.j-Ðûðé’s Diary

This weekend was amazing.  I couldn't really log this blog like I usually do cause I was pretty busy the whole weekend.  After finishing my first week of school, it was time to just relax and have fun going back to the Springs to hang out, eat, and dance at the 2008 Filipino Pageant.  I woke up that Saturday early as I did that whole past week.  I did try to sleep in though, that didn't really happen though.  My main plan for the day was to meet up with Ray at the Alameda RTD Station at 3 that afternoon.  Before that, I tried to finish up as much homework as I could.  I stopped during the middle of the chapter and called it quits.  I eventually finished up the homework though.  Going to the RTD, I brought my laptop, Math homework, and a suitcase with all my dirty clothes.  The stupid thing I did this time was that I had intentions of doing my English homework in the Springs, right ??  But I ended up forgetting to bring my laptop's AC adapter.  So the whole weekend, I just needed to use the battery I had left on my laptop as efficiently as possible.  I met up with Ray a little past three.  From there, we headed to the County Line Station.  That station's the same area where Park Meadows Mall is located at.  From there, we patiently awaited for Giane's arrival. 

Since it was raining a bit hard at the time, I knew Giane was going to be slightly late cause I know how afraid she is to drive in the rain.  We got into the Springs around 6, just in time for the Pageant.  After we dropped off Ray, we headed straight to the Crown Plaza Hotel, where the Pageant is annually located at.  When we arrived, the event had just started.  Giane and I were both undressed, so we went to the hotel room we had checked out and changed into a more appropiate attire for the event.  When I got back into the ballroom, I ate a lot of rolls with butter and salad.  We talked a little while, ate, and watched the Pageant take place.  The talents for each lady was different for each person.  Alyssa Magalong played her violin rendition of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go on".  Ann-Ann did her usual hula dancing with money being thrown at her lol.  Grace Norris sung a song.  Jenny did a hula dance as well.  My sister did their dance they practiced for.  They danced to Madonna's recent "4 Minutes".  I had fun that night.  The only problem I was really having was my right ear.  What happened was that with the changed of elevation from Denver to Colorado Springs, my ears didn't adjusted right probably because I forced them to adjust.  Bad idea.  My ears didn't feel normal until I actually got back to Denver Sunday night.  And even still, there's a noticable difference with my right ear compared to my left ear.  It'll get better though, hopefully.  It was great seeing everyone again after moving up to Denver.  Nothing much happened after the Pageant.  We headed over to Denny's to grab something to eat before simply going back to the hotel and sleeping for the night.  At the room, Giane and Steve had one bed while me, Marie Fe, and my sister had the other bed.  Maverick didn't want to join either bed so he chose to sleep on the floor.  The next morning, we just all left and I went home to get some Filipino food to eat for lunch.  On the way home, we dropped by Albertsons to pick up some food for me to take back home at Denver.  When I got home, I was so happy to be eating some Filipino food again.  It felt awesome eating some rice ya know ??  About an hour or two later, we left to Denver.  We headed to the Cherry Creek Mall first before heading to the China Town area to look around and pick up some more food.  After the China Town area, we left to my dorm and drop off my stuff.  After we put my food and clothes away, we went to Picante's to grab some dinner.  I ate a pork and green chile burrito.  It was amazing.  After dinner, the fam went off to go back to the Springs.  I finished the night completing my Math homework, which I found out later on I didn't even have to do yet, and chatting with friends on AIM and Yahoo Messenger.

Picture Downloads:

Note: The pictures were compressed with the default compressed within Windows XP.  So you shouldn't have a problem extracting these picture, if you do, holler at me.  These are only the picture from my Lumix camera and my Olympus camera.  I have more pictures though from other cameras.  If you want that, let me know and I'll upload those too.

Instructions: Download any of the files.  For each "zip" file, right click and click on extract.  Enjoy !!

Pictures Part 1

Pictures Part 2

Pictures Part 3

Yep.  I know some of you guys are curious to see where and how I'm living up in Denver.  Whelps, here's an exclusive blog about my crib.

