• OZ Crono Evolution
• Oz Superleggera
• BBS RX
• Vox Forza
• RH Evolution M7000

I have finally... bought... a ... car....

Can you believe that? After 7 years of saving up ... I finally got ... my very own .. car... You have any idea how big this is for me??? Man... It has yet to really strike me as reality... well, I don't have the car yet... I have to go pick it up on Monday, but I've signed all the papers and stuff... gonna get insurance now...

So I got to the dealer in Wexford with Sam and Pam, and after like 30 minutes of negotiating I got it on invoice price... I'm sure they still made lots of money off other secret incentives they have or what not.. but as far as I'm concerned, getting a brand new incoming vehicle right on invoice is good enough... I wasn't gonna sit there for another hour or something negotiating ... I have better ways to spend my time.

While I was negotiating, I made the mistake of slipping out my weakness by saying I would buy the car on invoice... which was a bad mistake since I should have first gone under... oh well... by the time I had realized that I had made the mistake it was too late. The guy had basically frozen the price... so it was game over... I actually tried to go under after that... but obviously it wouldn't work. So I walked out... pu heh heh heh... thinking that I would just go get the black one in Ohio... then while we're driving out the dealer Sam, Pam and I were just talking over the deal and I realized that I really really wanted the silver one... and driving to Ohio to get the black one wasn't really worth the hassle... Simply put, I wanted the silver one BAD... so I went back and signed the deal. kee hee... But, the invoice price they showed me did not match the invoice price listed on Edmunds... It did, however, match the invoice price listed on Carsdirect.com and AutoByTel.com. He had 3 mysterious items in the invoice: advertising fee, floor plan interest reserve, and port prep fee which amounted to a total of $230. If that is subtracted out, it matches the Edmunds invoice list. Some sources tell me that the advertising fee is legit.. so I'll give them the $125 that was on the invoice as a legitimate additional charge, but I personally think the other 2 items may just be balony... and if I didn't make the mistake of showing my weakness I would have probably been able to bargain another $130... but oh well... At least it was ~$200 below the True Market Value put out by Edmunds... This is the first time for me... I'll nail the deal next time.

Now I gotta shop for wheels and tires.... Awwwwwwww, Yeah!!! Let the modifications (only non-ricer modifications :P) begin!!!!

1. Silver / Black Velour , Luxury pkg, Sports Suspension, Cold Weather pkg, Mnsoon Sound system
2. Black / Black Leather, Sports Luxury pkg, Leather pkg (incl Cold Weather), Monsoon Sound System
3. White / Black Velour, Luxury pkg, Sports Suspension, Cold Weather pkg, Monsoon Sound system

The first one, however, is a brand new one incoming still in the dock being delivered to the deaer within the next few days. I doubt I'll be able to get a deal below invoice for that one... The other two are in Ohio... -.-;;;... But they've been in the lot for some time so I have a good chance of getting a good deal... It's just that I have to travel for an hour to go negotiate... Good news is that even over fax I have a price quote for the black leather one for $100 over invoice.

With all that aside... It's amazing how involved this whole car buying process is.. It turns out that no dealers have more than like one 1.8T manual transmission in stock... leather pkg is even harder to find... at any rate, I'm going to be spending the latter half of my afternoon and evening at the dealerships tomorrow... Go negotiate my first choice, then if it doesn't work out I'll go to my second choice, etc...

1. Take road trips to at least 3 cities within 6, 7 hours of driving distance (once I get a car, that is)
2. Learn how to tame the 1.8 Liter Turbo Engine
3. Bring my weight back up to at least 165lbs.
4. Keep up with my Chinese and Japanese by reading random websites like this, this and this and talking to myself. kee hee

I've bought myself a roundtrip ticket to Beijing! Departing the 9th of August, and coming back on the 20th. I'm gonna go and just pig out and read some books. Basically 10 days of vegitation!! woo-hoo.. kee hee. It's gonna be awesome. ;) Me, my cousin and her husband might visit the sunny state of Florida when I get back as well. I haven't been to the beach in like who knows how many years, so if that happens that ought to be cool, too .

