I’ve registered for the SXSW conference, purchased plane tickets and reserved a hotel room. Now I need an interpreter.

Information as follows:

What: Google Party
Where: Light Bar
Time: 6 pm to 8 pm
Date: Saturday, March 8th
Purpose: acquaintances, networking and social
Capacity: 300 to 400 people

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Billing will be taken care of by Director of Deaf Interpreting Services in Palo Alto. More details will be given after a successful confirmation. If interested, please email to nkester |at| gmail dot com. Also, there will be further interpreting opportunities to follow.

Thanks and look forward to meet you!

It’s my goal to go to each one. I’ve already gone to some. One thing I’m a little proud of doing was getting all on five bridges around the bay area. Cool!

from SFtravel.com

Alcatraz Island boat rides and prison tours - Alcatraz Island prison is an incredible experience which can be seen from private charters or toured from Alcatraz boat tours. Cruise the beautiful Bay on a guided boat ride galore & see beautiful views of the bay and Marin County.

Muir Woods - Beautiful forests; same place where Star Wars:New Hope was shot in, with those Ewoks. Ha.

Fisherman’s Wharf - great tourist place, fresh crabs off the markets, clam chowder. Great place to be people-watching, which I love doing.

Napa Valley Wine Country - The world’s premier wine growing region is a great way to enjoy sunny Napa wine tastings or ride the Napa Valley Wine Train.

Union Square Shopping - If you really must shop, go here– but you may want to avoid the hordes of pushy crowds. The 2nd biggest tourist trap in the City with a brand new San Francisco shopping center.

AT&T baseball stadium

Candlestick Stadium - where 49ers play

San Francisco Zoo - Great family activity with reasonable temperatures, lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, a petting zoo and more….

Castro District - Gay Village Celebrate one of America’s largest gay communities in the sunny Castro district.
(more…)

Cool! wonder how many of these that are installed in airports around the U.S. ?

After finding out that Illinois has been selected to play in the Rose Bowl, I’ve been wanting to attend the game as I’m a big sports fan, familiar with the exquisite history that Rose Bowl is known for—being the oldest college bowl game, big rivalry between PAC-10 and Big Ten conferences, my home state is in it this year and I haven’t visited SoCal yet except for one time when I attended an award banquet hosted by Nestle Co.

I asked around to see who wanted to go and two of my friends expressed interests but as the date approached closer, they couldn’t make it. Frankly, I was disappointed and wondered if I should just go there by myself.

It wasn’t till my mom told me that one of her friends had mentioned to her that the last time Illinois played in the Rose Bowl, it was in 1984, which they lost to UCLA. That’s 23 years ago, the same year I came to the United States when I got adopted. So, that pretty much does it for me. I knew I had to go. Luckily, I have a friend who lives in North Hollywood and asked him if I could crash at his place. He said sure. The game’s on.

Dec. 31st, Monday

12:57 pm: lying on a new couch bought from IKEA, staring at the ceiling.

1:00 pm: made up my mind to go to the Rose Bowl, sent a page to my friend.

1:05 pm: got a reply! he said sure, I can crash at his place.

1:10 pm: logged onto ichat to start video conferencing with my friend to make plans.

1:20 pm: plans made, logged into southwest.com, purchased with my new credit card from Southwest, double reward points!

1:25 pm: sent a page to my other friend to see if he can drop me off at the SJC airport. he said sure.

1:30 pm: pack my clothes last minute, couldn’t find my black gym bag (must have left at the Google gym), used a christmas shopping bag instead.

2:00 pm: my friend picks me up

2:30 pm: dropped off at the airport

3:15 pm: plane takes off

4:30 pm: my friend picks me up

5:00 pm: got to his place. nice place. met his bro who’s deaf too.

6:30 pm: went to eat at a taco shop. great tacos.

8:30 pm: driving to riverside for a NYE party. damn, LA traffic!

9:30 pm: met my friend’s friend and his wife. cool dude who’s a writer (has written scripts for cable shows like the Discovery channel) and his wife works in DA office. nice couple.

10:00 pm: got to the NYE party, introduced myself to the host and thank him for welcoming me.

11:59 pm: last minute of 2007 before 2008 begins! hugs time and celebration. great party.

Jan. 1st, Tuesday.

3:00 am: time to leave, helped my friend’s friend’s wife with directions back to the house, using Google Maps on my blackberry and hers too.

4:30 am: had a good chat with my friend, catching up old times, then went to sleep.

