Andrew Kao | This is my story

Most of my professors this semester are pretty good, much appreciated to RateMyProfessors.com (thank you!).  The only two classes that were “staff” are Japanese 113 and English 102.  My Japanese professor is awesome - she is very fun and energetic.  My English teacher is the only disappointment I have this semester.  It is partially due to the fact that the class is 3 hours long, but she uses every moment of it, speaking until the clock hits 820PM.  She is somehow interested in every article in the textbook… and the best response she has gotten is a harmonious grunt as she walks out of the classroom.  Oh well, there are only a couple more classes left that have a randomly assigned faculty member.

NSMH - I will be heading up to Seattle next Thurs-Sun for the 18TH Annual NSMH National Conference.  Unfortunately, it is during my birthday so I will not get to celebrate it with my friends in neither Vegas nor LA.  The school paid for registration and flight, so all I had to pay was $180 for 3 nights in a hotel.

Finally, I’m working with a couple professors right now on a project that would make the UNLV Hotel College shine ~ I don’t want to talk about the specifics yet but it’s currently set to be done in about 5 years, have thousands of members & businesses, and be nationally recognized (on the level of the AH&LA).  One of the qualifying questions a professor asked me was “Andrew, do you think you can raise $50,000 in on year?”  This will be an interesting project

Overweight? Not me ofcourse! Read on:

Monday and Tuesday are my only days off this week ~ so I had to get all my errands done. I dropped my work clothes at the dry cleaners, to the PO BOX, then Beat the Bookstore behind Einstines Bagles. I’ve seen them around on campus and decided decided to check them out since I was already in that plaza. Their prices are slightly cheaper then campus prices - saving about $2-$5 per book. It seems like their inventory is purely from books that the students sell back, but there were some like-new condition books. I then went to campus to pick up the books that wern’t available at Beat the Bookstore, washed my car and went to the library.

I then picked up Kim & Kylie from the mall and headed to Kylie’s dorm. They had a RA meeting so I took my laptop and chilled in Kim’s dorm until 10PM ish - watching a lot of Numb3rs and playing KDice. We got some Pho for dinner and went to Gameworks with Jay while we waited for our movie.

Freedom Writers is an racial story simular to Crash - where different ethnicities of students clash in the classroom. SO - we finished the movie and was the four of us headed into an elevator where there were already two guys. The elevator started beeping and we thought “what the hell, let it beep.” We hit 3rd floor, the door closed, but the only thing it did was continue to beep. So we hit the open button and stepped outside - the beeping stopped, door closed, and elevator went up. I never thought that the 4 of us would push an elevator over weight limit,

Mini vacation joined my vocab when I became part of Club de Soleil. It’s what it sounds like – a quick & short vacation, designed by our marketing department to get folks out for a taste of our properties.

Day 1 (New Years Eve)

I was feeling a bit nauseous when I got off the bus, probably because I was sitting in the back and didn’t sleep too well (these two old guys were about to go down a couple seats in front of me – quite a show). I really did not want to start off the new year sick, so stayed home and watched the fireworks with my parents (although my mom was asleep before midnight from me pouring everyone lots of alcohol). It was actually one of the few new years that we stayed in Burbank, my parents are usually bribed by the casinos to “celebrate” the new years with them – suites, dining, transportation, and lots of goodies (my sister has 3 coach purses) included. The annual ball drop at Times Square was unsurprisingly featured and replayed over and over again until the PST midnight stroke.

My girlfriend is on vacation in Taiwan right now – so I called her during Taiwan’s midnight and somewhat celebrated her New Years together. I was a bit disappointed as the minute hand approached 12 – 30 mins left, 15 mins left, 10, 5, 3, 2, 1 – the phone rang exactly 10 seconds before New Years <3

Day 2 (New Years)

Sleeping in is awesome. My morning shift starts at 7AM so I try to be up by 5am, latest 6am, on work days (just about every day). I woke up at around noon feeling much much better (although I found out that Tsz was really sick, so we couldn’t go out). I had a simple noodles lunch at home. My parents wanted to get away from my little sister, so I took her along to visit Emily in Santa Monica. Emily, my sister and I have spent the previous 2 (skipped this year) Christmases together in Vegas – usually horse back riding and watching a concert on Christmas Night (S.H.E. and Wang Leehom respectively). We chilled out at the pier a bit, had dinner at Bubba Gump and watched Blood Diamond (shopping at 3rd street is a given). On the way for ice cream in Westwood (which we found out was closed upon arrival), Emily’s mom called to check up on when the movie was going to end. She told me to bump my car stereo up and screamed in the phone that she was still in the movies and that she’ll call back later.

Day 3

I spent most of the night on the phone with my girlfriend (and later finding out that I’ve used over 1500 minutes on my 600 minutes plan).  I had maybe 2 hours of sleep collectively in between each call.  I “woke” up at around 11 and went out to lunch with my grandparents.  I chilled out at home for the most part, John picked me up at around 10pm and we went to pick up Tsz after that.  Stopped by Boba Loca first, then bowling and finished the night with a trip to Garden Cafe at around midnight.

140 I won!

Ramen Beefnoodles

Leeche Ice Slush

Day 4

I caught the 8AM bus back to Las Vegas.  I was going to be late for work if I picked up my car from New York New York so I took my girlfriend’s tiny green VW bug. 

Happy 2007! I’ll be starting off 2007 with a redesigned AndrewKao.com and a new blog at AndrewKao.org.I haven’t blogged for a long time - girlfriend, work, school, and sleep has been an infinite loop for the past couple months. I’ll try to squeeze some time to consistently blog this year. AndrewKao.com hit the top 40,000 sites (out of millions) on the internet in January 2006, I hope I can beat that rank this year. This would have been named “This is my Story: Chapter Five,” however I thought it would be better to forget about the chapters now – since their real purpose was to distinguish different blog designs over time.

Home
I got off work early today so I can make it back to LA and spend the New Years with my parents. Homesickness never really hit me while I was in school, probably because I was so busy and never had a chance to go home. In December alone, I’ve made the 4 hours 0 mins (exactly, says Google Maps) trip home four times already, that’s about once a week! I’ve driven twice and rode a very cheap, $45 round trip, tour bus for the latter times. Although they take about 5 hours and require a $2 tip each way, it allows me to take a nice nap after work and costs about 1/3 of the amount I would pay for gasoline if I drove.

Resolutions