Got Wii?

Since I'm gonna be out of action for a month, I need some entertainment. And I decided I'm getting a Wii.

I checked out ebgames, Bestbuy, Fry's, Toys'r Us yesterday, non got them. But the ebgames did hint they might have some in for today.

So I got up in the morning, checked out Target, Circuit City, Best Buy again, they don't have any - as usual. I dropped in Ebgames, and there's a line... saw someone receiving a big shopping bag... hmmm... could it be Wii? I lined up, and asked the clerk if they have any Wii. Yes! I'm in luck. And 5 minutes later, I got a Wii. I also called up a few friends that I know of that wants a Wii. One of them was lucky to arrive on time and got the last Wii :-)

Broken Toe - Part 3

Saturday today, so I went to teach TKD class in the morning. Try to teach the new correct technique we learned in Houston IIC to the kids, I tried to demonstrate the sine-wave motion after a kick, even though I was careful not to kick so hard, I still managed to hurt myself - even thought my toe didn't touch anything. I was just curling my toes back, so I could use the ball of the foot - such a small thing, but end up hurting me. I remember my first instructor said, we should practice it so much that the technique become a second nature to us. Well, I guess it is a second nature to me now. Unable to kick and balance with the injured foot, I left early, guess I'll be out of action completely for a few weeks...

Got home, played around with the Google map and browser used up 1GB of my memory! Even when I closed the browser, the memory was still not released.

Broken Toe - Part 2

I had an orthopedic appointment on Tuesday. When I arrived there were already about 20 people waiting - I guess the hospital haven't been seeing many people due to the move. So I signed in and waited for a while.

When the doctor finally showed up, he doesn't have my x-ray! He said they're moving to all digital, including the x-rays. But when he logged in, he still can't find my x-ray... great.... So he made decision based on my PCP note. They're not going to perform surgery, and just gonna to let it heal by itself, and check back in a month. See what I mean, the hospital and insurance are so over rated..

Point Reyes

Went to Point Reyes on Sturday with a toe broken. Good thing it's not a lot to walk from the parking lot to the lighthouse. The sky was a beautiful blue, and the ocean smelled fishy... :-/

The lighthouse.


Wild flower at Point Reyes:


Sunset at SF(from under the golden gate bridge look towards west):


And guess what is this?

Return of the Jedi...

I just received my lil toy Casio V7 camera, time to have a lil fun :-)

The action is performed by professional Jedi, please do not try it at home. No Jedi were harmed during the filming...

Urgent ... broken toe

I called the specialist today, they said they already received my chart and marked urgent, and they made me an appointment for next Tuesday... great... I'm suffering here... what the heck, maybe I shoudl just let it heal by itself. Health Insurance is soooooo over rated.....

Crap...

I went to see a doctor today, he said it's mostly likely just bruised, but he sent me to do some x-ray anyway. However, then the radiologist sent me to the Urgent Care. The doctor at the Urgent Care care told me my toe is broken. She showed me the x-ray, it's not just a fracture, it's "broken" broken, the bone just before the first digit on the big toe has a diagnal fracture, part of the bone moved to the side... ouch....

The broken toe is the Distal Phalange #1, as the diagram shown below. It's broken at about 45^o, and the top broken part got pushed to the right side a few milimeters...



She told me to see a specialist, and she said they may not reset my bone, since it's already been 5 days, it already started to grow....

Not only that, she said there also looks like an old fracture in one of the Metatarsals. I knew it! I've been complaining about it for the past 2 years, had many x-rays taken, even went to see a specialist. But nobody could see anything wrong with it, I was start to think I'm crazy or just just extra wimpy...

Ouchy, and I've been walking, jumping, kicking, bouncing all these days... doh!

ITF IIC Houston (4/13 - 4/15)

I spent the past few days in Houston at the ITF IIC seminar. We arrived on Thursday afternoon, had a big lunch at Papas BBQ.

