Lots of Excitement!

Wow a lot of things have happened in the last few months!

Helen and Andrew are going to be having a baby girl soon! Congrats!

Jen and I are also having a baby, next year, in March! Here is our post about it.

http://jenandjeffyang.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-share-big-news.html

Emily is being awesome and moved to India to work at Asirvad Microfinance.

I can't wait to hear more about her heart-pounding adventures!

Alice Chen got a new job at Personal Capital.

We all got an account at her new company to help us manage our money!

I'm also excited to announce that I got a new job at Hulu!

A little farther back, but definitely a life changing event, Linda got married!

So congrats to everyone and we wish the best for all of us!

And if I got something incorrect let me know =P.

giant doughnut!!

when i was walking home through the streets of sf one day, i decided that i'd fancy having a doughnut. specifically, a crumb doughnut from bob's. i walked up to the display window at bob's donuts and saw some crumb doughnuts available, along with several other varieties. at that point my eyes wandered across the other selections as eyes are wont to do, which is when i noticed the oft rumored, but never confirmed by my own eyes, GIANT doughnut!! in addition to being enormous, it was a crumb doughnut--precisely the type of doughnut i was craving. at that point, i figured: if a regular doughnut is good, a giant doughnut must be better! so i bought it and carried it home (and it was heavy!).

this is the beast:

this is me getting ready for battle:

i started out strong, diving right in and before too long, i had finished half of it. however, as time went on, my pace slackened, and in the eternal battle between yao vs. food... this time, food won.

you can see that a lot of the crumb coating fell off in my enthusiasm to devour it, but you can rest assured that i went back for the tasty morsels afterwards in round 2.

interestingly enough, after my body had told me no more and while i was lying on the couch, my roommate walked in complaining. she said that had been craving a doughnut all day long and was planning on getting one on her walk back from the bars, but her friends insisted on giving her a ride back home, so she was unable to buy one. though she didn't believe me at first, she was quite happy to find giant doughnut in the kitchen and helped herself to a serving or two or more.

more bed stuff

i haven't actually completed my entire bed. i sort of ran out of time/motivation after the platform part was completed, so my bed currently lacks a headboard.

but like jeff mentioned, my bed is upholstered, so there is no exposed wood.

here are some pictures of my initial design:




here is a rendering jeff created using sketchup:

this is actually pretty much what my bed currently looks like since i haven't put together the headboard.

New House!

Jen and I got a house!


We decided to install a laminate floor. Dennis, Yao, and my parents all came to help. A big thanks to all of them! Thanks to Dennis for bringing all the equipment too!

Dennis and Yao lay down the red padding you see below... then we started putting the planks in.




Not sure what Dennis is doing.



Jen is taking advantage of the small portion we've accomplished.



Teamwork!



Yay! Yao is laying down the last few pieces!


The finished product! Looks great!




House pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/xJenniferLinx/8954HelmsPl90034
Floor pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/jeffreyyang/FloorInstallation

oysters at tomales bay

when bruce came to visit the bay area, all of us cousins (including alice chen and frances chen) decided to get together to shuck some oysters at tomales bay. our trip began with shopping at cala foods where we purchased picnic supplies. while we were there, we received an emergency call frin alice. she needed help checking into her flight from las vegas. luckily bruce's phone had an app for that! (a browser).

since i forgot to get directions, we used france chen's phone to figure out how to get to tomales bay. her phone directed us to take the scenic route. unfortunately for those in the back, the secnic route also meant the windy, make you carsick and want to throwup route. luckily we were able to get to the oyster farm without any incidents.

once we got there we purchased a bag of 50 oysters.

after that, we tried our hand at shucking:

bruce starting to shuck an oyster
bruce struggling a little bit
and success!!
this is a picture of the cousins by the bay

skiing in mammoth

this past weekend alice chen and i met jeff and jennifer in mammoth lakes, ca for some snow sports. we stayed at the rodeway inn, which i highly recommend. the price was the cheapest we could find and the place wasn't dumpy like many of the motels in south lake tahoe. they even provided free breakfast and spiced hot apple cider!

this was alice chen's first time skiing, so i took her down the greens a few times. while we were sitting on the lift, we noticed a sign that said "lose your board, lose your ticket". of course, jeff had to put that theory to the test by having his board slide all the way down the mountain while he chased after it. true to their word, the ski patrol noticed jeff losing his board and then proceeded to force him to lose his ticket. luckily the lift ticket suspension was for one day only and jeff was able to ski the next day.

on sunday, jeff and i played with our phones to track our skiing performance. unfortunately, it was really windy and the top lifts were closed, so there weren't many blacks to play on.

here are my stats:
Total Time: 04:04:50
Moving Time: 03:03:01
Distance: 29.97 miles
Average Speed: 7.44 mph
Average Moving Speed: 9.82 mph
Max Speed: 48.09 mph
Elevation Gain: 11970 ft
Min Elevation: 8008 ft
Max Elevation: 9850 ft

alas, i was eclipsed by jeff's amazing high speed of 123 mph!

here is a map of where we skied

Myrrh Park

Hi all,
Sorry it's taken so long, but here are a couple pictures of our new baby.
Myrrh Xinmei Park. Born 4:10am 2/28/09 at 7lb 4oz.
Yes I am sleep deprived, but let me say I will eat all the pigs feet/peanut soup you want me to eat if you will come and cook/clean for me (thanks mom!!).
Here is also a 1w picture of the baby (yes, we are continuing with the cake tradition we started with Augustine).

