Lase Visits the US

Yeah, I know we never finished my visit to Msia Y.Y Maybe I'll complete it some day in the future or if I'm promised some reward... ;-)

This will be in several posts. There's a lot to tell and pics to crop, resize and upload to go with some. Making smaller posts to keep my sanity and prevent one bad post from losing everything.

First off: WOOT! I was really excited and happy to know she was coming to visit.My flight to LA from Cincinnati was to have a layover in Atlanta. Go figure... traveling to the west cost of the US before heading to the east coast. /boggle Airlines need to get something figured out to save people time, money and their own jet fuel. Jucky me, my flight was delayed due to bad weather in Atlanta. We were all on the plane and they said it'd be a while before departing due to the bad weather. They checked the flights of all the passengers to be sure no one would be affected. After the checks, three names were called, mine last... To get off the plane for a direct flight to LA :D I could feel ALL of the envious eyes on me as I took my carry-on out of the overhead and walked off the plane. :D I went and got some cofee at Starbucks and read my book (the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe) for a while before going to the gate and getting on the new plane. The flight was uneventful, but earlier than I had planned.

I now had an extra hour to wait for Lase to arrive. I was already going to wait an hour for her, but the direct flight cut a bunch of time out. I walked to the international terminals and checked the time of her arrival... she's going to be late. ARG! SO much time to kill... I sat ouside and read my book for a while. Skipped lunch so I could eat with her. Having traveled to Msia before, I knew the meals on the airlines are small and sometimes you only get to eat half of em because the other half is stuff you don't like. I expected her to be hungry when she arrived. After a while, the smokers started showing up, so I went inside and sat down on a bench and read some more... i don't know when it started, but I'd read a sentence, look around, read another sentence, look around, re-read the previous sentence because I forgot what it said, and then look around some more. I didn't want to be there reading, but what else is there to do? I had already looked around (restaurants and no stores I want to look through) on my way to the bench I was at. So I just stayed there trying to read and looking around, watching people walk by.

It got close to time for her arrival, so I went down to the waiting area. All the seats were full, so I backed up to the end of a row of seats and started watchign for Lase. The time boards still listed her flight as on the way... /sigh Shortly after it finally changed to arrived, I noticed I was getting some strange looks... I was happily bouncing on my toes. XD I was EXCITED.... Then Excited... Then excited... Time drug by waiting for her to show up... Lots of people walking up from the terminals and out of the building. Finally, I saw her. I could never miss her eyes <3 And it's a good thing, too, because she was wearing a medical mask LOL!



I met her at the exit of the secure area and got a quick hug and we walked out of the terminal building. :)

First night in Malaysia

L O N G overdue... I know

/hides in shame

My first night in Malaysia, after the pleasant car ride. Lynn parks in front of the hotel. We get out and a bellhop carries my bags in. I check in quickly and easily. I'd rather be carrying my bags up on my own and try to say so, but a glance from Lase...

>.>

*shudders thinking of it*

I let the bellhop carry my bags for me.

We get up to my room and move inside. He sets my bags down and turns to walk away. I didn't say anything, but I made some sort of movement that indicated I wanted to tip him. Lase glares at me...

>.>

*shudders thinking of the glare*

I would have totally not tipped him if I knew it wasn't custom. I would have said nevermind and let him go without a tip, too, if she didn't volunteer to pay him. i realized I had only the large bills she gave me, so I looked at her and got the glare I mentioned...

*shudder*

Then, she started reaching into her purse for a small bill and at that point he was hooked. >.< She pays him with a largish note, RM10 I think. I felt bad about it :( If she had let me carry my own bags, we wouldn't have had that happen. LOL

After that, we walked across the street to do some shopping. I needed to get something for breakfast. A variety 6-pack of cereal and a carton of milk would do well for the week.

After putting the stuff away in my room, she drove me out for dinner. :) I ordered a beef noodle dish and Lase had.... chicken? Anyway, it was more noodles than anything. There was hardly any beef at all. >.< Like it was all noodles and the beef was just there for flavor. Which brings me to the flavor... *ick* I wasn't feeling too well to begin with (i never mentioned that to Lase) and the taste of the noodles was realyl bland. Like a mushy flavor. Normally I'd be able to go with it, but somehow it jsut combined with my general sickness to make me feel even sicker. :( So, I just picked out the little bits of meat. I know she felt bad about me not being able to eat dinner. I could have easily ordered a second dish, but I just wasn't hungry.

