When Coco was a wee pup....

he had a straight tail and was oh-so-cute...

and always looked forward to my homecoming from work!

(can you spot him in the window?)

Baby Coco circa early 1998

A New York Summer Day 1996

Seeing the unicyclist this weekend reminded me of an interesting encounter I once had with an unicyclist.....

Once upon a time, long long ago, Dave, Gary, and I decided to go hang out in NYC for a day. I can't remember the details, but it involved a lot of eating, walking, going to see Miss Saigon, hanging out at parks, and going up the Empire State Building (which I sadly never did when I was actually a resident of the city!).

In front Miss Saigon theater

Can't remember where we were, but after getting some snacks near Chinatown, we were eating some sweet tofu dish at a park. While there, we saw a guy (by the name of Joey Joey) setting up for a show and started watching. Um, he picked me to be his "helper"!

Being the Statue of Liberty?

I dunno what I was doing here
Mel on Joey Joey ON a unicycle!
Afterwards, recovering from the adrenaline rush at the Empire State Building.

Over 10 years ago, but will forever be a memorable day....

Winter in SoCal 2008

A normal winter weekend in Southern California

Saturday

Driving down to Irvine we saw snow-capped peaks.

We picked Heather up and took her over to Charlene and Chris's place. Maddie was absolutely thrilled to see us. She's such a cutie. :) We then went down the street to a nearby Chinese place that served AMAZING peking duck! Wow, I'm so jealous of Charlene and Chris. The food was so good, Dave still thinks of it 3 days later. (I apologize there are no pictures of the food. We were too hungry to do that.)

While waiting for food, I teach Heather and Charlene some origami.

The whole purpose of this little trip down to OC was to drag Heather out for Mountain View for an evening of skiing! During our quick 1+ hour drive, the temperature dropped from 77C to 39C! Since Mountain High got a good amount of snow the previous weekend, it was PACKED. We saw many people shoveling snow on top of their cars or into their pick-up trucks. Very amusing.

Heather borrowed my skiblades while I borrowed Charlene's snowboard. Neither of us advanced from the bunny hill that evening, but it was a blast! Heather started off a bit shaky and extremely nervous, but by the end of the evening, she was able to cruise down the hill with no worries!

A couple pictures from early evening. They are not the most flattering, but nevertheless, very entertaining. :) Heather is such a good sport, she said I can post this pic where she looks "constipated". Ha ha ha!
My attempts working on boarding toeside. Not a very pretty evening, as evidenced by my bruised knees, but highly satisfying as I managed to switch back and forth between heel and toe-sides. It wasn''t elegant, but at least some progress was made.
Dave spent the evening doing small jumps. Unfortunately, there aren't any pictures as neither Heather nor I were fit to follow him up the lifts to take the pictures! :( Darn, I wish I could've seen them.

Sunday

Dave has been in San Diego for 3.5 years, and I'm ashamed to say we had never visited Balboa Park! So we finally did....

We had no idea it was so BIG! Reminded us of Central Park....

Um, interesting architecture. Hot dog stand!

Reflecting pools are so cool.
Very neat animated sculptures.
A unicyclist


The 163... we drive down it all the time!
View from the bridge
The biggest dog run I have ever seen! Fuzzy lady bug that flew on me. My mom would say it was my lucky day!

Training in Santa Clara

Back in December (9-13), I got shipped off to Santa Clara for work to learn all about a nifty little instrument called the Bioanalyzer. Dang, I wish I had one of those to use during my graduate work.

Anyhoo, a picture of some other folks that attended the training. We were originally supposed to go to Germany for this, but as so many people from the US were interested, it was rescheduled last minute to Northern California. A good bunch of people...

Kai from Stratagene Europe, me, (back) Chris, (front) Peter our trainer, Angela, my fellow colleague Al, and Tom

While I was there, I spent a lot of time with my brother in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. I also had a chance to visit my cousin Julie and her family. I haven't seen them in over 5 years! The last time, little Audrey, was a wee babe with HUGE cheeks! (hmmm, I'll upload a pic whenever I find it) And I haven't seen my aunt and uncle in over 9 years, at Julie's wedding!

top: Andrew and Audrey; bottom: Julie, me, Aunt, and Gene

me, Julie, Audrey

My parents came into town a few days after I left the Bay Area and visited them as well!

Uncle, Dad, Mom, Audrey, Aunt

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all! Holiday pics will come (once I get them on the computer)....

More Goodie Oldies

some old pics found in the archives of scanned photos on the computer: