Soccer In Hawaii!

Went to check out the Pan Pacific Soccer Tournament last Wednesday and Saturday and was good fun! I'm a big soccer fan and it was pretty cool to see this level of soccer live in Hawaii.

Wednesday's 1st game featured the LA Galaxy vs the Japan League champion, Gamba Osaka. Of course, everyone was there to watch David Beckham in action, but there were also a lot of fans who flew in from Japan to support the Gamba team as well. It was kind of funny because every single time Beckham touched the ball, the crowd would cheer, expecting him to score or do something amazing with each touch. I must say though that he is one helluva an accurate passer. His long lead passes were right on the money, perfectly leading the strikers to opportunities in the box. Unfortunately, the Galaxy loss 1-0. The 2nd game featured Hawaii's own Bryan Ching playing for the MLS Champion Houston Dynamo. Houston looked great in the first half, scoring 3 goals against FC Sydney. The announced attendence was 15,000 but that's BS. I would say at the most 9,000 people were there.

Saturday's games were exciting as well. The 3rd place game between the Galaxy and FC Sydney was entertaining. It was kind of cool to see Beckham get all heated up and bent out of shape over a handling call which he disagreed with. To see him so fired up over a minor call in an exhibition game just shows how competitive of a guy he is. The championship game was an awesome offensive display by Gamba Osaka as they totally killed the Dynamo 6-1. And each of their goals were nice ones as their strikers simply blew by the Dynamo defense. A much bigger and more active crowd on Saturday as well, making for a really fun experience.

I had lots of fun at the 2 days of soccer matches and hope they continue to bring events like these to the islands.

Those Wacky Koreans Think of Everything!

Korean mobile phone operator KTF has come up with a love detector service for their subscribers.

For approximately $1.50 a month, KTF subscribers can have their phones analyze the voice patterns of their loved ones and measure how much affection, surprise, concentration, honesty, etc. are in their words.

Good for those who think their loved ones are always lying to them! Bad for those who are the ones doing the lying! LOL

The Shoe Has Fallen.....

Toshiba will be announcing that they will be dropping the HD DVD format. Looks like it's curtains for HD DVD....sigh! Oh well...time to start investing in Blu-Ray movies. If only their players weren't so damn expensive!

Ski Trip - Day 6

The last day of the trip! We had to check out by 10am so we were on the road by 10:30am. This time, the road conditions were great so we made it back to Sacramento in a record time of just under 2 hours. We paid a little more this time and stayed at a Quality Inn near the Convention Center rather than the ghetto Motel 6.

After having our last dinner together at Esquire Grill in Downtown Sacramento, it was off to the Kings/Sonics game at the Arco Arena.

Downtown Sacramento is like a ghost town. Seriously, I don't know where all the people are. We were walking around at rush hour time and the streets were dead. Where the heck was everyone? I felt like we were in that movie "I Am Legend"! LOL
Beauties and the Beast! The cheerleader on the left is married to a former UH football player. She seemed really happy to see other people from Hawaii and was really cool.
Kevin Durant at the line
Man, Arco Arena is really old. That place needs a makeover or something. But I still liked it better than the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.

Overall, the trip was really fun and I'm glad I got to hang out with some already close friends and also a few new friends who I met for the first time. That's the thing about travelling with people. As long as everyone's cool, you can all get along.

Thanks for the memories, guys, and I look forward to next time!

Ski Trip - Day 5

I made a decision that I would take the 3rd day off from skiing due to my left knee not feeling up to snuff. I felt that it wasn't worth the risk of going up again and decided to just cruz on this day. So when the rest of the boys went up, I headed to town to do some shopping and checking out the sights.

Surprisingly, for a heavy tourist destination, there isn't much shopping to be done at Lake Tahoe. I walked around Heavenly Village and was not impressed at all. But I bought a few gifts I needed to buy and then headed to the casino. Again....lose money!

The casinos are located right on the Nevada/California state line
Then I went back to the hotel and took a nap while waiting for the boyz to return.

Later that night, we had dinner at the Blue Angel Cafe. I really liked this place a lot! Prices were reasonable and the food was delicious! And it had a really cozy atmosphere that I particularly enjoyed.

Some of the best clam chowder that I've ever had
Yummy quesadillas
Hulk Bunny and I both ordered the Beef Bourginon. Man, this was so good!
After dinner, it was back to the casinos again where once again, I lost more money. Dammit!

Ski Trip - Day 4

Our 2nd day on the slopes. My left knee was still bothering me as it was swollen and also making a weird "clicking" sensation whenever I tried to straighten it out. That can't be good. But I wanted to go out so I decided to take it easy and just cruz with the 2 people in our group who were first time snowboarders. So the 3 of us spent all day on the green slopes. They were trying to learn their turns, and I was just basically going up and down. Yeah, it wasn't much of a challenge since it wasn't so steep, but I didn't want to risk another fall and injure myself more.