We also went to Jonker Walk. It had the same atmosphere of a flea market here. Some people selling new toys and trinkets. SOme selling used items. And a good number selling foods. ANd the crowd being thick enough in some spots you ahve to push your way through a little and completely empty in others. I liked it. :) The markets here all close at dusk and are indoors. I prefer the outdoors, night-time setting of Jonker. It seemed easier to breathe the fresh air and with no roof, it was a good deal quieter.

Then we went back to the hotel room and spent time together until she had to leave to sleep at home. I had a wonderful day. Except for the exceptional travel wearing me out and making me feel kinda sick at dinner and accidentally making Lase pay the tip to the bellhop (I'm still REALLY sorry about that, Honey), I had a perfect day. :)

<3 you, Dear.

I R NUBE!

Even after spending YEARS in school learning about PCs, gaining certifications in PC maintainance (like A+, Lenovo and HP certs), I'm still making little mistakes with my own PCs. I recently changed the CD-ROM in my spare PC for a DVD-ROM that'll burn CDs, too. When I booted it, it would start the fans, blink lights and then shut off. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it for two weeks. Finally, tonight I opened it up one more time before calling in my brother (who is also uberly PC savy) and looked at every part in the case. The last one I checked, the CPU fan, was the culprit. I had forgotten to plug it back into the mainboard. >.<

For those of you who say the CPU fan has nothing to do with the optical drives and didn't need to be unplugged for the change... I have some very tidy cabling in my case and the lengthy CPU fan cable is included. To get the cabling out of the way, I unplugged the CPU fan to give the bundle some slack.

So, for those of you who are experts at anything, consider a piece of advice: When something isn't working out just right, the Devil is in a little, obvious detial. Check everything as if a moron had done the work and you expect it all to be wrong.

Hmmm

The more I hear about it, the less I like it. The gov't here is goig to help the people who can not afford to pay their morgages. The people who have bought houses they can afford, made their payments on time and worked responsibly to support themselves will get no help. They (myself included) are the ones who are paying for this huge bailout that the gov't have put together. I want to save money to buy my own house. I don't want to be paying for someone else's house after they bought more than they could pay for. They shouldn't be keeping the houses they can't afford. They should be selling what the have and moving into something more affordable, not waiting for their neighbors to pay for their home as well as their own.

I've been working and saving so I can provide for myself in the future. I paid my own way through college while working. I paid my car loan off years early. I've been putting money away in a retirement account. If the gov't wants to levy taxes to pay for the roads I drive on, the military that protects me, etc, that's fine. I totally agree that I should be paying for things that benefit me. The neighbors that get to keep the house they can't afford is a slap in the face to everyone who was responsible. It's absolutely rewarding bad behavior. It isn't something I should be paying for.

V Day

No, not Victory in Europe Day.... Valentine's day.

Just celebrated my first in years. :) And with an extra special person. <3 Not only that, but it was more of a whole weekend than just one day. Her being on the other side of the world helped extend it, as I got to start at least 13 hours sooner than anyone else in the US. And she got to celebrate 13 hours later than everyone else in Msia. :D

Anyway, It was a great weekend. Especialyl watching her open the gifts I had sent to her. I got to watch her open them because we were using Skype. The PC parts I sent (everything except a PSU, hard drive and case) diodn't seem to imprress her much. But that's ok. She knew those were coming. What really seemed to please her was a video player (like an iPod touch) that I had included. I recorded myself singing (audio only) parts of several different songs. I sound horrible (and she agrees I have no tone), but I did it for her. I also downloaded and converted season 4 of So You Think You Can Dance to put on the player. I thought she'd like that more than my crappy singing. But, no. She really likes that I put my pride and embarrassment aside and STOMPED on them. ROFL!

Other than that, we spent a LOT of time playing together in the World of Warcraft. We talked using Ventrilo a good deal while playing, too. The internet is wonderful for not only letting me meet her, but for providing so many ways for us to stay together even though we're half the world apart. <3

Dear: If I find out you've shared me singing with anyone else, I'll have to return the favor of public humiliation. :P

Her story.

Good news for men:

We're not alone Clickie for news article.