I had my 3rd dan test on Friday at GM Binh's dojang, everything went pretty smooth, even the breaking. I did side kick power break, inward knife hand, and jumping rising kick as special technique break. But, I hurt my right foot, the big toe; it took me 3 attempts to break the board. My whole foot got bruised pretty bad, it's swollen and I feel as if my shoe is too small. My toe has been black and blue since then. I thought I was going to flunk my test, because I didn't prepare my theory at all, it just somehow completely escaped my mind.... At the end of test, Mr Morris asked me why the heck did I pick rising kick? I should have picked something easier. Oh well, I'll do something easier next time.




We went through a lot of things during the IIC, patten, defense, pre-arranged sparing etc. I didn't get to find out my test result until Sunday night at MG's home. I thought Mr Morris must've misheard the invitation, as the hours went by, nobody looks like going to tell me the result. However, at the very end Master Suarez did made the announcement that I passed my test - in front of GM, masters and ITF president, and I got to shake hands with them. Kewl!!! Mr Morris said it's quite a bit of unusual. Lucky me :-) I was the lowest ranking student - a mere 2nd dan.


Hanging out at GM's dojang after the dinner.


Doing all sorts of crazy exercises.


And hand conditioning work by hitting the pole, with Mr Trinidad posing in the back ground.


We also had alot of different food on this trip:
Amazon Grill(not bad, but nothing special too),
Raging Cajun: we had bucket of crawfish and soft shell crab po-boy. I'm not very good with crawfish, it took me some time to peel the shell, if it wasn't for Carol, I'd spent whole night there... but the soft shell crab was delicious, I'd definitely go there just for that.
Goode Company BBQ: Looks like a shack, but with very good BBQ. I liked the ribs and source. Carol loved the spicy pork - very tender. We also tried the Sweet Water Duck, slightly gamy - but yummy.

Me in front of the Goode Company Palace Bar with the horned Armadillo in the back ground.


I'm going to make an appointment to see a doctor tomorrow...

George Lucas In Love

I was telling Carol where George Lucas got his idea/story about Star Wars - check this out:

Obi-Wan saber

I unpacked the saber after the TKD class, put in batteries, switch on - and the saber hummed to life. The modified blade look just like the original MP blade, same length and width. The blade does look a lil brighter than the MR blade though. One minor critic though, it seems hard to make the saber clashing sound when strike something. I had 2 sabers in both hands, clashing each other, the original one keeps making the sound but the new one does not always. Anyways, I'm still very happy with the saber.

Also booked hotel room for the convention - I'm all set. Except the Jedi costume...

Lightsaber is here...

I was in LA for a wedding over the weekend, so I missed the delivery. I went to the post office and picked the package just now. It's shipped in its original box - with a picture of the lightsaber on it, so as the clerk handing over the package, I can feel people staring at the box and at me. :-)

Vote for Pedro!

Oops, actually I mean vote for Sanjaya! I must confess I don't watch TV alot, so the chances of watch Americal Idol is next to none, actually I watched only once with Carol, but she keeps me updated.

I could never figure out how the heck can William Hung got on to TV and sing on national TV? This is no longer about singing ability, it's getting to more about their popularity and audience's stupidity...

But the votefortheworst.com really get to the bottom of this. Please, vote for Sanjaya, and make a fool out of the American Idol TV.

..... During the initial auditions, the producers of Idol only let certain people through. Many good people are turned away and many bad singers are kept around to see Simon, Paula, and Randy so that America will be entertained. Now why do the producers do this? It's simple: American Idol is not about singing at all, it's about making good reality TV and enjoying the cheesy, guilty pleasure of watching bad singing. ....

Star Wars Celebration IV

In LA, May 24th - May 28th 2007. I've booked my ticket for 27th. I'm planning to go as a Jedi :-)

So, I've been looking into Jedi costume stuff. So far, I ordered a new ObiWan Lightsaber. I already have a Master Replica's Darth Vader saber, but it has red blade, so can't use it for a Jedi. I ordered the ObiWan saber from UltraSabers on eBay. Unlike the MR saber, it's been modified to allow the blade to be remove, so it's possible to wear just the saber hilt, but also retaining all the bells and whistles - I mean woosh sound when you swing the balde. :-) Also, the new blade from UltraSabers is brighter than the MPs stock blade. Of course, it gotta have the green blade to match my eyes ;-)... kidding, my Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies has a green saber.