Speaking of my cousin, I don't think I've ever mentioned here that she's finally pregnant. Sooooo happy for her. Time sure flies... I remember her being this rich Armani-clad punk sister with attitude, but now she has gotten married, settled down in D.C., and expecting.... awwww... how sweet.. :) She used to be one of my primary drinking partners, but I guess that'll have to be put on hold until she lets that monster out of her womb. kee hee. Her mom (my aunt) had gone through some hard times while she was pregnant, and it looks like my cousin isn't having an easy time, either... She's hanging in there, though. You go girl!

I guess I forgot to talk about the commencement ceremony I attended on Sunday. Simply put, it was a disaster... Thank god I had taken my umbrella with me. It was cloudy.. then it rained, then it shined, then rained again, then shined again, etc... bleh... Well I was there to see JP, a good friend of mine since freshmen year who had returned from serving the Korean military, couple friends from iFS (international free stylers), and a couple hoobaes of mine graduate. Having attended the Upenn commencement ceremony with Jim Lehrer and his great commencement speech, I had great expectations for Tom Ridge's commencement speech at my alma matar. But, alas... Tom Ridge took the most obvious path reflecting on his career change as the homeland security advisor, and talked about how CMU is about advancing the technology to improve the U.S. security and to stop terrorism. Ok... sure... CMU is partially known for its excellent science and engineering schools... but that's not what CMU is only about... Moreover, CMU is not just an American College, but it's an international community... Yes terrorism is bad, but devote an entire commencement speech to anti-terrorism agendas?? Maybe he was so busy guarding the good ol' US that he didn't have time to write a real commencement speech, and opted to just recycle one of his other boring speeches??? Basically I thought the speech sucked. Me and my friends were just yawning throughout the ceremony... *YAWN*... On top of that, I dunno... for some reason the commencement seemed rather dead compared to the other years I've attended. Cap decoration was kept to a minimum, and not many people were cheering on...Oh well... Just blame it on the weather...

With all that aside I'm just... relaxed... relaxed... relaxed... my mind is ready for a fresh new beginning. This week will be spent in preparation for the entire summer and beyond. Got 'nuf sleep and 'nuf rest / action over the weekend and I'm ready to proceed. :) Fuuuunnnnky Frrrrresh!!! Here I come!!!

So yesterday I got to test drive the Jetta 1.8T. Loved the steering, loved the brakes, loved the acceleration in the lower speed range... Not too happy with the accelaration in the higher speed range... Darren explained to me that that's the characteristic of the stock 1.8T engine; to have jucice at the lower speed range. I didn't get to drive the RSX cuz the salesman at the Acura dealer was being an ass hole... but Darren tells me that the engine on the RSX is the opposite of the 1.8T in the sense that RSX will have juice at the higher speed when the i-VTEC kicks in. That discussion lead to whether I should just get the VR6 instead for overall power improvement... I dunno...

I think even if I test drive the RSX I'm still going to buy the Jetta... Something tells me that I should get a 4 door and not a 2 door hatch back... plus I get heated seats with the Jetta... Pittsburgh weather seeks for heated seats. :) So I think I'm swaying towards the Jetta... gonna get BBS RX wheels for it just like the wolfsburg edition did!!! awww yeah~~~ :)

Oh, I forgot to mention an interesting event that took place while I was in Philly, so I though I'd post it. There was this guy who proposed to his girlfriend at the graduation. I think he was an undergrad. Three of his friends held up cardboards that read: "Will U", "Marry" and "Me". The crowd, once realized what was going on, went wild and the dude ran up the side rails while the girl ran down to meet up with him. They kissed, he put the ring in her finger, and they kissed again. Awwwwww... how sweeeet.... ^^;;;

Oh, and I did see the Panic Room. It was... uhm... interesting. Kind of an odd ending I must say... Before we saw the Panic Room we snuck into another theater to sneak a peek at the ending to Blade II. Just as gruesome as the original and pretty action packed. Although Wesley Snipes still doesn't look natural in his fighting scenes in my opinion. heh heh. I guess it'll take Keanue Reeves and the subsequent Matrix sequels to beat that kinda awkward fighting scenes. Speaking of which... when the hell are the sequels coming out???