Close call at Helen's wedding

At Helen's wedding I was given the responsibility of walking Grandma down the aisle.
Helen called me up and asked me if I could handle this, and if I would please not trip and bring Grandma down with me.
Of course, I ensured her that I would do a fine job.

For the wedding, my mom bought matching shirts for my dad, Bruce, and me, so my dad and I both wore that shirt.
Everything else I borrowed from my dad, except my underwear, my socks, and my dress shoes.
Since I rarely dress up, these shoes have lasted me since college.

We arrived at the wedding pretty early.
After I got out of the car, my mom looked down and asked me what the mess on the floor was.
There was black gunk everywhere.
After careful examination, it turned out be the bottom of my shoes.
They had melted a bit in the sun, and started wearing off onto the carpet floor.
As I walked around, I felt my shoes sticking to the floor.
Even inside, everywhere I walked, I was leaving a black trail.

I tried to walk as little as possible, choosing to sit, or just stand.
At one point, as I was standing there talking, I lifted my right foot and felt my foot get a lot lighter.
I looked down, and saw that my entire heel had fallen off!
I couldn't help it, I burst out laughing... my dad and Jen did too, once they saw what had happened.

However it was also starting to make walking a problem as the bottom of my shoes were now uneven.
I started wondering if I really could handle my responsibilities.
Shortly before the wedding was about to start, the status of my shoes had deteriorated even more.
The heels had both fallen off. In fact, everything had fallen off, except for a clump at the very center of the shoe.
This meant that for both feet, I was essentially balancing on a single lump instead of standing on a flat surface.

Luckily, my balancing skills were up to par as I did not trip during the walk!

Success!


Oh, the other weird thing at the time was that I was completely deaf in my right ear.

Beds Part 2

Yao and I had different ideas about how to finish up the bed.
I decided to stain the wood while Yao decided to upholster his.
Here's what my bed turned out to look like.
Yao, are you done yet? Post some pictures!

Beds Part 1

Yao decided that he wanted a bed frame and that none of the frames he could buy met his needs.
So following Bruce's example, we built beds!
Yao designed it, then we went to Home Depot and built one for each of us.
Pictures courtesy of Jen, who also helped.
Also, yes, this happened more than a year ago.

visiting emy in hong kong

when i was in hong kong for the past week, i had the distinct pleasure of staying at emily's apartment in sheung wan on hong kong island. you might wonder if emily has enough space in her apartment for visitors and i can assure you that she has plenty of space. she lives in her own 2 bedroom apartment in a mansion!

since i have considered following in bruce's aspirations in making lots and lots of money, i decided to do a little research into the banking lifestyle with emily as my specimen. together, we did lots of banker-type activities like:

being snobby and eating wine and cheese:

and salami with black truffle:

cheese closeup:

we also constantly checked our blackberries (i had to pretend with a nokia), drank bottles at the armani bar (yes, an armani-branded liqueur establishment) on a friday night before heading back to work, and partied until 5 or 6am at some exclusive banker-dominated club. i definitely have a greater understanding of why it feels good to be a banker.

there are tons of things to do in hong kong, like checking out the lights from kowloon:

hiking up to the peak (or taking the tram if you're feeling lazy)

and taking a boat to macau to exercise in the parks:

or, you can go to the many casinos in macau and gamble

(emily won over a hundred dollars!)

so if you have a chance, i highly recommend paying emily a visit! she's a very gracious host, even if you try to leave a few hours early!

Jen and I are engaged!

Helen got married!

The wedding was on August 3rd in Cinnamon (or something like that), NJ.


The wedding was a fusion of Chinese and Jewish traditions.
Some of the more interesting Jewish parts include glass breaking and the chair dance.




We also found out that Helen and Andrew are professional dancers as they busted out the moves!





Here is a picture of all of us.


The reception included an open bar and fruits and pastries. After that, we had dinner, which had a bunch of different buffet tables: meat station, sushi station, chinese station, omelette station, breakfast station, eggs benedict & crepe station, and pasta station. And the cake of course.


Siblings!

alice's visit to san francisco

this past weekend, alice was on the west coast for a wedding. while she was here, us bay area cousins had the opportunity to hang out with her for a bit.

since there are multiple cousins with the same first and last names, we'll go through chen family naming nomenclature first:
alice = alice from new york (76th st)
alice chen = alice from california (sacramento)
frances chen = frances from georgia/kentucky

we all had dinner at this small italian place in north beach.

the place was pretty small and didn't take reservations. lucky for us, frances chen arrived a few minutes late to put in our name while the rest of us arrived 30~40 minutes late--just in time to be seated! this was the first ever meeting of alice and alice chen; it was truly a momentous occasion! all four bay area cousins + alice = five chen family cousins eating italian


at the end of the meal, frances chen had to use the facilities, so she went into the men's room where she saw the best dieting plan ever:


after dinner, we went to alice's friend's pre-wedding gathering at a bar in SOMA. there's more in common among the alices than just their first and last names: