Here it is!!!

As promised and also to fulfill one of my 2008 New Year's resolution, this is the start of my blogging. It will be a "catch all" type blog where you will get updates on my life in Germany; my musings, rants, and raves; share pictures; show places I have visited; share my experience overseas, etc. Be forewarned, I tend to write too much about anything and everything. I think this makes up for me not being talkative or verbally active. I will try to incorporate photos and videos, and try to continually enhance and add features to this site.

I will start with just before the new year. The photo above is of the group in front of Sea Garden Restaurant, taken 30 Dec '07. It has become tradition now that my visits back to Seattle include a treat at this place with most of the kids (nephews, nieces, other relatives, and their friends). It's a good way for me to catch up with everyone since my visits in Seattle are always quite frenzy with me trying to do a million things before leaving Seattle again. It's also a great social bonding occasion. But most of all, I get to enjoy the food that I crave most when I am away from Seattle. The photo is courtesy of Miss Grace.

Feel free to comment. This blog will be an open forum for me, and for the most part, open for anyone in the cyber world to see. Let me know if there are any text or pictures you want deleted. As far as the images I have selected for the the format of the blog -- the astronomical clock is a recent picture of a clock tower in old town Prague; I don't have too many pictures of myself, so I ended up choosing a picture from Iraq for my profile pic. Since I have tons of pictures collected, I would like to share a few random pictures at the end of each blog. There are probably better venues to share the pics, but for now I will present it this way with a few descriptions.

So as far as picture sharing, I will begin with one of my favorite picture of Jerome. It was taken in kindergarten when he was featured in a neighboorhood newspaper. I first saw this picture on Mng. Eden's fridge at a family party in Bainbridge Island. I immediately summoned Jerome when I saw this picture. Jerome comes running to me and I tell him "how come you turned Cambodian and you did not tell us." Jerome was confused at my attempt to be funny. The picture and the newspaper story also feature Jerome's Cambodian classmates. I've always enjoyed this picture and it always reminds me of this particular exchange between Jerome and me. Years later, I googled Jerome just to be able to get a copy of this picture.

The next picture is Michael licking the top of the Eiffel Tower, taken summer 2004. This is a take off from a summer 2002 picture of CJ "sizing" the tower. The picture of CJ is a much better picture but I do not have a digital copy at the moment.