Farewell Matt

Matt's flight back was Sunday at 6pm. Had to leave the house around 4pm to get him there. Too bad he couldn't stay for another day because my mom was throwing a huge Vietnamese party at the house. The reason for the party was for a Vietnamese bishop that was staying with us. i was so tried when i drove matt to the airport and on the way home it was even worse.
By the time i got home the street was full of cars. i'm going to guess there were about 60 asians there, maybe even more. There was one bishop and like 4 priests. Silly vietnamese catholics and their parties.

i only had enough energy to talk to a few people and eat some dinner...i then passed out at 8pm. Must have partied harder than i thought with matt. i woke up at 10:30 pm. By that time everyone was gone and didn't fall back asleep until 6am. Worst sleep schedule ever. Its going to take me a few days to get back on track.

Another Grad Party

After matt and i had finally recovered from the toga party, it was about time to head over to terry's for his and his brother's grad party. It was a bout a 40 minute drive there and we arrived around 5 o'clock, just in time for the food.

There was this crazy washer game that a kid brought, his name was matt too. It consisted of two octagons with a pvc pipe in the middle and you threw washers into them...kind of like horse shoes or cornhole.
When terry's family finally left it was about time for the real games to start. For some reason pong wasn't good enough for the Millersville kids and we played they're crazy beirut version of the game. It consisted of having four games going on at once and if the ball bounced on an adjacent table from which it was shot or if it hit the ground it got sent back to the other team...this game had teams of four and if you beat your opponent you can shoot at the other players as well...it was weird and i was horrible at it.

Not sure why i took a picture of the switch plate while waiting to use the bathroom...

After the beer was gone we all went down to the basement for some actual pong. Here is matt in action.

There is one reason i don't like falling asleep at parties, and that's because of the sharpie marker. Terry on the other hand always passes out at parties. Not sure how he does it...so his twin brother mike and the second matt went to town on terry's face and body.

Since no one really knew my matt, he was left alone...lucky for him.

Somehow i ended up being the only person awake at like 2am. i hate it when that happens.

i was pretty hungry at that point so i helped myself to some leftovers from the party. All i could find were chicken fingers so i had that. They were kind of well-done...but the lemonade tasted delectable.
Eammon and i had a little trouble getting out of the house, i forgot that you can easily be locked in the house if you don't have the key. Luckily Eammon found the key on the stove but he was unable to open the door. Either he's retarded or drunk i'll never know...he's one of those people that always look drunk. i on the other hand was able to unlock the door easily.
i was pretty bored at this point and noticed all the tables and chairs were still out...so i spent like 30 minutes folding all the chairs and stacking them. i also broke down the tables and emptied the coolers. i stacked everything in a nice little pile...i should really see a doctor about my cleaning habbits.
After the backyard was cleaned up i carried matt to my car. i then went back into the house and tried to wake up marker covered terry. i felt bad leaving him sleep on the floor in his own house so lifted him up and he kind of guided his sleep walking to his room.To his surprise there was already a kid in his bed, one of mike's friends...not sure what happened from there...and i don't really want to know.
Next person was the second matt...he was a little more of a hassel to get up the stairs than terry. He kept falling asleep on every other step. Took me like five minutes to get him out of the basement.
Eventually got him to the stupid couch. i'm sure he doesn't remember any of this...i probably should have just left him in the basement. Oh well.

My matt was completely out, i could have punched him in the face and he wouldn't have woken up. Took us about 30 minutes to get home. matt walked to the guest bedroom in his sleep practically. i didn't get to bed to about 4 AM.

i seriously need to start looking for a liver donor.

Toga, Toga, Toga!

Picked up matt at the airport. He had flown into Houston or was it Dallas...We'll just say Texas, then he went to Pittsburg, then philly to hang out with me before going back to Saudi! Just happened to have a toga party to go to on the day of his arrival. For a toga i did a little research, ended up going to a fabric store to get 12 yards of fabric for two togas. One toga in blue, and the other in white. i was going to wear the white one but ended up going with blue...i wouldn't say blue is my favorite color, but i some how always ended up picking it...maybe it is my favorite color.

On the way to the party we ran into matin, my landlord my senior year. Little weird having a landlord that is younger than you and parties like a rock star, a Iranian rock star. He always wore tight shirts, and this encounter was no different. He said that the shirt shrunk 'accidently' in the wash...riiiiight.
Since it was a toga party and all, i brought one of my bottles of wine. The Muller-Thurgau. Everyone who tried it seemed to like it. Below is one of the hosts of the party, jules. i looked pretty pickled...

By about half way throught they party, matt just kind of gave up on his toga...

i made matt fix his toga before we got a picture taken together. My toga was pretty lame, but at least i had the fancy rope belt. i even rocked the saudi sandals...didn't get a picture of them though, you'll just have to believe that they were awesome.
john and i were pong partners the whole night, we have a fun hand shake/high five and everything...its sanitary so there isn't any actually contact. The last team played was leah and rachel. They said they were going to beat us...but i'm the pong champ! i can't lose! Of course john and i won.

Lost the toga after the beer ran out.

Another host of the party, julie.

matt and john walking back to the apartment.

matt the next day, he woke up at 1:30 PM.

Risk

After the trip to Jim's, manthan called and said he wanted to hang out. i was thinking about staying in Philly so i wouldn't have to drive so far to the airport the next day to pick up matt. manthan gets back to me and said that we're meeting up at ryan's...to play Risk. Oh boy, lets not do anything too crazy. i get there a little late because of the awesome traffic on 76 due to the random road work. After i parked i grabbed john so i had someone to talk to. i accidently gave john the impression that he would be able to play Risk but by the time we got to ryan's they had already be playing for 20 minutes.
john and i ended up sipping on some Magic Hat #9 while watching the exciting game play. Wasn't long until john got tired of doing nothing so he went back to his place. i was going to follow him back but then manthan got 'defeated' or whatever in Risk and we went to New Deck instead. We had to beers each and a plate of awesome fries minus the bacon. i guess they're really not that awesome without the bacon, so they were just regular cheese fries with a side of ranch dressing.

i noticed that the bar had the fancy Samuel Adams glasses that supposedly give the best drinking experience. Of course when i ordered a boston lager the bartender put the beer in a regular glass...manthan then asked if we could get it in a cool Sam Adams one...that problem was soon fixed. i should have ordered two beers in different glasses so i could compare them. i'll just have to do that next time.
Got a ride back to john's, hung out with him for a bit and passed out in rich's room. Because has an air conditioning unit in his room and it was extremely hot in the rest of the apartment.

Why So Many Buffets?

My parents wanted to go out for dinner. Their choice, Old Country Buffet...because they had a coupon. i can't stand that place. The food is just horrible. Well i guess the salad bar is alright...but thats it. Everything else is just disgusting. i managed to talk them out of going. They then wanted to go to Jim's Buffet, a chinese buffet. Ugh, i didn't want to go to a buffet. We then all agreed on an Indian restaurant. Turned out that was a buffet too, but only for lunch. So we ended up going to Jim's...
Well i tried. My first plate went pretty well. Everything except the chicken wings. The wings were very dry, i should have known better. The beef roas thing was pretty good too, probably because it has been cooked for ever and contained massive amounts of fat.
The second plate was probably the best one out of the three. Mostly because i got some fried dumplings on there...because they're basically fried crack. The crab rangoon was pretty good too. The boneless spare ribs are always delicious as well.
Totally ruined the third plate, i didn't know if i wanted dessert, sushi, or more main course. So i got all three. The kimchi was awful, it wasn't even hot. i made the horrible mistake of pouring soy sauce on my dumplings, it just ran into the jello....so my jello tasted like soy sauce. If that sounds nasty thats because it is, but i still finished it because i'm gangsta like that.

Ugh, i'm so tired of buffets.

Um...

Not sure why i took a picture of this...just had to capture the moment of 17,000 miles.

Another 21st Birthday

So had a party on the 23rd. It was on a Monday and the birthday girl, angela, decided to just have a shin dig at her house rather than going bar hoping like people usually do on their 21st birthday. Pretty lame if you ask me. i was just invited because of my hookah. The party went down at 7:30 pm and there was a million burgers and pieces of grilled chicken.

The chicken was really good, and i found out the secret...italian dressing. You soak the chicken in italian dressing...i'm sure there is some lemon or something too...but it was delicious. i really wanted to play some beer pong, so i brought some Solo cups and pong balls. i thought i didn't need to bring a table and turned out that i should have. The best thing we could find at the house was a picnic table. It took four people to lift this thing and bring it in the garage. About 2 minutes after bringing the table in the garage it started to pour outside...good timing.

i failed to take that many pictures at the party, probably because me and my partner, jessica, ruined everyone at the pong table. The one game i had to sink all six cups by myself but the rest of the games my partner held her own.
i did the horrible mistake of packing 3 bowls of the hookah. i forgot that my limit was 2...after that its just asking for a headache.
i forgot the dogs name, i'll just call him "Mean"...because he tried to kill me whenever i looked at him. i was told it was something to do with its previous owners being male and they would beat him. Despite that he was more than happy to eat grilled chicken from my hand...but after that he was back to growling at me whenever we made eye contact.
This one kid, i forget his name but i remember he sells phones at Costco and he's going to school at Temple. He was about 25 and plans to go to Law School after his undergrad. Then after making oodles of money as a lawyer he'll invest his money and make even more oodles where he will use it to fund archaeological dig sites around the world and he'll visit them at his leisure. Good luck with that....anyway, so this kid decided to nuke a cold cheese burger patty after showering it with hot sauce and Malibu Mango Rum....he said it was delicious, i took his word for it. He even made a second one for this girl at the party.
i have to say that i felt a little out of my element hanging out with all these other kids since i only knew angela. i tried getting brent to come to the party so i had someone to talk to but he was in Delaware...lame. Didn't leave the party until 3:45 am.

