The Pig Roast

This past Saturday, one of our friends decided to hold a pig roast at one of the fire pits in Dockweiler Beach. It was a great success and I think a lot more people came out for it than expected. Here are a couple of pics from the day:

Caroline and her friends made a spit for the pig and started roasting it pretty early on. It's a 20 lb baby pig. We were pretty close to the bike path so we heard a couple "hey look! They're roasting a pig" and a couple of "ohmigosh, is that a dog they're roasting?!!" (we were with a lot of asian ppl.)

Here's a close up of the pig. All we did to season it was to put a dry rub on it.

Cutting up the pig once it was done roasting. It was derecious!

Another view of the piggy.

New Jobs, Asian Moms, Norah Jones and etc.

Sorry I haven't written in a while but damn times are a' busy these days.

1) I finished up my interviewing and accepted a job at a large consumer electronics company in their corporate strategic planning group. I'm uber excited about my new job and my last day at my current job is on Monday. I'm currently trying to just play catchup on the consumer electronics industry and all the financial modeling/valuation that'll be involved in my new role. If you have sample excel models for me to study, send them my way! This job is a completely 180 from what I'm doing now but I really excited about the new industry and the company. The only drawback is that this company's HQ is located in Compton (this firm orignally was a startup from the CEO's garage in Torrance) so I just extended my daily commute by at least an hour each day.

2) My sister (I think it's ok to say it now since she's no longer in the country) is going to be on a reality show! She's currently in a different country in the process of filming it. Don't ask me what show though, I don't think I'm allowed to say bumpkiss about it until the network reveals who their contestants are. The whole family is excited for her and we all had to sign waivers essentially not revealing anything about the show.

3) The other sister started her new job on the Monday following the Friday on which she took her last final ever. I think she's really starting to feel the pangs of everyday working life. I feel for her because it's a big transistion to go from student to 14 hour training days (this includes study time at home). She's told me about how envious she is about seeing how all her just graduated friends are enjoying their post-collegiate, unemployed times by taking wacky day trips but in the end, I think my sister's the one's who's gonna come out ahead. Hang in there!

4) My little brother graduated HS and is finally taking the steps to get his driver's license... about time!

5) Our whole family has to go back to HK since my grandfather just passed away. I didn't know him that well since he was in HK so I wasn't that close to him. He used to always slip us grandkids money  when we saw him and that's my most predominant memory of him. As bad as this sounds, this actually works out because I was supposed to start my new job July 2nd but now it's been pushed back to July 9th to give me time to head to HK and back. That's 2 weeks of downtime between jobs, which I'm glad I'm getting and plus I'll get to see my whole family again since everyone's flying in for the funeral.

6) B and I went to Norah Jones last night at the Greek Theater in LA. It's a really nice outdoor theater! Who knew? I didn't like her opening act but Norah was great. Sadly, I only recognized 3 songs out of her whole set.

7) B and I are spending every weekend working on the townhome. It's kinda exhausting but I think in the end it's rewarding to see stuff getting done. It's been great living with B and it almost feels like a honeymoon cuz we're just so happy. Corny, I know... Sorry! Damn I feel domesticated.

Oh and get this: we went from deciding to go with pergo flooring to bamboo to wood flooring. I think we've been to every janky discount wood flooring place in LA. B decided to go with light wood flooring since our flooring contractor warned B that dark wood is much harder to maintain and when it scratches, it shows up very easily. We're still trying to figure out which exact place to buy our boards so the conversion to wood flooring is stalled until we figure that out. Oh and get this - we have 3 flights of stairs. To convert the rug on those stairs to wood flooring will cost about $150/stair since it's more detailed work in addition to the special wood supplies needed to for the stairs. We have about 40 stairs (est). <sigh>

We've had a couple contractors come by the place because B wants to renovate the upstairs half bathroom and make it to a full bathroom so that hopefully we can make a little extra income by renting out the loft. Funny story: B's parents came up one weekend to visit and his mom is a force to be reckoned with. When we finally got down to negotiating the price of the construction with the contractor she tried to bargain with the guy to get the best price - which is normal. What I wasn't expecting was B's mom telling the contractor (who's Israeli Jewish) that the last owner was Jewish too so the contractor should give us a better price because of this. I think B and I just kinda inwardly groaned when his mom said that but the contractor was a good sport about it and laughed it off. Speaking of which, I think B gave his mom a set of keys to the townhome so one of these days, I could conceivably come home and his parents could just be sitting our couch - something I'm not to thrilled about. Well... at least she completely cleaned our kitchen for us while she was here. haha love dem' taiwanese moms. 

Oh and we got our new couch delivered and FYI PG, it's not generic!! lol. When the couch arrived, the movers, literally strapped some ropes to our 3rd story balcony and pulled it up since our couch was too big for our narrow staircases. It's a great color and very comfy.

That's it for updates for now, I'll try to post more pics when I can.

State of Flux

This weekend was the big weekend of moving. I am glad to report that despite all my tales of gloom and foreboding stories of "mom pulling out of escrow", B successfully closed escrow on the townhome this past Friday. We officially have a home together!! Yippee! We started moving things (aka. my bed) Friday night and all that standing around in the cold night without a sweater caught up to me as I woke with a pretty gnarly cold the next morning. B's brother is moving in with us and taking the other room so he was on hand to help move a lot of B's things Saturday/Sunday morning. I was pretty miserable with my leaky nose all weekend long, toting around my kleenex box like a security blanket but B wanted to get the majority of our things moved this weekend... so no rest for the weary.

We actually got a lot done this weekend and moved about 88% of all our combined things into the townhome. We also went furniture shopping and found a good price for a couch which we will probably go back to the store to buy this coming week. We also went to Circuit City and Fry's to look at the 60" rear projection Sony TV B wanted and ended up deciding to order it online since that was the cheapest price we could find. We'll be ordering the cable tv/internet today and I've officially been placed in charge of researching the replacement of the old funky microwave in the kitchen. B's gonna take care of getting us parking passes for the 24-hr permitted parking outside our townhome for our guests. We also got to meet a lot of our neighbors since they all stopped to say hello as they were parking their cars. There are only 5 condos in our building and those owners make up the HOA. We met a pretty cool indian computer engineer with dreadlocks (who looked to be about the same age as us) who lives with his sister and a friend in unit 2, an older, nice asian lady who lives next to our unit with her husband, and a cool young hip Italian couple who live in unit 3. All-in-all a good busy weekend. The place is definitely a fixer-upper and we're planning on installing laminate wood flooring (the kind that clips in) and a mess of other home improvements. A couple of friends have already volunteered to help us with a little bit of everything so we're pretty excited.

We've spent a lot of the weekend echoing the sentiment of  "I can't believe we're moving in together" to one another. I'll say it to B and then he'll repeat the same statement 2 hours later to me. I guess the reality is really starting to hit us. It's a little bit scary to know what moving in together implies but we're also pretty excited about the future. Friends, we are officially adults.

As another FYI, keep-you-updated on my coming and going ons, I've told my job that I'm going to start looking for another job so they have time to find someone to replace me and this also gives me time to run out for interviews during the day. I wouldn't suggest this strategy to everyone as most companies would probably insist that by telling them, you are giving your two weeks notice. I guess I'm a little lucky in that my bosses recognize the reasons why I'm leaving and are sympathetic as to why I've decided to move on. I've already interviewed with 4 companies and 2 of the positions look promising.

Last weekend was my little sister's, Tam's and Nancy's graduations so it just generally feels like everything is changing right now. Congratulations to Tam, Nancy and Jade! All of you are now Lawyers/Dentists/Employed graduate! I can pretty much sum up how I feel right now by this pic below. Sometimes change is a good thing and right now, I'm hoping the coming future lives up to all the hype I'm feeling about it right now.