Based on my own experience of finding time (or lack of it) to cook dinner, I think my mom was (and still is) amazing.  We barely ate out, and my mom would cook dinner everyday, after a long day at work.  She was a single mom, working to support my sister and I, and was able to cook.  I know I don't feel like cooking when I come home, so it's only now that I know how much effort and energy she put into it.

The alternative would've been what I commonly see on the way home -- being in one of those cars in the huge line at the Mc Donald's drive-in.  I'm so glad I had home cooked food.  If I didn't, I'd probably be overweight.

Although I was supposed to start at 3:30PM, everything was running behind schedule.  I ended up going around 5PM.  First was forms.  I got 3rd place.

After an hour or so, I sparred.  The guy I went against wasn't in my weight class; he was 180lbs vs my 152lbs.  At the start of the match, he was able to get a kick to my head. (Head kicks are 2 points.)  i was only able to get in one punch or kick to his chest.  My coach/instructor said I had great footwork, evading the opponnent, but I shouldn't hesitate when I create an opening.  Thanks to J, she recorded my match so I could analyze it.  I don't attack often enough, which I'm going to work on.  The guy I sparred also punched my face, which is illegal by WTF rules, but the judges didn't see it.  The second round, the guy just clinched me almost the entire match, and I couldn't get a different angle on him.  So, after two rounds,  I ended up losing, 7-1.

Overall, it was a good learning experience, and it was great having my instructor as my coach (he's participated in national and state championships and won several state championships.)  I think it's better to particpate in tournaments that not participating because you can always learn from the experience.

Also, I know my friends don't have xanga, nor do they know about this blog, but thanks for coming!

as much as i like google,  i'm not really a big fan of their google maps service.  it's okay, but the routes it usually gives me are considered the "long way."  so i try asking for the same directions on mapquest, and i get a more efficient route.  example: i asked for directions a few days ago, and google gave me a bunch of back roads, but those roads have a lot of lights and are usually congested.  i tried the same on mapquest, and it gave me a route, using mostly highways.

24 is one of my favorite shows.  But on Monday, I did something really surprising -- I taped it w/my VCR and went to taekwondo class instead!  I still haven't seen it yet, but I did manage to come back home in time to catch the latter half of the second episode.

I just finished watching the finale to Beauty and the Geek 2.  I can't believe Cher & Josh won; I think Joe & Brittany deserve it more.

I'll be participating in H.K. Lee's 2006 National Capitol Open Taekwondo tournament this Saturday.  Having high cholesterol is somewhat a blessing in disguise.  I've eaten super healthy the past few weeks (if you know how healthy I eat, I've been eating even healthier) and have dropped several pounds in the process, which will make me quicker.

I went to Staple's today and the salesperson asked if I needed help w/anything. I said "yeah, do you have blank VHS cassettes?"  He was really surprised.  I said I know Tivo is the newest thing out there, but yeah, I still use my VCR.  I might upgrade to one of those recorders to record in MPEG4 format to memory stick so I can watch video on my PSP, but I'm gonna research it more before I get it.  I learned my lesson (somewhat the hard way) when I taped "The Bachelor" for J and it didn't fully record since I recorded over the same tape many times.  I say "somewhat the hard way" because I really don't care about that show.

Saturday, J & I went to Naniwa, a Japanese grocery store in Mclean, VA.  The selection was okay, given the limited number of Japanese stores in the area.  I heard a lot of good things about Tachibana, a sushi restaurant nearby.  It turns out that it really lives up to its name.  Of course, I'm not Japanese, so I don't feel like I can truly judge what's good and what's not, but judging by how quickly the place filled up, I think it was pretty good. The fish was really fresh, some of the best I've had in a long time.  It was even better than Sushi-ko, which is supposed to be the best in the metro-D.C. area, since the chef is a Japan native and is very well known.

Both Naniwa and Tachibana are hidden away on side streets in Mclean, and are very hard to spot from the main roads. It's well worth the effort and time to find them though.

J & I went to Pauli Moto's Asian Bistro for lunch today.  The menu was not that exciting; it was your basic, Americanized, Asian cuisine.  We got salt & pepper calamari [too salty, and no salt/pepper taste], salmon skewer [just one], bi bam bop [not spicy at all, and nowhere near as good as most Korean restaurants], and roast duck [which was good, but pancakes were too hard].  My favorite was the dessert: banana spring rolls with green tea ice cream.  The spring rolls were very hot and crispy, and the smooth texture of the bananas and red beans offset the crunchiness of the skin.  Although traditional Chinese medicine says not to eat hot and cold foods together, I enjoyed the contrasting temperatures and textures.  Overall, the food may be okay for people who can't tell the difference between authentic and Americanized-Asian cuisine, but it's not acceptable for those who can, and prefer, authentic Asian food.

J & I decided to see a movie today.  At first we were going to see Final Destination 3, but since it wasn't going to start until an hour later, we decided to see Brokeback Mountain. 
The first few minutes of the movie were boring, but the rest of the
movie was really interesting.  J & I were still discussing the
movie for several hours afterwards, looking online for more detail on
the movie.  It's an excellent movie and I highly recommend it, if
you haven't seen it already.

Sometimes when I'm at work, I'll see a lot of flashing lights and get really dizzy, since my vision is temporarily impaired.  However, it goes away pretty quickly, and I don't think too much about it. I attribute it to not getting enough sleep recently.

Today was different -- I wasn't in my office; rather while I was driving, I noticed a huge flash of light in my left eye, similar to how you see a patch of light after someone takes your photo with a flash.  The scary part was that the flash wouldn't go away, and it created a blind spot in my eye, so I could only see things partially.

It was off and on today, and I'm not really the type to rush to the doctor, so I figured it would go away.  Finally, around 6PM, I gave in and called the doctor. I've got an appointment at 10AM tomorrow; hopefully, it's nothing serious!

Okay, I was bored, so I started searching for people on Google. Some people don't leave any trace of themselves, or their name is so common, you can't find the "real" one.  I searched for myself, and I'm all over the place.  Most of it is from some Java-based community sites I registered for, but one is really cool; it has the professional paper I wrote with my boss when I was doing an internship during college. 

Anyway, after I was done with that, I decided to go to AsianAvenue.com.  Although I haven't been there since ~ 2000, I still remember my username and password!  Do I have a good memory or what?!  Most of the people who signed my guestbook don't use the site anymore, since their name is listed as "Inactive User".  It was interesting, going back and reminiscing on all the comments, and thinking about those chat rooms, forum posts, etc.  IMHO, AsianAvenue just got boring when they took away the point system (or at least made it harder to get prizes), and the chat rooms seemed full of spammers.

During Restaurant Week, Joanne and I went to Sushi-ko,
which is supposed to be the best in the area.  The sashimi was
excellent -- it was the best I've had yet.  The sushi was average,
probably because of the quality of the rice.

Linux (skip this part if you don't like operating systems)
This is so cool............ after a long struggle, I was able to install Linux on my laptop!
The desktop is so pretty, and I can do all the programming I
want.  Also, I don't have to worry about spyware, adware,
etc!  Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It didn't go as smoothly as I wanted though.  At first, I never
had a logon screen. So I decided to go back to plain old Windows XP,
using PartitionMagic to remove the Linux partition.  However, that
made it worse, and I couldn't even start my computer! 

So I reinstalled Linux, and changed the monitor to WXGA since it was
being selected automatically.  That worked, and now I'm typing in
Linux, with a nice iguana desktop/wallpaper!!!!!!!!!