Dammit! I must've left my stereo on auto-wake up, but forgot to set the auto-turn-off bit so that it would turn itsel off after an hour or so... While I was out of town I got a warning from my landlord and next door neighbor about my stereo blasting throughout the night... grr... Mah bad... I don't blast my stereo... that hurts my precious ears. :) Dang, I'll go apologize tomorrow morning.

Eeenyway, I'm back in the burgh. Home sweet home. Two straight weekends of venturing outside the burgh seeking for some adventure has finally come to an end. I'm actually kinda glad, cuz I need some rest. Short trips always drain you out. I think I will spend this week taking it easy with work and excercise. Then when Friday comes around I'm thinking of renting a car so I can brush up on my manual transmission driving technique before I go test driving next week to finally settle on a car. If the weather forecast seems good enuf, I might even get a convertible... :) hee hee.

Oh yeah! about the trip to the city of brotherly luv. I had a really good time there. Most of the time was spent looking for a parking space downtown, pigging out (good food, mind you), and watching graduates march in, and march out of the stadium.. :) I think I can dig philly if I didn't have to drive downtown too much. I really like the vibe I got from the South street. Simply walking through that jam-packed street makes me just wanna let myself loose and have some serious fun. It usually takes some time for me to get to know the people enough so that I will be comfortable, and same goes for places; I always have this somewhat lengthy period of awkwardness that I have to go through to get a feel for stuff, but once i do I totally let myself loose and just bond with the people and the place. If you're gonna party, you might as well party hard, ya know. :) South street seems like a place I can eventually relate to and have some good hard fun. I didn't really get to do much there this time around, but I'll make sure I do the next time I drop by. The streets around Upenn is also very nice. Lots of little cool places to sit down and talk over a cup of smoothy or what not. This place called the Pod looked pretty cool. I didn't get a chance to dine in, but it looked like a pretty cool spot. I think the overall cost of living theres is rather high. It's just the vibe I got... parking, rent, insurance (although, this seemed to be primarily due to the fact that the town which UPenn is located in happens to be somewhat dangerous), all seemed to be quite a bit higher than the burgh. I guess the suburbs are much better in that regards.

So my first time in Philly has given me a good idea of what the city is like. I think it's certainly worth a second trip just to get more involved in the scene. Oh, oh, oh, and I wish I could revist the Philadelphia museum of arts with somebody who has a clue. Sure I can enjoy walking around looking at the pieces in awe, but it's so much more to have somebody next to me being able to fill me in on the history of the individual pieces. Are YOU that somebody????? ;)

Off to Philly in a couple of hours. Gonna see one of my very good friend's lil bro graduate from UPenn. Haven't seen him for ages, too... so it should be good. I'll also get to see his mom which is very good as well. Right now I'm kinda sorta hung over from last night, but not really. kee hee. Very minor, tho... I think I had about 5 glasses of daiquiri, a shot of Tequilla, and a shot of "piece of ass"... Yeah, it's another cocktail that I discovered last night. Dude... if it's got amaretto in it, I'll take it any day. :)

Okee... I'm out, will be back on Tuesday! Don't miss me tooo much, yo~~

Alright, today is the big cleaning day for me. I just bought a bunch of cleaning utensils and sprays from Giant Eagle. I'm ready to scrub my bathroom and vacuum my room, man. By the end of the night, it's all gonna be squeaaaaky clean. :) Gotta change into my tank tops and sweat pants, pump some funky breaks and get down to biznaaaazzz. :) Oh, yeah... I'm gonna dust out all my equipments, lube them and all as well. Gonna feel goood, babyeee!!

