Holiday lights

This is the season where night is sometimes brighter than the day time. I love it.

Rest between turmoil

It has been horrible at work, probably one of the worst times since I have been with the company. Luckily, I requested some time off prior to the troubled period and was able to recover a bit. I have been reluctantly checking my work emails via my blackberry throughout my time off and issues have yet to be stabilized. At this point I am not sure what the outcome will be but what I do know is that I have to move forward, whether it be with my current employer or not. Most likely the latter. I anticipate a rough few months ahead and really need to prepare myself to be put in a better situation.

Anyways, here are some random pictures from my recent time off.

Rainy days in Sydney

As expected with my "rain man" reputation, it rained about 75% of the time and was unusually cold. Luckily, I saw more of Sydney than my previous trip, but I couldn't do what I wanted which was chilling at a beach wearing nothing but my beach trunks and sipping on an ice cold cocktail. Oh well, I may still have a chance to fulfill that dream as I may be asked to go back there in the near future.

Now here are some random pics of the trip:

Going back down under

I have a business trip coming up in the next couple of days that will send me back to Sydney, Australia. Unlike my last trip to Sydney where I was there for about a week, I am scheduled to be there for almost three weeks. Hopefully, I will get to check out more of Sydney than just Darling Harbour. I will definitely take pictures while I am there. In the mean time, here is a pic that I took 2 days ago while I was attending a BBQ next to Tamagawa river in Setagaya.

Natural disasters

Natural disasters, like earthquakes have always been a way of life in Japan. Every time one occurs, I just say to myself, "Oh .. its an earthquake" and just brush it off. I almost never stop what I am doing. Ever since the 3/11 disaster however, I notice myself with a bit more anxiety during a tremor. I don't go into panic mode at all, but I do find myself briefly interrupting on what I was doing and question myself if this could be another "big" one. This past week, there were 2 big jolts that could be felt in the Tokyo area. Scientists still say that the Tokyo area is not out of the woods yet in experiencing a big earthquake, so there is still fear that we may experience a another super earthquake in the near future. Besides earthquakes, a strong typhoon just ravaged Japan this past weekend. Luckily, the Tokyo area was spared but parts of western Japan wasn't as fortunate. I hope natural disasters won't continue to escalate. However, I am not so sure especially with Virginia just recently experiencing a magnitude 5 earthquake! The world is a scary place.. and that is not even factoring the man made chaos like crumbling economies, wars, etc.

Summer time view

Summer came and went in a flash. My little bro from the U.S. came to visit for his summer vacation. It was great. Here is a brief view of that vacation -


Enoshima shrine. Really awesome and first time I visited there.




Went to visit Disney Sea again. We stayed there for 12 hours. Pretty crazy but fun!



Blueberry picking. A great summer time activity.



Chinatown in Yokohama. Ate too much Chinese food that day. I haven't eaten any Chinese food since!




Fireworks at a festival in Yamanashi.




Tama-center festival.



Shonan beach in Kanagawa.



Roppongi Hills as seen from under the spider.




Small beach in Odaiba.




Lake view at Yamanashi.

In the SLR game

Well, I finally gave in and bought an SLR camera this week. I've always been about convenience, hence all my pictures were taken from my camera phone. After a while though, the pictures and memories that got captured from those pictures all started to look the same. No depth. Just bland pictures that gave me the same mindless reaction "Oh yeah I remember that. Heh...". I was always impressed with the pictures that people took with their SLR cameras but I was never motivated to get one because of the cost, it was inconvenient, compared to my camera phone and the fact that some lenses cost more than the camera itself. I tried one at a local electronic store last week and was amazed that even I could take a picture of a simple object with little to no effort and it would look stunning. So now, I hope to take better pictures and possibly turn it into a hobby... hopefully not an expensive one...