Much nicer day today
See that beanie I'm wearing? I lost it while riding the lift cuz I was trying to adjust my goggle strap. What a fool! It fell down to the middle of the slopes and I hurriedly skiied down to retrieve it but it was gone! I went up again right away to look for it again but no luck. But at the bottom of my 2nd run down, I noticed that someone dumped it near the lift station. Whew! It was really cold without my head being protected!
For dinner, we headed to Womack's Texas BBQ. Man, this place was delicious! Very tiny and crowded, but well worth it. WW and I split an order of pork ribs (they were out of baby back) and Southern fried chicken. The sauce was oh so yummy and the meat fell off the bones. I'd definitely go back there again!

The menu
The meal

Ski Trip - Day 3

Our first day on the slopes!

But we couldn't go out in the morning due to a heavy storm. Snow was falling like crazy and the high winds were swirling as well. We found out that morning that the lifts would open no earlier than 12 noon. Aw man! So we just kind of waited patiently in the room until they gave us the okay to head out.

In the meantime, the sun peeked through a little, giving us this fantastic view. Ain't that a purdy picture?
We finally hit the slopes at around 12:30pm. But man, was it cold! We were all guessing that the temperature was in the low teens, if not single digits! It was that cold. And to make things worse, I took a nasty spill at the very bottom of my first run and tweaked my left knee. Dammit! I could already feel it swelling and stiffening up. But I was still able to get 2 more runs in before we had to head in to watch the Super Bowl.

View of our first run from the bottom
So after about 3 hours on the slopes, we headed back to watch the big game.

Check out our Super Bowl setup!
This was our spread...bologna sandwiches, chips, and beer! Yummy!
After the game, we cruzed for a while and then headed into town for dinner. Based on a recommendation, we checked out Fire and Ice. This restaurant had a pretty cool concept. It's a buffet, but you put all of your raw ingredients into a plastic bowl and then you give it to the grill chef who will grill it for you while doing some teppanyaki style show tricks. It was pretty fun! You could fill your bowl with choices from pastas, vegetables, seafood, beef, pork, and also your choice of sauces. The waiter said that the record was someone eating 9 bowls. All of us had just 2 bowls each and that was enuff!

The grill chef at work
My first bowl consisted of penne pasta, roasted garlic, eggplant, mushrooms, pulled pork, and a sweet barbecue sauce. Here it is on the grill.
The finished product! Ono!

Ski Trip - Day 2

We left Sactown at about 10:30am and then it was off to Tahoe! The drive took about 3 hours because road conditions were not the greatest. Snow started falling about halfway there and didn't stop for the entire rest of the way. Once we got to the Tahoe area, you couldn't even enter some areas unless you had chains or a 4WD vehicle.

We got to the Ridge Resort at about 1:30pm and discovered that it was practically right next door to the Stagecoach lift of the Heavenly resort. Cool!

Bunch of bear statues around everywhere
After checking in at the front desk, we then proceeded to our room. I have to say, I liked our room a lot! It had a big living room, a nice kitchen, 2 bedrooms, and 2 excellently huge bathrooms, complete with tubs! Good work, Chad!

The kitchen
The living room, with sofa bed
The bathroom
The view from our room. Check out all that snow!
After settling in, we went to rent our gear for the next 3 days and then headed to dinner. For dinner, we checked out Chevy's a mainland Tex Mex restaurant chain. I haven't eaten at Chevy's since I was in college (I remember celebrating a bunch of 21st birthdays there) and their food was decent.

Look at all that snow around the restaurant!
Me...outside Chevy's and freezing!
I ordered a sampler type plate which came with enchiladas, a tamale, and a chile relleno. You see that chile relleno on the left? Our waitress said that that alone was 4,000 calories! WTF! You tryin' to give me a heart attack?
After dinner, we went to gamble at Harrah's for a while and then it was back to the hotel. The drive back was really scary as snow was falling very heavily and visibility was heavily limited. Luckily, we made it back in one piece!

Ski Trip - Day 1

Arrived in Sacramento at around 9:00pm.

Check out the cool column of luggage at the baggage claim!
Went to pick up our SUV from Enterprise and although their service was excellent and very helpful, we did not get the Suburban we were hoping for and had to settle for a Tahoe. Which meant that with 6 guys, 6 suitcases, and 2 snowboards, we had to improvise a bit to get all of our gear in and on top of the car.

This took a good 30 minutes!
We then went to our cheap Motel 6 in Downtown Sacramento. Yeah, the neighborhood wasn't the greatest but I thought the rooms were fine. But indeed, sorta ghetto. Chad said that he heard "hooker heels" walking past his room in the middle of the night. How you can differentiate between hooker heels and regular heels is something only Chad can explain! LOL

WW said that any hotel/motel that lists their price on the ad sign can't be good!
After settling in, we were all hungry so we went down to a local eatery and had a late supper. Food wasn't bad and the service was good. It was a place called Lyon's and I guess it's like their version of Zippy's?

I had the roast turkey. Pretty good!
Then it was off to bed...