Update: Alright, so apart from my music equipments, everything is squeeeeeaky clean. Well, may be not squeeeeeaky clean, but it's certainly much much cleaner than it was a few hours ago. Bathroom floor, toilet bowl, the tub, the sink, kitchen, oven, my room, etc... all of'em!!! Dang... Tilex and 409 doesn't work exactly as advertised.... You have to scrub a lot harder than they do in the commercials...... -.-;;;. Phew~~~

I got to talk to one of my very good friends Sang Yoon on the phone last night. He has gone through some crazy shit for the past year and a half. I can't believe he just kept it all to himself... He simply did not let anyone know what he was going through. Basically he had a child with his girlfriend, unexpectedly ( a son named Suh Yum who has just recently turned 1 year old ). It was kept a secret for a long long time until they let the parents know. Now if that wasn't hard enough, there's so much crap going on right now between the two families that it's not even funny. Since some time had passed by, we were able to laugh about it and stuff, but I know that he's still going through a lot of shit. He's just basically so jaded that he doesn't let it get to him too much. He is looking at life straight in the eye and living it as it comes at him.

I wish I could just sit down with him at a Korean bar with a couple bottles of soju and just chat. I can't even begin to imagine what he had to go through. It's certainly nothing I can easily relate to. Talking to him really shows how much he has grown in such a short period of time. He sounds like he is at least 5 years older than I am.

He's on his way to serve in the military come Fall time, and it doesn't seem likely that I'll get a chance to catch up with him any time soon. He told me the only thing that he's worried about right now is how much he's going to miss his son while he's serving in the army. Damn... You're gonna be such an awesome dad. I honestly don't think any friggin hero, any holier-than-thou religious leaders, any charismatic political figures, and even the greatest thinkers beat one great father. Son, don't forget that I'm always behind you no matter what. Don't let what others say to you get to you, in the end all that matters is that you're happy. I miss you very much, friend.

Slim, you're such an idiot... Dammit... Why do I keep doing this? I forgot to eat lunch again... and now I just started getting all hungry... Crap... I have to stop doing this if I want to start gaining my weight back... dammit, dammit, dammit... Alright.. no work out for me tonight. Going home, and I'm gonna put all my clothes in the washer and I'm gonna eat till my stomach blows... well, not quite... but I'll eat. ;)

So if you've been following me around :), you'll know that I'm still struggling to decide what car to buy... I'm so indecisive about this, it's not even funny... I'm usually pretty quick on decisions. I research, I survey, and I decide. But this car thing... man... It ain't happening like that... Darren even went out and survyed the public. I'm still torn between Jetta GLS 1.8T and RSX Type-S... I have a feeling that when I go test driving I'll pick the RSX, but when I think of general utility I'll pick the Jetta without even test driving it... RSX is about $1,000 more... AHHHHH!!!!! I might just lease... Jetta depreciates more gracefully in that case.... I really don't know, man.... I'm just gonna go test driving next week see what happens...

Je voudrais prendre un bain avec toi

Just got back from Boston. What a vacation.... Pretty exhausted I must say... I'm probably just gonna take a shower, tidy up my room, and just call it a night.... But!!! Before that I'm sure you're all wondering how my trip went. :) So here goes...

Well, on Thursday I arrived in Boston and headed straight to the hotel I was supposed to stay that night. It was the hotel that the groom worked at and I got an insane deal of $30/night. That was sweet. After unpacking, I took the T to the hotel that the groom's buds were staying cuz it was the bachelor's party night!! I was like... damn... this is the bachelor's party that I've only read about in fairy tales.. well, not exactly fairy tales, but you know what I mean. There were 5 of us and we headed to this place called Jillian's to shoot pool for a lil bit before heading to our final destination of well, a true bachelor's party joint: strip club!!! Jillian's is just like Dave & Busters and we were just there to try and kill some time cuz it was only like 9 PM. We figured we'd shoot pool for an hour and head to the strip club afterwards. I was all eager in anticipation... Various names of strip clubs were mentioned by the groom: Alex, Foxy Lady, Esquire, etc... pu heh heh. Then BAM!!!!! Guess what happened... Two of the grooms friends almost got into a fist fight over some stupid argument revolving around their pool shooting skills... I was like... WTF??? Who gives a crap how well you play pool at the bachelor's party???.... damn... Well anyway, me and the others broke them off but the two just weren't taking it well... So we decided to split and take them back to the places they were staying at...There goes my first visit to a strip club... all the anticipation, no climax, no resolution... just a flop. Grrrrreat.... -.-;;; So me and the groom ended up going back to our hotel and drank for couple hours at the bar he was working at. We just talked about all the drama he had gone through to make this marriage happen (This was an interracial marriage between a Korean female and a White male). Quite entertaining to be the listener of the story, but it must have been pretty crazy to have been the actual characters.

