Christopher Suh's Blog

So, I joined Community Boating on the Charles.  For about $190, you can rent out their sail boats all summer long.  I used to belong to this organization several years ago, but quit when I moved up to Andover.  The place is really quite popular.  I go once a week on Wednesday evenings, and there is always a significant group of people waiting for classes.  Last Wednesday, I sailed out too far too close to sunset.  The punishment for my imprudence: having to be unceremoniously towed back to shore by a tugboat, together with a small flotilla of other similar scalawags.

So long story short, my week has finally settled down into some semblance of a definite pattern.  Monday, work late or go home.  Tuesday, Boston Sports Club at Copley.  Wednesday, sailing.  Thurday, more gym.  Friday and Weekend at Boxford.

I saw the movie "Elizabethtown" yesterday.  I knew the reviews about it were mixed, so I went in with low expectations.  Mixed is probably the right word for this movie.  The movie is very long, and basically seems to be two movies grafted together and fighting for dominance.  One film is a very sweet, winning romantic comedy.  Kirsten Dunst and Legolas, I mean Orlando Bloom seem to have genuine chemistry between them.  Kirsten Dunst is probably the most attractive actress that I know of on the screen right now.  This film also has a quirky, quick witted sense of humor, and a meaningful story in which the main character learns how to let go of his fears and transcend both failure and loss.  The other movie is some weird welcome to middle America slapstick, in which we meet all of the main character's relatives and their attendant nutty quirks and take a road trip across the American South.  This is certainly a film that could have benefited from having about a fourth of it excised (and with my biases, portions of the second movie would have been the first to go).

Another film that I recently saw that I would recommend would be the feel good "Last Holiday".  Queen Latifah is the main character, and I was very much surprised by her acting ability.  She plays Georgia Byrd, an employee in the cookware department of a department store.  When she bumps her head and has a CAT scan, a misdiagnosis leads her to believe that she only has three weeks to live.  As a result, she decides to cash in her bonds and go to a ski resort in the Czech republic.  Once there, her free spending and familiar ways lead important dignitaries vacationing there to assume that she is also a mover and a shaker.  She also manages to touch each of their hearts with her simple humanity and vigor for life. 

Paradoxically, this film actually reminded me the most of Spirited Away, a Japanese animation film -  not in any way with regard to plot or environment, but in terms of the attitudes of the main characters.  In each case, the main character comes into their own through adversity and develops into a constant, caring individual that even their enemies cannot help but care for.  This film was certainly a surprise to me, and I would recommend to to anyone.

 

MONEY COMPLAINTS

So, more money complaints.  Now my condo association decided to whack my apartment with a $3,500 special assessment.  Ack.  Fortunately, I think I have a big tax refund coming to me. 

INTERNET RADIO

My brother introduced me to a very interesting site at http://www.pandora.com.  It's an automated internet radio, where you enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that it thinks are musically similar.

SPORTS AND VW FAST

So its March and there's no sports that I'm interested in to speak of going on, especially since I don't like college basketball.  I keep wishing that arena football would come to Boston.  It's the only top ten media market without one, and I live one T stop away from the Fleet center.  I guess there was the Olympics a couple of weeks ago, but the highlight of the games to me were the opening ceremonies and the Volkswagen GTI fast commercials

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/02/17/videos-volkswagens-bizarre-gti-fast-commercials

I thought these commercials were pretty creative, if somewhat misogynistic.  I even thought about getting a FAST to put in my car, but they are running hundreds of dollars on Ebay.  People are claiming that only 600 of them were made in total as a promotional to dealers.  It seems that this is not correct, as other sources are now reporting that they will be generally available.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/03/10/500-for-a-volkswagen-fast-doll-think-again/

Actually, there are plenty of sports for me to watch, as I subscribe to the NFL Network, which means football 24/7.  The big news is the extension of the collective bargaining agreement.  This is the labor agreement between the owners and the players.  The prior deal was that a certain percentage (say 55%) of the Adjusted Revenue of the teams was allocated to player salaries in the form of a salary cap.  Adjusted Revenue was basically all of the money that the teams earned from television rights, tickets, etc., but not including certain things like luxury boxes, etc.  The salary cap for 2005 was about $85 million, meaning that each team was not allowed to spend more than that amount on its players.  The players union wanted to include all sources of income in Adjusted Revenue, and also increase the percentage of Adjusted Revenue included in the cap to 60%.  If an agreement could not be reached, it would mean massive player cuts and possibly a player strike in the future.  Fortunately, a deal was reached.  Basically, considerably more sources of income will be included in Adjusted Revenue, and the percentage will be raised to 59.5%.  The effect is dramatic, as the salary cap will now be approximately $102 million.  The Patriots are now in good shape, being about $10 million dollars under the cap.  They have at least two major players who could leave the team as free agents: Adam Vinatieri and David Givens, and they released Willie McGinest last week. 