Dieting

The Houston ITF TKD Seminar and blackbelt is comig up fast - 1 week to go. And I've been dieting, kind of, for the past week or so. I'm no way in way over weight, but it helps staying trim and fit, and would help in a small way with my blackbelt test. So, I've been eating salad for the past week and half. When I told my friends that I'm trying to loose a bit of weihgt, they realy cracked up... :-/

I always got hungry in the afternoon, if I eat salad for lunch, so I took some apple to work, so I can eat in the afternoon. It's been pretty good, my jeans definitely feel a little loose than before. And I'm kinda ggot used to the eatig salad now. I thought I might get used to not eating lunch at all. Well, boy I was so wrong, I got so hungry in the evening, and ended up eating 1.5 times the normal dinner.. opps...

Scammer...

I hate Spammers, Phishers and Scammers. And I don't just resent the junk email sent by them, I FIGHT BACK!

For Phishing emails, I jus feed them log in informations - it's what they want, it's what they going to get. This is the tool I use: http://phishfighting.com/. What I usually do is open my Firefox and/or Opera, open a dozen tabs and point to phish fighting site, and run them all night long. LOL... Take this! Scammers.

For Spammers and Scammers, they use web bots to collect email address to send emails. So, I want them to receive spam too... Here's the latest in my Spam folder...

Pls contact me ASAP.
From: MR Philip Bradford
philip_bradford24@yahoo.co.uk
Bills & Exchange Department.
Email: philipbradford33@aol.co.uk

PRIVATE AND URGENT
I am contacting you in regards to a business transfer
of a huge sum of money from a deceased customer's
account(German property magnate) who On the 7th of
July 2005, the deceased his wife and his only son died
in the Bomb Blast at Kings cross underground
Station.They were on holiday for three weeks as a
tourist and bank with us for over 10years now.It
happened on his birthday. Click below:

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/07/london.tube/index.html

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8492258 /

Although I know that a transaction of this magnitude
might make anyone apprehensive,I would like to
assure you that we are sending you this mail with the
best of intensions.Please note that we cannot at this
time disclose the name of the bank where the funds are
untill your interest in disclose.

PROPOSAL;
Since then We have been trying to get this funds out
of the country, the funds where in Pound Sterling and
its equivalent in Dollars is the sum of
?7,800,000.00 (Seven Million, Eight Hundred
Thousand British Pound Sterling) in an account
that belongs to our foreign customer who died along
with his entire family in the accident stated
above. Since his death, none of his next-of-kin or
relations has come forward to lay claims to this money
as the heir because he never made any one as the next
of kin to his funds( it was his secret account). We
cannot release the fund from his account unless
someone applies for claim as the next-of-kin to the
deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines. Upon
this discovery, we now seek your permission to have
you stand as a next of kin to the deceased as all
documentations will be carefully worked out by us for
the fund(?7,800,000.00) to be released in your
favour as the beneficiary's next of kin.

It may interest you to know that we have secured from
the probate court, an order of madamus to locate any
of the deceased beneficiaries. Please acknowledge
receipt of this message in acceptance of our mutual
business endeavour by furnishing me with the
following;

1. Your Full Names and Address.
2. Direct Telephone and Fax numbers.


These requirements will enable us file a letter of
claim to the appropriate departments for necessary
approvals in your favour before the transfer can be
made. We shall be sharing the funds in this mannner
70% to us and 30% for you on final conclusion of this
project. Your share stays with you while the rest
shall be for us for investment purposes in your
country.

If this proposal is acceptable by you, do not take
undue advantage of the trust we have bestowed in you,

I await your urgent response to this email: philipbradford33@aol.co.uk

Mr Philip Bradford

Bots, go get Mr Philip Bradford!