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PTO Day #23.03: What Happened Here???

So, I now know what I will be doing during my next vacation. A vacation of hard, intensive, man-power labor.

Finally after months of tribulations, we have come into possession of the Sunnyvale house. But the drama is not over yet. There are still all these legal preventions we still have to follow. Below are pictures of the crap the tenant left behind and all the damages.
The eventual plan is to demolish half the house and remodel and rebuilt. The kitchen will be demolished, the entire wall behind the TV will be demolished, the carpets will be replaced with wooden floors, all the doors have to be replaced.

PTO Day #23.02: Sacto

Today after work, I took a quick trip into Sacramento to meet relatives and friends. Since this feels like a mini vacation - i'm posting it here. It wasn't that quick as it took 3.5 hrs because of traffic.
My uncle's house

There was a really nice garden in the back with a swinging bench.


After dinner at a japanese restaurant, my friends took me to Lounge On 20. www.loungeon20.com It's a nice fancy cozy place to just get drinks and lounge. There were sofas and soft seats and a DJ. Seems like only young good-looking people come to this place.


My drink was made out of bourbon, milk, honey, cinnamon.

PTO Day #23.01: Cousin Lila's Wedding

Lila had already been married in Sweden, but she and her family wanted to hold the wedding reception in California where most of her family are living. I bought a new suit just for this event. I got some ooh and ahhs for my suit. I've worn so many suits and ties this year - for me anyways. Anyways, I was the 'official' photographer for my cousin's wedding so i took a ton of pictures. Here are some of my pics:
Getting the slideshow ready

PTO Day #23: Dolphins!

I saw something amazing today at the beach for the first time. I saw wild dolphins not too far from where I was. If i had been in the water i would have been able to touch them. When the dolphins appeared, everybody took out their cameras to take a picture. I have now seen wild dolphins. Next, to see a real-life whale.


With 100's degree weather in San Jose over the weekend. I swam in the condo's pool yesterday and it noticeably gave me a tan. People may not recognize me tomorrow when i go back to work.

PTO Day #22: Air Force Reunion

Today was my dad's South Vietnamese Air Force's 45th year reunion. This is the gathering of all the pilots from the Air Force in the class of 1964. There seems to be less people this year than there were at the 40th year reunion.

There were alot of pictures taken

I'm way over on the right side... preparing for a speech.

PTO Day #21: NHL Draft

It has been an excited couple few days in sports - at least for me anyways. Today was the NHL draft for hockey players. some of the players drafted:
#1 John Tavares (C)
#2 Victor Hedman (D) Swedish
#3 Matt Duchene (C)
#4 Evander Kane (C) Black
#7 Nazem Kadri (C) Lebanese
#? Oleg Lee (Chinese raised in Russia) - a guy i have in my facebook friends list wasn't drafted this year.

PTO Day #20: Transformers and NBA Draft

Went to the mall this afternoon to watch Transformers 2 (Revenge of the Fallen). "The Fallen" is actually a name of a decepticon leader (which wasn't part of the cartoon series) So this character/robot confused me.



NBA Draft, this is a big event for me and my sports buddies. This is our chance to see who the top basketball stars will be in the future. This event was when i saw Yao Ming get picked 1st overall 7 years ago. That was big. And then Yi Jianlian was picked 6th overall 2 years ago. All these players are so young (younger than most college graduates) and will be given millions of dollars as their first job. Some of these players will succeed and make millions more. Many will be happy with their money and fail. We'll find out who in 10 years. Here are some of the picks:
1. Blake Griffin (Los Angeles Clippers)
2. Hasheem Thabeet (Memphis Grizzlies - from Tanzania)
3. James Harden (Oklahoma Thunder)
4. Tyreke Evans (Sacramento Kings)
5. Ricky Rubio (Minnesota Timberwolves - from Spain)
6. Jonny Flynn (Minnesota Timberwolves)
7. Stephen Curry (Oakland Warriors)
23. Omri Caspri (Sacramento Kings - from Israel)

Sadly today, legendary singer Michael Jackson died from cardiac arrest at UCLA Medical Center - where my sister visited to pay tribute. He is my all-time favorite musician. No one will ever be able to match his worldwide success on the international stage. He unquestionably has influence stars of today such as Usher, Rain(Bi). I am now watching all the music videos i have from his songs.

PTO Day #19: Santa Cruz Beaches

It was so hot in San Jose. Temperatures were in the 90's and sunny. So decided to go to the beaches in Santa Cruz. As soon as i could see the city of Santa Cruz, I could see clouds covering the area. It was chilly and cloudy. Not a good day to be at the beach. But still, there were many people at the beaches.


Bonny Doon beach. Very beautiful and lots of rocks to climb on.

PTO Day #18: Back to work now.. not really

As part of my vacation, i went into work today. And Swati was there! After looking at a bug, we played foosball. I heard Vitaly and Puneet did well when i was on vacation, but now i'm back! Alex and I showed why we make a good team. But stamina is still something we need to improve on. After awhile, we get tired and start losing. Then i had yogurt across the street - it was my lunch.

