Saturday, September 23, 2006

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Dragonboat race ... and she's a winner!

Posted by Hippobean at 11:59 PM 0 comments
Nobody told me it was soooooo much fun! The Hippo absolutely loved it! We had 2 good practices at the Redwood City Marina (she got really sore after the first practice, exercising the muscles she didnt know she had!) and when the day of the race came, San Francisco welcomed us with the unusual warmth of the brilliant sun. Actually winning the race had been a brief timid imagination for me. Pure dream I allowed myself only to contemplate. Now that we actually won and took home the trophy and gold medals was more than a dream come true. Yeeeee haaaaa! Grad school had started so the Hippo has no time to do anything else but study; otherwise Ken's offer to find me a team to join would have been accepted wholeheartedly.

paddlers
 Can you spot the Hippo?

 See all the pics!


------------------------

Hot off the press!

~September 23, 2006

AlphaDetail, 2nd year dragon novice dragon boat team came to Treasure
Island to participate in the 11th annual San Francisco Dragon Boat
Festival and went home winners of Novice Division D. For their efforts
they took home a spectacular ebony trophy, and 27 dazzling gold medals.

AD Press

:-)

Congratulations AlphaDetail on yet another fun filled dragon boat
excursion. I hope that everybody had a great time. Our trend is
directionally upward as we beat 2 teams last year, and 5 teams this
year. I calculate that our talented paddling team had 25 members that
took paddle in hand, and the average number of practices was only 1.
The potential is yet to be tapped!

The weather on Treasure Island was very nice, a bit windy on the water,
but on land it was comfortable. There were over a dozen edible treats
vendors, and a selection of merchandise booths to visit. The kids got
to visit "DragonLand" a place where kids can go to do some arts and
crafts as well as play a few games. A stage showcased all sorts of
local talented performers from Taiko, to Tahitian dancing.

The AD races went as follows: in the morning we came in 5th, less than a
half second behind the fourth place boat. In the mid-day semi finals AD
went out with a full crew and romped into 4th again only a half second
behind the boat in front of them. That placed us into the Division D
finals where even though we were a few paddlers short of a crew we
fought into the stiff head wind. The competition was close as everybody
came of the starting line but AlphaDetail forged a straight line slowly
and steady pulling in front of the challengers 10 strokes at a time to
win the heat by over a second! It was an exciting race for sure.

Until next year.

Paddles up!!!

Ken\

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

TechOps' offsite

Posted by Hippobean at 11:34 PM 0 comments
at Dave&Buster's in Milpitas. Among other things, I've suggested doing orienteering as it's fun and great for team building. Or virtual (or real) bowling, or kareoke, or ice skating, or wall climbing, but all was squashed. Somone mentioned D&B and suddenly everyone agreed. I wasnt totally keen on the idea of spending an afternoon inside an arcade and drinking beer (not my idea of team building!) but once I was there (and with a bit of alchool in my system - cocobanana colada!) I actually had fun - especially when someone else was paying for the booz, food and games! It brought out the kid in me again (what, the Hippo needs no external stimuli to bring out the kid in her!!!) and reminded me how much I enjoyed playing games! There was my favorite game where I won all my stuffies (horse racing, you roll a ball, it falls into a pocket and your horsie or camel moves), skeeball, video bowling, and we won some tickets, not enough to get anything significant, so we blew all our free cards on the wheel of fortune, which we found gave the most tickets, and ended up with enough tickets to get us a stuffy mascot, 2 footballs and 2 stuffies for Sarah's upcoming twins. Thus ended our offsite, lots of $$$ blown, nothing in respect to team building, but we dont need it. As a team, I think TechOps is doing real well!

And now the pics.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Hippo Hats&Wigs BBQ

Posted by Hippobean at 9:27 PM 0 comments
Our first house warming party. Tomasso bought us a BBQ grill (thank you! we'll promise not to use it to warm the house!) and we had more sausages, beer and wine that we could partake. No one was admitted without a hat or a wig. Alex spray painted his hair blue.

Pictures (Hippo was, as usual, bad, she forgot to take pictures again! and Karen, I'll get you next time - Hawaii? and Joe and Co Ltd, we'll do real Pictionary next time but I still dont think what you drew looked like a padlock!):





It was fun and thank you all for coming!

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

random thoughts ...

Posted by Hippobean at 7:19 PM 0 comments
After reading John Spencer's blog on the Planetary Society, the Hippo was almost convinced of Pluto's miniature status. Especially when he mentioned Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, yes, 'furniture of the mind'. It gets me every time. But I'm sticking with my view of Pluto if nothing for pure sentimental values.

We're all moved in! As much as I like our new home, my heart seems to be elsewhere (my heart is always elsewhere!). I dont quite feel right at home yet although the place is comfortable, roomy, with lots of stairs the Hippo can run up and down like a mad kid. The view is gorgeous, and the moon was red last night. But somehow it just aint home. Not quite home. And I simply just dunno why! E from work grew up in San Carlos and told me all about the hiking trails, places to eat, ways to get around in the area, hometown days which last for days and block off downtown streets all the way to Britany. Last night A and I saw the first Star Wars trilogy on tape, made fun of the dialogs and plots and alien languages. Why do we like it so? Soon he'll be gone and the house would be just much quieter. I'll miss him. And J might be moving in next door which was rather strange because we each found the place separately. Is this bad karma? And I've just stumbled on Ondrej's picture on the travel site. Dunno if it was taken before or after I've met him, but he looks a bit older, slimmer and definitely more handsome. I wonder how he's doing and what the heck he is doing right now. I remember the evenings in Romania in his company. School will commence in 2 weeks and end in 7 and I'll be occupied again, this time with lots of writing. I hope I'll enjoy graduate school and not waste my money, time and energy. I really dunno what I'm doing this for. Also 7 weeks countdown to the wedding! I cant wait to be in the warm tropical volcanic island! I will do nothing but sip Fanta and listen to Pilot - Strange Way and Sky High - on my iPod, and reminisce. [She must be getting really old...]
 

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