If you don't want to jump: The article basically says that women read other women as well as men do... and that's not very well at all. So when we complain about not understanding women, it's for realz. Even women can't understand other women. :P

Still very busy

When new PCs come in for my company, I get to do the techie stuff to get it ready for the user to use it. I'm working on 27+ now. There's another guy who I split the work with who is doing a similar amount. Needless to say, I'm swamped at work. I get a few moments here and there when waiting for PCs to run processes, but not much. I take that time to IM Lase. <3

And outside of work, I'm pretty busy, too. I've been doing some work to package stuff that I'm sending to Lase for Valentine's Day and our anniversary. :D Between things that I do in WoW (yeah, it's game time I could cut out and have more time for other things, but I have friends in there I want to help out), I'll work on a little surprise project for her, too.

Anyway, posts here have been less than I've wanted to do. They'll pick up when I get more time later.

Again with the Evil Winter...

I left work at 4:30 today. I didn't get home until 6:30. :(

I was snowing HARD. Like so hard that I drove through two major town/areas and didn't even know it. There's a mall and movie theater and restaurants, etc in these places. But, since I couldn't see more than 20 feet, I didn't even see the signs stating I was near the exits, much less the places themselves.

When I started driving, the roads were clear. When I got home, there was 6 inches of snow on the road. There's more than a foot in our yard. It was a crazy 2-hour snowstorm. I wouldn't actually enjoyed driving in it, but other drivers made it very tense. They were always so close to me, like they usually are during rush hours. Five feet is WAY too close to be behind someone or even next to them when you can start sliding at any time. I always leave plenty of room in front of me for stopping. But, people in an unsafe hurry will speed past me and then get into that space. >:| Many times I wished I had a gun mounted on the front of my car so I could shoot their tires out. If they can't drive safely and put other people in danger like that, then they should be forced off the road.

Ice Storms Suck

My car was covered in a sheet of ice this morning that was at least 1/4" thick. It took me 15 minutes just to get a door open. Afgter that, another 45 minutes to get the ice off of the windows so I could see out. The ice on the back window of my car was half an inch thick. I have a hatchback car, so that window has a more shallow slant to it and the car is on a little hill, so it's more slanted. It made for an almost level surface for the ice to just build up on.

Anyway, after that, the roads are still a mess. There's ice, snow and/or slush on every road on the way to work. It was bad even the highways that I use. I was being SO careful the whole way. I only started sliding once. And that was on a steep highway hill. There was a Jeep in the next lane that I was sliding towards. He would have been fine if he kept going the way he was because he was a little ahead of me. But, he started slowing down >.< Luckily, my car is front wheel drive. I turn the wheel left (I was sliding right) and that had no effect. I expected that because I was sliding... Then i hit the gas a little and the car practically jumped. :O It went left in a hurry and I was back in my lane and not sliding in two seconds.

Then there's the bus ride. When I got on the bus, the driver was smiling and seemed too happy. As the driver closes the door, he says "There's already three quarters of an inch on top of the stuff." and laughs. I'm thinking: Oh boy, this guy is nuts...

So, he starts pulling out of the side street and onto the main street. he's really gunning the engine like the roads are clear and dry... I'm in the back of the bus next to the rear door. I notice that as the front of the bus starts going left, I'm still headed for the other side of the road. He's sliding the back of the bus :O And I can hear him giggling. :O About halfway to work, he does that again through another intersection. The rest of the trip is pretty safe, but him laughing and giggling is such serious weather... He's got to be crazy.

An OK Day

So we're TOTALLY swamped at work this week. Lots of new PCs coming in and I'm on the team that gets them installed. I have 8+ PCs all running and none of them are mine. There's also a half dozen I haven't even unboxed yet. I was kinda stressing because the next month is coming up and they're all marked Feb... But, I was mistaken about a little detail. they're all PCs that need to be installed by the end of next month, not the beginning, so we have plenty of time to get them done. :)

After work, I was riding the bus to the parking lot and got a phone call. A friend invited me to join him and another at a local resteraunt. So I went. We had dinner there. I had the peppercorn ribeye steak with garlic mashed potatos. *YUM* Friend had a chicken alfredo and the other a Philly chicken sandwhich.

After that, we moved to the resteraunt's arcade area. Dave & Buster's, if you're wondering what the place is called. The two of them purchase new cards and put some credits on them. I still have mine from years ago. We walk around some to see what's changed and settle down in front of Gauntlet Legends. We all play through a few credits and almost got the dragon at the end of the first levels down. He was at, like, 3% >.<

We move on after wiping that last time. The only other games for 3+ people are the racing games. So we sit down in the Daytona game and race a few times. With our bellies full, credits spent and me having to get home for a WoW raid, we decide to leave.