Sigh, this week was very bad cash wise.  First a tire blows out on my car while I was driving to the gym in Andover.  So I replace it with a spare.  Then tonight, another tire blows out.  So that's about $300 sacrificed to the tire gods.  Also, the heat is out in my apartment again.  Replacing the forced air heating unit is going to be about $2,000.   

So Saturday was black saturday.  I drove up to Sunday River to go skiing with Susan.  Unfortunately, it rained all day, then dropped about 50 degrees over the course of two or three hours, making it too frigid to leave the condo.  Then the Seahawks beat the Redskins, and the Broncos beat the Patriots, eliminating both from the playoffs.  My brother is a Seahawks fan.  I was all set to call him on his cell phone and blare "Hail to the Redskins" (the Redskins fight song) to him on high volume, but sadly the team didn't hold up their end of the bargain.

Now today, Susan has apparently caught whatever bug I had last week, and may miss work tomorrow.  I think I'll go up to see her tomorrow and nurse the nurse. 

Tonight I had an aggregating experience.  I went onto Ebay and saw this Patriots neon sign being bid at $9.  So I bid $25.  Of course it was too good to be true.  The seller had put fine print under the price, saying that he planned to charge $129 in shipping costs.  I was ready to hit the roof.  Luckily it seems that Ebay allows you a limited right to withdraw your bids, provided that you do so within the hour. 

So Susan and the boys were away this weekend down in Long Island to see their Nanna (Susan's mother).  So, I filled up the time with going to the gym on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and by buying extra sets of silverware and a coffee maker. 

Saturday was the big Patriots game vs. Jacksonville.  We all went over to my friend Y's, and of course my evil foamhead came along. 

http://store.yahoo.com/foamheads/fh625.html

Patriots won, and will be facing Denver this Saturday at 8:00 PM.  I'll probably be up skiing that day.  The Skins will also be facing the Seahawks earlier that day, which will be interesting because the Seahawks are my brother's favorite team. 

Y had recently purchased an electric guitar game for the playstation 2 called "Guitar Hero".  In essence the game scrolls real guitar chords across the screen, and you need to play them in order to score points.  The game starts out very simple, but gets much more complex.  Eventually you are really playing the song - an interactive way of learning to play electric guitar.  Anyway, we all had a good time with it after the game. 

http://www.guitarherogame.com/

Something tells me that only the Japanese would come up with a game like that.  It's my understanding that they also have a game that teaches you to play the Taiko drum, as well.

http://www.namco.com/games/taiko

Maybe they should have games to teach all sorts of instruments.  Think of the possibilities!  Thousands of band teachers and music instructors unemployed throughout the country.

Anyway today is Tuesday, and I am home sick.  At first I thought that I was just aching from working out three days in a row.  But then I realized that I felt dizzy and congested.  My joints ached, and my head hurt.  I went home early from work, and went straight to sleep.  I feel a little better today, but figure I should lay low today in order to make a full recovery.

So New Year's Eve was nice.  Susan and the boys were up at Sunday River, Maine all week.  I joined them on Friday after work, and skied on Saturday.  Saturday night, we all made silly hats out of construction paper and celebrated.  The boys had their PSPs up in the condo with them, which was slowly but surely driving Susan crazy.  Wipeout Pure is an excellent game by the way (I bought two copies for the boys).  I brought my foamhead Patriots head with me to the condo and placed onto the refrigerator, where it cast its malevolent eye over the boys while they slept.  It's quite scary looking, to be truthful.  We should have some great pictures from the weekend, which I'll try and post sooner or later.  Included of course is a picture of myself wearing my silly hat and holding my disembodied Patriots head under my arm.   

We also went swimming in the outdoor heated pool.  Then when I came out of the water, I noticed that the wonderful bracelet that I got for Christmas had some kind of weird patina on it.  I guess the silver treatment on it reacted somehow with the chlorine to make it turn pewter colored.  Susan washed it with salt as an abrasive, and the shiny color returned.  One of the secretaries at work in fact complemented me on it the next week. 

Oh, one more thing.  Because everyone was away for the week, Susan placed automatic feeders in Matthew's fish tanks.  I stopped by to check on them on Friday before I went up to Maine.  Everything seemed okay, except one fish which had croaked.  Anyway, Matthew's favorite is his blue lobster (I think it's really a crayfish).  Susan was worried about it all weekend.  So when we get back, first thing she does is run upstairs to check on it.  I'm still downstairs when suddenly I hear a loud yelp and a crash.  I run upstairs.  Susan is busy frantically looking for lobster on Matthew's blue blanket.  Apparently, while she was busy cleaning the tank, the little ingrate decided to pinch her.  "That'll teach her to go on vacation and leave me here alone," it must have been thinking.  Susan was so shocked that she jerked her hand out of the tank.  She thought that she flung lobster out of the tank when it happened.  Luckily, it was just hiding on the bottom of the tank (undoubtedly chuckling to itself at a job well done).