PTO Day #17: Beach and Baseball

Today went to lunch with an "old" friend who recently got married and is now pregnant. Her identity is hidden here because I think she thinks she has pimples due to the baby in her uterus. We went to Chocolate Sushi which serves both japanese and korean dishes.


Since I was in Sunnyvale, I decided to drop by the house to look at it's condition. Instead I found a creature laying in the yard. The house looks like it has been deserted for awhile so i thought this was a dead furry animal. Got closer and saw that it was "Bluey"! Chloe and I met Bluey here last time.


Then I went to Stinson Beach - which is a little north of San Francisco.

Getting to this one beach was difficult because of all the rocks. But it was quite an adventure climbing the rocks and going through caves to get the this almost sandless beach.


Then I drove over to Oakland to watch the Giants vs A's game. Travis Ishikawa hit a homerun in this game and Kurt Suzuki had an rbi hit.

PTO Day #16: Father's Day

Mom and Dad wanted cheap chinese food... so we went to Lung Lung BBQ. Cost me only $45 to feed 6 :)





But now that i did the calculations, that's $9 per dish since we only ordered 5 dishes. not so cheap afterall.

PTO Day #15: I Hate Lazy Tennants

I wanted to spent the last week of my vacation to working on the house. Today was the day i was supposed to begin cleaning and preparing the Sunnyvale house for remodeling. The tenants who previously occupied the house and their lawyer said verbally they would move out by June 20th. Of course when they said this, we wanted everything in writing, but they refused. They have not yet moved out and the lawyer is ignoring phone calls. So, It'll be at least another two weeks before something happens - in two weeks we'll stop paying their hotel bills.

Some background on the tenant: The tenant is a mother of two who does not work. She gets checks from the government to pay for her housing. So basically, she lives in the house for free. A man also lived in the house. I presume he is the tenant's boyfriend. I bumped into him while checking out the house one day. I doubt the gov't knows about this since if he lives in the house, the tenant would lose her rent voucher.

The current situation: the tenant's belongings are still in the house. they are currently staying in a hotel which we are paying for. This costs about $600/week. and they have been in the hotel for over a month. Her lawyer, Nadia Aziz, works across the street from Realization. The tenant doesn't pay for her lawyer. Her lawyer works for financially deprived citizens and probably makes money out of settlements and lawsuits.

How did it get to this situation:
It all started out with the tenant complaining about mold in the house. There is mold under the kitchen sink and in the wall next to garage. She says the mold is so bad that she and her kids get sick all the time and that is the reason why her kids can't study and why she can't go to work. (the neighbors say she uses drugs). So we had to get the housing authority to come inspect the house, and gladly for us, they said the house was inhabitable. So the tenant had to move out but because my parents still want to be law-abiding landlords they are paying for the tenant's hotel bills.



Some of the remodeling I plan to do. Fix the holes in the walls made by the tenants. Remove all cocaine infested carpets and replace with wooden floors. Paint the interior and exterior of the house. Redo the kitchen. Gut the garden and make it look nicer. and more...

PTO Day #14: Rest

After a long trip to LA, today was used for resting... which meant doing chores and going to the gym. Somehow i lost track of time and spent 4 hours at the gym today playing basketball, swimming, lifting weights. My basketball skills has really declined. I could not make a single basket during warmups. It's been over a year since the last time I played basketball. That was with Crom and Ken. That was back when we played 3-on-3 in the same gym. We lost to three really good players by the score of 15-7 but then got our revenge in the rematch and won 17-15.

PTO Day #13: UCI University Center and drive back to SJ

My brother, his gf and I walked around UCI's University Center. My brother is also a UCI graduate. I noticed so many changes in the University Center. Definitely more diversity with persian restaurant, thai, japanese, pizza, yogurt, indian, lee's sandwiches. Back when i was in school, Denny's was the only place to eat.




My brother and I also drove around Santa Ana (Mexico Town) in search for food and found Alberto's (now called Arsenio's). Albertos is my favorite mexican food chain, but it's only here in southern california. So i had to order extra to take it to-go.


What should have taken 1.5 hrs, it took us 5 hours to drive from Orange county to Pasadena (pick up my other brother) then to UCLA (pick up my sister). LA traffic is horrible.

PTO Day #12: Shogun, Laguna Niguel and more beaches

LAGUNA NIGUEL
My girlfriend from college took me around Laguna Niguel. She now lives here with her 4 year old son. We went to this restaurant named Shogun. It's very similiar to Benihana's except way more affordable. Dishes range from $8-12.



The chef decided to throw rice balls to all the boys on the table. The others dropped the rice balls but when it came to my turn i caught it and ate it. yummy.


LAGUNA BEACH
This is perhaps the most beautiful beach i have seen. There are resorts scattered around this beach and benches and trails over-looking the beach on the cliffs. There is even underground and parking lot for these beaches.


This is me at the top of this 100ft rock on the beach. We had to climb up this rock.






My tan is finally starting to even out... but there's still more work to do.



ELEPHANT BAR
That night we all went to Elephant Bar for dinner because we had coupons for kids-eat-free and free appetizers.