Jigna & Vidya organized an engagement party for our friends, Hemant & Sindya, which I hosted at my place last night. Check out the pictures. It was a great turnout and very successful with yummy food–lasagne, baked ziti, homemade tiramisu (which Jigna & I made!), gelato cake, salad, etc….Congrats to the two of them! I haven’t gone out salsa dancing in awhile. I really need it, especially this week. Looking forward to tonight. I’m very excited–decided to exercise some options I’ve had sitting around for awhile…and exercised the Amazon stock today at $47.19, which I’m super happy with considering today’s range (44.85 – 47.83). This is always such a nerve-racking…

I’ve finally posted my pictures from the trip to Spain. Lots of them. Trying out a new photo album generator, aside from Photoshop and modification of html. What do y’all think?

Sri and I had a very successful evening of tapas and sharing my photos and video from the Spain trip to Brendan, Joe, Jigna & Matt. We went all out and made a lot of food we’d never tried making before. Our menu for the evening: Sangria Olive Oil Toast with Jamon Serrano or Jamon Iberico Tortilla Espanol Garlic Shrimp Almejas en Salsa Verde (Clams in Green Sauce) Oven-Roasted Wild Mushrooms with Goat Cheese Fried Calamari Marinated Olives Assortment of Spanish Cheese It was all quite successful and we had lots of fun making all the food! To add to the continuing saga of my love life, Brendan and I…

I haven’t been doing a good job of post-vacation resting…this whole week has been busier than I expected. Monday, I had dinner with the Cassanitis and got to see my friends Julia and Jocelyn (who finally graduated from law school—congrats!). It was so nice to see all of them again and to catch up with Julia. I really need to go out to Chicago sometime to visit her. Tuesday, I ended up going to Trivia Night at Cooper’s with Eric (and feeling rather stupid after my only contribution was recognizing a movie scene from Porky’s). Afterwards, I caught up with my Chinese friends for a last minute karaoke get together,…

[sigh] how much is my time and comfort worth? i’ve been a procrastinator and have yet to book my flight for linda’s wedding in d.c.—since it’s 1.5 weeks away, i’m in slight panic mode and trying to get my ticket asap. so far, this month, my total trips on a plane: seattle to austin austin to seattle seattle to madrid madrid to barcelona barcelona to madrid madrid to seattle that’s a lot of flying in one month. and my hip is starting to act up today from all the stationary seating. argh. anyhow, i *could* use up my frequent flyer miles from northwest for a very long, multiple-stop, sleepless flight…

hi—haven´t had much time or ability to blog lately as our hotel in barcelona had limited internet access…so i´ve been away from the computer for the last few days. anyhow, to sum things up: sri & i arrived to sunny barcelona on wednesday. ah, what a beautiful city. our first day there, we embarked on a crazy long walk all over the city. this won´t mean much if you don´t know the city…but we walked from our hotel (the derby hotel) which is near the metro hóspital clinic along the avenida diagonal…down the paseo de gracia, across the plaza catalunya, down las ramblas, and then crossing all the way over…

Waking up late again, Sri & I went to El Museo Prado today, viewing all the various paintings by Goya, Velasquez, El Greco, Rubens, Bosch & many more. It was nice to have studied a large number of these paitings already from the class I took while I was a student here (properly entitled “El Arte en El Prado”)—made me even more excited to see them again. I was most excited about getting to see Bosch´s Garden of Delights, which was on loan when I was last here. After the museum, we grabbed a late-afternoon (er, it was like 7pm…but sure felt like late afternoon) snack at Vip´s, a place…

Last minute, Sri & I decided to take a half-day trip to the beautiful town of Toledo, which is just south of Madrid. I´ve been there before but I knew it was worth going to. We found an organized tour via our hotel and were on a bus this morning at 8am (and it was a bad night of sleep…er…lack of sleep). Fortunately, it was a rather nice & sunny day in Toledo and we saw everything from the Catedral to the Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes to the oldest synagogue in Spain (dates to the 12th century!). Unfortunately, the tour ended at some factory where they tried…

We didn´t have a museum day today like we had planned. Sri & I slept in til nearly 5:30pm! It was ridiculous! We definitely have not acclamated to the time yet…and will need to force ourselves to sleep tonight. After getting out of bed, we headed down to see if we could get into the Centro de Arte Reína Sofia for the last hour..but I guess it closed at 6pm instead of 7pm. Instead, we went across the street and hung out at the Estación de Atocha for a bit. We then wandered back to the Plaza Mayor area and made reservations at a restaurant for tomorrow night. We´re going…

My first 24 hours in Madrid have been so amazing. True sensory overload. Upon arriving, Sri and I located our hotel in the heart of the Puerta del Sol, right above Zara (for my fellow friends who shop with me in Vancouver, you must appreciate that). We immediately crashed. We were oh so tired from the long plane ride. We woke up around mid-afternoon and headed to the Plaza Mayor where we basked in the sun, sipping a café and eating some paella and croquetas de jamón. We then wandered around a bit more..and soon learned that there was a Real Madrid game in town that night…at 10 pm. Crazy…