So it's the next weekend now, and Susan and the boys went down to Long Island to see her mother.  I'm left in Boston waiting for the big Patriots Jaguars game at 8:00 PM on Saturday.  I'm hoping that one of my friends will host us for a playoff party, so I can bring my evil disembodied Patriots head to watch.   

So I had a good Xmas with Susan and the boys.  Mary was kind to me, and told me to take Friday off, giving me a four day weekend.  Both Friday and Saturday ended up being mall days, doing last minute stuff.  On Satuday, I ended up taking the boys to see the movie "Fun with Dick and Jane".  A pretty funny movie, but also tremendously disturbing to anyone who has a job.  Dick works for Globodyne, a gigantic multinational corporation, in mold of Enron.  He's estatic to find that he's promoted to Senior VP of communications, only to find that he's slated to go on CNN that day to explain why the CEO has sold all of his holdings days before.  Caught on the spot, there's little he can do but stammer like a deer caught in headlights on the air.  The stock tanks, and everyone loses their job. Dick becomes an industry joke, and the guys at jib jab make an animation making fun of him.  Having lost his job, Dick has all of his possessions slowly repossessed, including recently reseeded lawn.  He tries to take a job at Walmart, but can't hack it and gets fired the first day.  Then he turns to a life of crime and finds to his surprise that he's good at it.  He finally give up the criminal life, but then realizes that the CEO is the biggest criminal of them all, having stripped all of the profits from the corporation for his own gain.  Needless to say, he decides to get even, in a creative and unexpected way.  The boys seemed to like the movie, and I did too, although it was still disturbing for me to watch.

Sunday was Christmas.  Susan and I stayed up very late hiding the presents, and the boys woke us up promptly at 7:00.  Both were estatic at what they got - playstation portables.  Both were exceptionally surprised because they thought that the other one was going to get one, and not themselves.  I figured out that with a wi-fi connection and a memory card, the PSP is a very powerful little gizmo, more akin to an apple video IPOD than a gameboy.  In addition to playing games, you can browse the web, listen to buffered podcasts, download pictures, download and play video clips, and listen to an MP3 library.  It feels like Sony really hasn't done a good job of marketing the psp, because most people are unaware of all of the capacities it has.  All this on top of being able to play games anywhere online with millions of other people.  It's pretty amazing, actually.

So it was a techie Xmas.  I got Susan a 7 megapixel camera, which I think that she really needed.  She got me a David Yurman bracelet, so for once our roles were reversed.  Generally, I'm the one getting her the jewelry, and she gets me the techie gift.  I really like the bracelet alot and will wear it all the time, as I never really owned any jewelry before meeting Susan, other than my watch.  The website calls it a "Thoroughbred Braided Cable Cuff."

On a negative note, I just realized that along with my scarf and psp games the car thieves also took all my golf clubs and golf bag (about $700 in value).  That was a very depressing thought.

On a second negative note, I bought myself a present for Xmas, a silly foam "Patriotshead", shaped like a silver face.   I got the box three days before the 25th, only to open the box to find that instead it's a gigantic "Jetshead" shaped like an airplane.  Now I gotta send the stupid thing back to them in a gigantic package.  Let that be a lesson to you.  Don't buy dumb bulky tacky things in the mail.

So last Friday was the firm Xmas party.  Susan finally got to meet all of the people I work with, and their significant others.  After the party we went shopping and then to Figs for pizza.  Then at about 11:00 we went over to the lot near the hockey rink to pick up my car.  We were met by a major shock.

Someone had smashed the front passenger side window of my car, grabbed a handful of stuff, and run off.  Gone was my very nice Burberry scarf that Susan had bought me for Valentine's day, and also about four or five games for my psp.  I guess my alarm must have gone off properly, preventing the thieves from popping my trunk and taking more.  I called the police to file a report, but they said that they couldn't tell me when they would be able to come by, because they had to put a priority on crimes in progress as opposed to crimes already accomplished. 

The next day I called the insurance company and they said that they would cover the full amount of the damage.  The autoglass place didn't have the window in stock, and would fly one up from Texas on Monday. 

So then I wrapped some dry cleaning plastic around the window, and drove up to Boxford, where I figured the care would be more safe anyway.  The plastic seemed secure when I put it on the window.  However, as I started drivin', the plastic started flutterin'.  As I picked up speed, the plastic then started to flap.  By the time I hit the highway, it was whipping around at full speed.  Then suddenly, with a big WHOOSH, it went flying off, like a big transparent ghost, to the great consternation of the people driving behind me.