Where the Magic Happens

The Golden City

As a result of being half Vietnamese, i find myself dragged to various ridiculous Vietnamese gatherings. i've avoided them for quite some time but no such luck this time. The party this time was at the Golden City. A couple was celebrating their 35 anniversary, retirement, and a birthday. Plus the couple's two boys were paying for the whole shin dig. Not only was this party going on, but on the other half of the restaurant there was a wedding reception. So with the 150 Vietnamese at the party i was there for, and the 400 viets there for the wedding....i was surrounded by 550 little asians and i was the only 'white person'. i guess my dad is white but he speaks vietnamese so i'm including him in the yellow skinned pool.

My aunt hooked us up with a table for ten, so i didn't have to sit with anybody i didn't know. You can tell i was thrilled by the picture below, i just hadn't had enough to drink yet. For some reason Vietnamese praise the taste of Heineken. Not sure why, but at every Vietnamese party there is always Heineken. i guess if it wasn't from Holland i would be more willing to drink it. The only think Holland is good for is clogs and windmills, i've got some pretty sick clogs.

More Vietnamese just keep showing up...

About 5 minutes into the festivites i had consumed half a beer and it looked like i might even enjoy myself...until i looked behind me to find that they had just set up the karaoke, Vietnamese karaoke...and all my hopes had gone out the window.Of course my mom was one of the first people on the stage singing and dancing, ridiculous.
Here my mom is with the guest of honor. He was a pretty funny guy, kept coming over to my table to toast his glass with my dad and i. Not sure what that was all about.
Singing with a group was not good enough for my mom, she had to be on that stage by herself. She pretty much went all out, dancing all over the stage like a rock star. The sound guys had some crazy effects going so everyone's voice and an echo through the microphone, kind of ruined it for me.
The boys that organized the whole shabang...they cracked me up, they sang like a million songs that night. And their clothes...it was like they're were going to club Shampoo or something. My aunt asked my mom if the one son realized that his shirt was only partly tucked in...

Poor asian baby, just wanted to be held by his dad...but he was too busy rocking it out on the stage.

Since this was a chinese restuarant in the states, the food was pretty greasy. The first plate to come out was pretty much ground shrimp meat fried in different forms. It was alright, i wouldn't say it tasted amazing. The next dish to come out was shirmp, whole shrimp in its shell. If there is one thing i can't stand its unshelled shrimp. i blame my mom for that because while growing up she would always shell them for me at the restuarant or dinner table. So i have pretty much no idea how to eat them. Of course rather than letting take a crack at it, deshelled shrimp starts flying onto my plate from my mom and aunts. Ridiculous i know...the shrimp wasn't even that good, didn't taste like anything.

One of the later dishes was the egg drop soup. i'm not sure if it was actually egg drop soup, but it kind of looked like it and sure tasted like it...so i'm going to just call it egg drop soup.
i failed miserably taking a photo of the soup. Some crazy vinegar sauce was handed to me while eating it and i was told to put some in the soup. It was red...and for some reason when i first saw it in my soup it looked like a chick had her monthly...
So the next dish was lobster, i think...we had lobster somewhere between all these dishes. That was really good, i'm not from Maine or Maryland so i guess i really have no idea what good lobster is but i liked what they served up at the Golden City.

After the lobster (maybe before, i forget) some peking duck was put on the table with some crazy dumpling pancake things. Duck is so good, its like the goat of birds...really fatty and delicious. Can't get enough of that crispy duck skin either. The dumpling things were really good too, especially when consumed with a piece of duck.
Here the father was saying a few words, in Vietnamese of course just like everything else that was said through the microphone that night.
The next dish was completely random, i've never seen anything like it. Pieces of fish on top of slices of ham, maybe the concept seems appealing at first...but no, it was a horrible idea. Pig and fish shouldn't have a party in my mouth at the same time, it just doesn't work. The fish criticize the ham for being too salty, and the ham bashes on the fish for being mushy...they just don't get along. The 'fried rice' was really moist and bland as well. The only thing i did like on this dish was the crazy noodle things and the greens.
After that crazy dish was finished, the waiters came out with this crazy noodle dish. i don't know why but it just felt out of place, like i wasn't expecting a noodle dish. The noodles didn't taste like anything either. The only thing saving it was the snow peas, because i love peas. i wish i could just fill a swimming pool with them and just...
Finally dessert came out after the ridiculous noodle dish. Not sure what these round balls are but i've had them before. These ball things are pretty dangerous, if you eat them whole they could suffocate you, trust me i know...i should have put googly eyes on them so i'd feel more comfortable with them.
Then of course there were the fortune cookies and fruit. i always get a stupid fortune, this time it was something about how advice is never heeded...awesome.
Can't have a big shin dig like this without a bottle of champagne! Never heard of Verdi, and i'm not a champagne expert...but this stuff was delicious! i wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't any alcohol in it but for under 12 bones per bottle...its pretty good. No cork either! Just some crazy modern twist top! And it still makes that popping noise!
Ended the night with some cake...then i bounced. i met my listening to people talking in Vietnamese quota and i peaced.
Overall i had a good time...but of all the tables that were in the restuarant, i was at the one in front of the karaoke speaker...could have done without that.