On Friday I hung around a bit helping out with all the pre-wedding day stuff, then headed to China Town to meet up with a good sister that I knew from way back. I actually got there an hour earlier than the scheduled time cuz of some uncontrollable circumstances. I kinda walked up and down Boylestone's shopping district browsing around, trying to feel Boston, ya know? :) That only lasted like 30 minutes cuz I felt like a dork walking up and down the street with my friggin roller bag (If I knew I was going to be walking with my stuff I would have taken my back pack with me, not some bag on wheels that scream "I'm a friggin tourist") So I ended up sitting down in this big park they had. It looked pretty nice and very Boston. pu heh. Thought I'd just chill on the bench trying to look like some romantic dude engaged in deep philosophical dillema. Romantic dude my ass... It was friggin cold as hell... the wind was gushing like a mofo and after 2 minutes of trying hard to look like a romantic philosopher I just rolled up my legs and hoped that time would fly by... pu heh heh heh. Well, so we finally met up, went to a restaurant and caught up on stuff. It was sooooo good to meet an old face. After that we headed back to her place and chatted some more.

Saturday was the big wedding day. I headed to the hotel where I was going to be staying that night and changed into a suit and a tie. I took the role of a video camera guy for the day and just shot everything from our way to the church in a limo to the wedding reception. All in all the wedding day went well, but of course the reception wasn't enough for me. I sat down with groom's friends and bride's friends and demanded, heh heh, they "Show me Boston!!!" Well we ended up at this place called "Champions"... some sports bar... They were like "That's Paul Pierece's jersey, that's reeeally Boston."... shessh... -.-;;; Well, after the last call a small portion of the group including me headed to another location which was supposed to be "really Boston". We ended up in this bar called "J.J. Foley's" which was an Irish pub. That was pretty Boston... pu heh heh. The last call there was like 2:30 ... I think the bottom line is that night life in Boston isn't that great, either.

On Sunday I checked out of the hotel and met up with the sister I met the other day and this time with her boyfriend to go see Spider Man. The movie was, well... ok. It was kinda funny and cheesy, but I guess that's expected. I also hear that that's also the style that the director of the movie is known for. All in all, it was a decent movie, and that up-side-down kiss scene in the rain still kicked ass. ;) Later on in the evening I met up with a good friend of mine whom I haven't seen for almost a year and a half. We talked until around 1:30 AM that night catching up on stuff. He seemed to be doing well, and he hasn't changed a bit, and he seemed like he was in good hands which makes me happy as well. I also got to drive his CLK for a few minutes, too!!! :P

All in all, it was a good trip, but also a tiring one at that. Trying to do all the things I tried to do in such a short period of time was pretty hectic. Now I gotta clean up all the mess in my apartment, get organized and I'm headed back out to Philadelphia this weekend!!!! Awwwww yeah~~ :P

Kinda wired... not on coffee... Just kinda wired on something... perhaps it's the sudden drop of workload and the anticipation of the adventure that is about to ensue as spring subsides and summer approaches...Or maybe it's something else. ;)

Much to be accomplished this summer, and I def. need to take some good quality time out of Pittsburgh in order to get rejuvenated. Boston this weekend, Philly next weekend.Then it's full-time Pittsburgh until my vacation in August. I have a feeling this summer just might be different from all other summers I've had... stay tuned~~~ :)

Basically DONE! Our team needs to present our final project today, I need to finish up the essay due for the same class, then I'll be handing in my last bit of assignment for the Macro Economics course.... Awwww yeah.... what does that spell??? D. O. N. E!!! Done!!! :) Woo-hoo!!!

I'm off to Boston, MA on Thursday... For that wedding I mentioned earlier. I'll be back on Monday, don't miss me too much. ;)