IT'S TOO COLD!

I went out to changr the battery in my car and it was frozen to the plate it sits on. >.< Last night I bought the battery. I tried to change it at the store so I could immediately return it and get my core charge back. But, it was dark and I couldn't get it out. So, frustrated and about freezing, I re-attached the battery cables and drove home. As I suspected, there is a bracket at the bottom of the battery that's bolted in and holds the battery securly in place. I couldn't see the bracket the previous night because it was dark. Anyway, I get the bracket off today without much trouble. The ratchet I have in the carr came with an extension bar, so it was uber easy to get it into the narrow space and remove the bolt. The hard part was getting the battery out. The bolt was out and the bracket removed, but the battery wouldn't budge.

*BAH!* says I, or something similar ;-) Remember what I said earlier about not much getting me 'excited'? Being cold is one of those few things. I HATE being cold. My ears hurt, my fingers hurt and won't move, my toes hurt, my eyes dry out and just want to close, my nose gets SO dry from breathing that it feels like it's gonna bleed at any moment... It's just makes me feel horrible. So, frustrated as I am, I just kick the thing. I raised my foot up over the car and dropped it as hard as I could on the battery... and it moved with a loud *POP* :D WOOT! I heft the thing out, which wasn't an easy thing to do since I couldn't get my hands down the narrow spaces around the battery. I had to lift it gripping only the top 2" or so. I see some heavy frost in the bottom of the battery space, raised in places, a perfect mold to the bottom of the old battery GRRRR...

I drop the new battery in. Hook up the cables. Start my car to make sure the new battery is good and then clean up my tools. After getting the old battery back in the car in front of the passenger seat, I run to the house. The previous night, it took me 8 tries to unlock the door. >.< I had gloves on and the door is secured with a number pad. The gloves kept hitting different buttons and ruining the code. Today, though, my sister was walking by the door, saw me coming in and unlocked it from the inside. :D Thanks Sis.

A car ride in Malaysia

So Lase is driving me away from the airport and I immediately notice one thing: Every tree is a palm tree. For many miles, all I saw was palm trees. Clear-cut hills and palms trees. Power lines on poles and palm trees. Crazy motos (more on those in blogs to come) and... palm trees. Back in the states, before I left, I had heard several times about people boycotting Malay palm oil because of what they do to the enviroment. Now I see why. The land is devastated by clearing, terracing and planting only palm trees for MANY kilometers. The US people are boycotting because the palm plantations are now wiping out rain forests to expand. But, even if it wasn't just because of the rainforest, I'd have to agree that they should plant palms in a more eviromentally friendly fashion.

I forget what words started it, but a little bit into the trip from the airport to Melaka, she says something like 'well, fine then, I won't talk.' I then say something like 'I can play that game too' and we have ourselves a little game of silence... at least 15mins of neither of us saying a word. That's easy for me, but Lase not talking? 8O I'd look at her, smile, check outthe palm trees, look at her again, take in more scenery, etc. I didn't think it was bad though. i was comfortable being with her. :) Anyway, I wanted to end the game and said soemthing. I flew to the other side of the world to see my girlfriend and I wasn't going to spend my time with her playing a game of silence.

Down the road, there was a resteraunt build across the highway :O i had thought of something like that before. It's rather logical, really... There's TONS of unused space over our nations highways. We have double-decker bridges near where i live and I've seen video of long higheays in California where highways are stacked up. So, i know there are ways to use the space. I just didn't expect to see it ever happen. Kudos to Msia for showing retail use of the space to me for the first time.

i also have to say the drivers in Msia are pretty crazy. Esp near my hotel where there's no lane lines. They just go from one side or middle of the road to another position whenever they want without signaling. We have that here, too, but they leave considerable space between cars when they do it. There, it was so close, I thought we'd get hit several times. Not only that, but the motorcycle drivers do it and do it more aggressively. Weaving between cars on what should be a lane line and driving around them at stop lights, etc. I thought they were asking to be killed. Here in the US, motorcycles obey the same rules as cars. If you're behind a car, you stay behind the car unless there's a lane to pass in. If there's two lanes and two cars side by side, you can't go between them. You have to wait til one car passes and follow behind it to pass the other car.