10:00 am: my friend’s friend made breakfast. met his parents who are deaf too. chatted.

12:00 pm: left house *note to myself, write a note to them for letting me stay at their place. they have a beautiful, gorgeous Italian-style house. nice family.

1:30 pm: friend dropped me off at the Rose Bowl stadium

1:45 pm: got to the front gate, searched for Illinois fans with extra tickets

1:50 pm: found a ticket! $50 dollars. face value was $150. 10 rows from the field in the corner!

2:00 pm: jet fighters flown by.

2:10 pm: game kicks off!

If I had the money and could live anywhere I choose to, the John Hancock Center would be the place.

Why? While it’s not the tallest building in the world, it is the tallest residence building in the world, meaning you can own a piece of room—-a condominium—-right there in the building. It also has the highest level swimming pool too at the 44th level. There is a very logical reason why it’s come like that.

A brilliant civil engineer named Fazlur Khan invented a structural technique called X-bracing that wraps outside around the building, resulting into a stronger structure and eliminates the need for inner support beam inside the building. Thus, you get a wide-open room without beams, perfect for people who are deaf like me.

It is truly an architectural icon with its angular lines and has the perfect “grey” color—not too dark, not too light. Batman would feel right at home here.

If you ever come to visit this building, do try to visit the Signature room instead of the Observatory where you can actually order drinks and enjoy the awesome views while sitting in a comfy chair, not waiting in visitors lines!

Wallpaper download link:

I just got flown in to Illinois to see my only grandmother who suffered a bad stroke and it appears that she will not ever regain consciousness.

I want to share feedback that Southwest Airline is the best, most deaf-friendly airline that I’ve ridden on. They don’t do seat assignments, just A, B, or C group but that doesn’t matter as they will let deaf passengers go in first. All you have to do is to tell them that you’re Deaf.

I was able to find a voucher for only $325 and booked the next soonest available flight and got in Illinois the next day. So, even if you use the best flight search engine like kayak.com or websites like Expedia.com or Travelocity.com, I guarantee that you won’t find the same deal within that short amount of time.

Another cool thing about Southwest Airline is they don’t do stupid late fees, so if you missed your flight, no problem, just wait for the next flight at no extra cost or fines.

Those are enough reason that I will become their frequent miles member and apply for the card.

Thank you, Southwest.

Perfect! My parents and I have been talking about going on a cruise especially to Alaska and there’s a tour for Deaf people!

Alaska Deaf Cruise Tour 2008

I just bought a plane ticket to Salt Lake City in Utah, the host place for 16th Deaf Winter Olympics. It’s gonna be my first time attending the Olympics. Should be tons of fun! My friend, Bak, has reserved a condo with 8 people crashing where we’ll be snowboarding and going to sporting events.

Before I could swing over to SLC, I’ll fly to Mountain View again to help out with giving a visit to a group of deaf students from CSDF who will be visiting Google headquarters. I’m looking forward to that.

When I get into SLC, I plan to blog often, take lots of pictures, meet a lot of people and try to write like Bill Bryson.

Stay tuned!

Another repost. This is probably one of my favorite posts I wrote.

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If there could be one thing I’m envious of hearing people, other than being able to talk on phone and enjoy music, it’s to eavesdrop other people’s conversations. Like when I’m in the airport, waiting for my flight in a hub, I get curious what they are saying. Or at a bookstore and I’d pretend I’m reading a book but actually eavesdropping someone’s conversation. I suspect this is how hearing people become well-versed in English while we deaf people have to rely on a lot of reading to catch up.

Today, I went to Barnes and Noble bookstore to use up my giftcard someone gave me for my birthday. I bought this book titled “Neither here and there.” by Bill Bryson, about his travel experience in Europe. Wow, I really want to go to Europe so badly. Bill Byson is definitely my favorite author; something about his writing that totally captivates me and how much I can relate to his thoughts. As I was reading, I froze upon this paragraph and made me wonder that perhaps it’s not so bad I cannot eavesdrop people’s conversations.

“When I told friends in London that I was going to travel around Europe and write a book about it, they said, “Oh, you must speak a lot of languages.”

“Why, no,” I would reply with a certain pride, “only English,” and they would look at me as if I were foolish or crazy. But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”

Except mine is a lifetime on a series of interesting guesses. :-)

That was a nice day at the beach. :-)

34” Dell Flat tv in the menu? Man, that’s why I love traveling.

Bonus to anyone who can figure out the handsign. ;-)

Awesome.