recent hapz! well 1 more week until the Don Wes moves up to sea-town!! I just got rid of more than half my wardrobe! *AHhh* so refreshing...welp, finally ending my 2 years of living alone. while it did get a bit lonely and sad at times, I'd say living alone was a positive experience--I learned how to manage my bills, conserve energy, clean up the house ultra fast when people come over, learned to be fearless walking near by a late night gang activity, learned to be patient when opening a jar and other very important survival skills. ;) all in all, it allowed me to better prioritize a lot of shenanigans in my life and be able to focus & understand myself a little bit better.

With that said, I'm definitely ready for the imminent change. I'll miss getting greeting cards like this ;) but finally be able to start fresh and say good bye to long distance =)

oTher hapz, well... recently I've been REALLY into mushrooms. ok not magical ones... the edible ones! My favorite is shiitake and I cook them with almost everything I eat... But I also loooove other ones like enoki, nameko, shimeji then portobello & chanterelles if I can get my hands on them at the store. then recently I found at Uwajimaya... THE BLACK FUNGUS!!! ok I'm not entirely sure if they are mushrooms. To those who don't know, they are usually in chinese or korean dishes, with rice noodles they have texture similar to that of jellyfish. anyway, I lOooOOove them. I never knew what they were called but with my handydandy iphone, I looked up "black fungus" at the store and found that its "the stuff I like." so you can prepare them just like dried mushrooms, by soaking them in luke warm water and let it sit for few minutes.

I like stir-frying them with harusame noodles. in the picture, its the black stringy looking stuff. I read online that they are actually really good for you and has a lot of detoxing agents. Miracle!! gawd I mean almost everything I like now a days are BAD for you. But I've been trying to go back to my roots and remember what I ate growing up in Japan, which was a LOT of veggies and fish. Thanks to college and working in downtown where aroma of buttery croissants and freshly baked bagels have compelled me to believe that they are absolute essentials to LIVING: alleviating my mood thus improving the well-being of my work environment. WRONG. *sigh* too often, its too easy to take the wrong step with dieting. I went through I think 3 major weight gains since I got to college: freshman year, senior year and last year. but FINALLY now that I'm almost back to normal weight from last year, I think I learned my lesson.. Man, how food can affect your life so drastically!

Anyway, speaking of being healthy, couple weeks ago, I organized an HH for my supervisor who just got married. It was a good turn out, both my managers showed up as well as a lot of people from other teams. It was good fun and we all got pretty tipz. I ended up with few pictures of me on my phone with one of my coworker's tie around my head:

one of my coworkers left his tie at the table when he went home so my manager put it on me

oh joy of alcohol... dear Sascha, this is right around the time I drunk dialed you.

Overall, work has been pretty good. People are starting to ask me questions like "what do you wanna do here?" or "where do you see yourself in couple of years?" There has been some shifting around and new people coming in, so most of us who started in the last couple of years are asking questions about their future. As for me, I have NO IDEA. I want to do some more PM work. some people say I might be good at being a BA, which does sound interesting but also sounds like I have to unleash the bitch in me all the time. either way, I have no idea when and how I'll be able to get to these positions and I'm kind of freaking out because it feels like I've JUST settled in my comfort zone and people are thinking ahead already. hmmm

anyways, I must get on to life stuff now. Cheers!