Anyway, thank you Lase for keeping me safe in all the hours we were on the road. <3 And I hope you stay safe in all the hours we're apart.

Oh Pooh!

Several years ago (more than I care to admit now since I'm getting old XD), I read The Tao of Pooh. It's a very good book. I would recommend everyone read it if I thought other people still read books. Anyway, someone wrote a simple guide to blogging Pooh-Style. It makes some nice points and I hope it'll help any readers who blog blog better.

"Pooh never panicked when plans went astray. Life continually threw him curve balls and he never seemed surprised. Obstacles cropped up constantly, but that didn’t bother Pooh either. He expected adversity to happen. When it did, Pooh seemed almost pleased, as if he were greeting an old friend come to visit."

That's how I feel a lot of the time. Every now and then something will cause me concern, but it's far from the norm. That's basically what The Toa of Pooh is about. Taking things as they come and not getting excited when they come.

At the airport

Yah yah, I be lazy. But now that there's absolutely no work for me to do, I can get some writing done. Besides that, I have to post more than Lase. You can take that as a challenge, Love.

Where was I... Oh yeah, leaving LAX for Taipei.

I get to Taipei and I'm not feeling very comfortable. The place is under heavy construction, so there's very little lighting in some places, temporary plywood walls, wires hanging out of the cileing, etc. I just feel like I'm walking through abandoned tunnels and am about to get mugged at any moment. It totally reminded me of the airport in Mexico, which was just in a state of horrible disrepair.

I'm feeling a little sleepy because it's VERY late for me my time, but it's morning Msia time. So, I walk into a bar, have myself a muffin, bananna and orange juice for 'breakfast' and sit down at the terminal to do some more reading. After a while, I got bored and walked to one of the paid internet thingies. It's just a little screen with a keyboard that folds out. I give my credit card info (very creepy feeling doing this on a public PC) and get a few mins of internet time. I send Lase an email and get off of it.

The flight to KUL was absolutely boring... I can't even remember what I did. I know I stayed awake somehow and the movies wer still free as it was China Air. But, I don't recall what I watched, what I read, etc. It did teach me to not pick the very front row of coach, though. There's a wall in front of you, so you can't stretch out at all. In other rows, there's not much room, either, but you can still get your feet under the seat in front of you. And I land in Msia...

After first class disembarks, I'm the first off the plane :D I start walking, and walking and walking some more... XD KIL is a VERY nice airport, but it's also HUGE. Even with the rail shuttle, it takes about 20 mins forme to get from the plane to the luggage carosel. And there, I wait for the luggage to start coming out. That takes a while. I start seeing other people from my flight showing up. They pick up their bag and move on. I was the first one there, but I'm among the last to get my luggage >:| Then I go to customs. I was very nervous about getting in because I didn't do anything before beginning my trip to get permission for entry, but it was very easy for me to get in. I just showed my passport, handed them the paper I filled out on the plane and they stamp my passport.

I move on past the security area and start looking for Lase. I know I'm late because of waiting for my luggage and something told me she could be anywhere. Walking towards our pre-designated meeting spot, I see some kiosks and other obstructions that block the view and could be walked around. I keep to the front of the airport, since the back seems darker and less likely traveled. And, sure enough, I see her walking towards me about halfway to the meeting point. I was right about her not waiting there. LOL I get a quick hug. /bonk Lase and we go to the Burger King there for lunch. The burger and fries there taste just like the ones in the USA. I didn't like the pepper too much though. You have it ground into a very fine powder that just seems to clump up. Here it's larger grained, like salt, so it's easier to spread it out. The chilli dip was good though. :)

Besides eating, I also showed/gave her some stuff I had brought with me. She had mailed to me some keychains in pink boxes so I could have them engraved. I have them engraved here and carried them with me to Msia. I handed her one of the boxes. When she opened it, her eyes got SO big and her jaw just dropped. 8O I had put in that box the necklase I bought for her:



I could tell she REALLY liked it and it made me SO happy. :D It's kind of a poor pic, but she's the one with it, so I can't get a better one. I also showed her the engraved keychains. There were two pairs of keychains. you know the split ones that fit together? We each took a part of each pair. I also showed her the candies I had brought for her. I'm not sure what else... Her reaction to the necklace kinda drowns everything else out. We talked for a while and then headed out to the parking lot to leave the airport.

Clickie for Lase's side.