Anyway, fortunately, my car was fixed on Monday.  Today is Friday, and I have the day off.

So I spent Thanksgiving in Woodbury, CT, and then went down to Woodbury, NY to spend the next day with my parents and brother.  Since it was "black day" my brother and I decided to stop by the local mall.  We went into Sephora to continue my further adventures in cologne research.  The store clerk kept calling us the "Goatee Clan".  I guess we looked kind of similar, both sporting large black wool overcoats, nice scarves, and having not shaved in a couple of days.  Jon then went out later that night to have a good time with his buddies at a bar, while I stuck around the house like a wet blanket. 

Saturday I went with my parents to a Chinese brunch, swapped music with Jon, and then drove about 5+ hours back to Massachusetts.  My recent interests are the bands Tool and A Perfect Circle.

Sunday I went with Susan and the boys to see Harry Potter.  The film was quite good, and all the characters seem to be growing up nicely.  I didn't really agree with the casting choice for Cho Chang.  She didn't at all look like how I thought she would.  Worst yet she spoke with some kind of weird welsh accent.  It was also interesting to see the Ginny Weasley character in the periphery, knowing that she will be playing a larger role in future movies. 

Work was crazy busy when I got back, so I missed out on CyberMonday. I've been celebrating a CyberTuesday instead.  I'm considering getting Tivo for the boys for Christmas. 

This weekend, Susan the ski nut is going up to Sunday River for Santa Sunday.  Apparently, anyone who goes skiing in a Santa costume gets a free lift ticket.  I'll be staying in the city, going to the gym, catching up with work, and going to Jenny's birthday party on Saturday (Yasuna Murakami's wife). 

The weekend after that is Susan's work Xmas party, which I will be at with bells on.  My, the holiday season goes by quick.

Hi,

So yesterday was Saturday, and Matthew was away on a boy scout campout.  In the morning I went to the gym in Andover.  Then for the evening, originally the plan was to go cologne shopping and then go to see Pride and Prejudice at the movie theater around Boxford.  Then Andrew mentioned that he was eager to get the video game (Half-Life 2) that I had bought him for his birthday.  I had ordered it online for him, and it took about a month until it was released and mailed to me.  So the plan was to go into the city to get the game as well.  Then Sheraz gave me a call, and mentioned that some people were going to go and watch Harry Potter that evening at the Boston Common.  So we tried to shift plans to join them, but unfortunately, the show was already sold out.

So Susan, Andrew and I ended up going to Filene's at the Square One mall to sample colognes.  I don't normally wear colognes, but for some reason I had the idea in my head that it might be fun to look for one.  I used to like a cologne called Nautica, which was a very watermelon like scent, but unfortunately it has been discontinued.  On Thursday, I had gone around downtown crossing sniffing samples, and found a somewhat similar scent called Kenneth Cole Reaction.  Like Nautica, it smells exceptionally melon like and light.  On Saturday, I had Susan sample the fragrance, but she didn't care for it at all.  She said it reminded her of an air freshener that I had a while back (kiss of death!).  Out of fairness, it was an air freshener that had really appealed to me at the time, which is probably why that scent appealed to me last night.  Apparently I like fruit / citrus scents.  In any case, melon scents are out.  We then proceeded to drive the store clerks crazy by going round and round the counter sampling everything, spraying cards and each other, and most importantly NOT BUYING ANYTHING.  Unfortunately, after one samples a couple of scents, one's sense of smell starts to go.  Then Susan sprayed herself too close to her eyes. 

Anyway, the scent that I like the best after all this was one called Lacoste Red (http://www.lacostered.com), which basically reminded me of green apples, with florals and cedarwood.  Susan however seemed non-committal about it. 

We then went to pick up Andrew's game and had dinner at Figs.  Susan told me that she's decided that she really likes drinking Guinness beer, an exceptionally dark, peat black beer from Ireland with a creamy, frothy head.  She had not really tried it before I suggested it.  Something about the thought of her drinking Guinness was very appealing to me.  I guess it makes me imagine that we are meeting at a pub somewhere in the far north of England. 

I suppose that I'm an anglophile at heart.  Further proving my point, we then went to Harvard Square to watch Pride and Prejudice, based on the Jane Austin novel.  Decent, and often cleverly put together, but not quite as good as Sense and Sensibility.  Several of the characters bugged me.  There were five girls in the family, and many of them giggled way too much.  And I wasn't really sure what to think of Keira Knightley, who played the lead role of Elizabeth.  I think something about her bugs me too.  I think she looks a little unhealthy to me, like she is a overly made up anorexic giraffe.  There is nothing wrong with her acting, it's just that some of her mannerisms and aspects of her appearance disturb me.