6:26 PM

What a sweet day.  I don't know if it was Dennis's wisdom that's brought this magic into my life, but today just turned out great.  Other than the fact that I had to bike in the freezing cold rain all day, everything seemed to turn out the way I wanted it to.  I woke up, brushed up and took a shower then went straight to class.  On the way, I saw Bryan Smith for the second time since he moved in.  We exchanged words before we went our seperate ways.  When I got to class, we reviewed some more and went to the computer lab to learn how to use the computer application, Mathematica.  After class ended, I went to the gym on campus to lift a little and shoot some hoops.  No one was really there during that time.  As I was walking out, Ray texted me that there was free food being given out.  I took advantage of course.  I got my food and went to the Tivoli to get something to eat as well as to try and finish up the homework I had from English.  That didn't really turn out well lol.  But what I can say, the food at the Japanese restaurant was great.  They claimed their food was "healthy", they weren't lying.  Their choices made this place probably the most healthy fast food joint I've ever seen.  What I decided to do, since I didn't have anything else to do, well homework, but yahh lol.  Anyways what I decided to do was go back to the gym and shoot some more hoops.  Luckily when I got there, there were people there.  I met a lot of people during my stay there.  The first bunch were a bunch of Asian grad students.  We played a game or two before we joined up with more people to play a 5-on-5 game.  That was awesome.  No one knew who I was, so they couldn't judge me from my past.  I proved to them I'm not really a bad basketball player.  I was shooting lights out the whole time, it felt awesome.  Like I said already, everything went great.  Today as well, I even added a small handful of numbers to my phone too.  It's great that I'm meeting more people now.  As each day passes by during my stay at Denver, each day just keeps making my experience up here much better.  When I got home, I filled myself up with about four tuna sandwiches for dinner. MMMMmm.

1:24 PM

Everything's turning out great so far.  I am getting used to this place sort of.  I have an idea of how the light rail works around here and I almost understand my way through the campus.  I got to the campus on time but the bad part about it is that there were no spots to park my bike.  Not only that, today I decided to use my briefcase type of bag instead of my traditional back pack.  Yahh, the strap snapped on my when I got to the school.  It sucks cause it left physical damage on my laptop.  There's now a scuff on one of the corner, but that's ok.  When I got to class, I finally got to meet more people.  I met a couple of cool dudes in my Core Comp class.  One of them lived here in Denver, and he stays with his parents.  The other two live in the Campus Village.  Class was fun.  I'm also getting the hang of doing homework now.  I'm more focused and everything unlike how I was back in high school.  Hopefully that'll stay with me.  After class, I decided to go back to my dorms to exchange my briefcase bag for my back pack and to get something to eat for lunch.  I ate and also watched part of an episode of Beverly Hills 90210.

4:53 PM

Going into my next class wasn't too bad.  We talked about the controversial picture of the Spanish Olympic Basketball Team.  They were doing the whole slanted eye pose.  We talked about reactions that picture could cause and how other people in the classroom felt about it.  In all honestly, I don't feel offended since I do, though it may be a very small amount, have Chinese blood within me.  It's alright though.  The class doesn't seem to hard so far.  All we did was discuss and take notes as the professor lectured.  After class, I decided to go into the Tivoli to finish up my Calculus homework, which I did eventually finish.  I checked out the pool bar right after.  So I've basically decided: I could easily make new friends by playing pool.  Since I'm not too bad at it, I can join and play with the good players.

8:56 PM

So after I walked outside to start heading out of the campus to go somewhere else, I saw that free food was being given out.  So what I did instead was call up Ray to inform him about it.  I guess the fraternities and the sororities were out in the courtyard promoting their offerings.  In all, I got to eat three delicious BBQ pork sandwiches which two sides of spicy pork and beans as well as a side of colesaw.  That was great and the best part about it, that was a free dinner for that night.  After eating, we decided to check out the pool bar in the Tivoli.  There we discovered a couple of important things.  We found out the prices to rent out the pool table and the ping pong table.  The best part we found out was that playing the X-Box 360 on the big screen was free in exchange for a student ID.  For a little more than an hour, we played Halo 3 before calling it a night when the pool bar closed.  When I got back to my room, I chilled out, chatted on the laptop, and watched the movie, The Truman Show.

4:31 PM

So the day started out the same.  I woke up, got ready for class, then biked off.  The work my professor was giving us was familiar to me, but wow.  He was throwing a lot of stuff at us about graphing functions.  It's alright though, I think I can handle it.  After class, I just went to the Tivoli and got some McDonald's to eat for lunch.  I then went to the pool bar nearby and shot some pool before heading back to the dorms to meet up with Ray.  After hooking his computer up, he went to class and I just chilled out and watched a couple episodes of Justice League Unlimited.

9:41 PM

After the Justice League vids, time went by fast from there.  I decided to pick up my mailbox key which finally came in.  It was a little embarassing because I couldn't open it for a while lol.  Eventually I got to open it though.  Right after that, I decided to truly go job hunting.  The first place I went to was the Curtis Hotel.  It was pretty nifty cause the person I turned my application in to was one of the head peoples there.  Thanks to the bell person there, he gave me a nice tip on which jobs to sign up for.  The head person, Joseph, told me that I'm pretty much going to be working a lot.  That's going to suck.  But he also told me the huge benefit is the money they make there.  So ok I applied.  The next place I went to was the Marriot hotel nearby and I applied there as well.  By the time I hit up Starbuck, Ray hit me up about some free food at his dorm's courtyard.  I quickly biked there and got there on time for some hot dogs.  We chilled there before I called it a night.  After we ate, we walked around to check out the Campus Village.  After that, we rented out the ping pong table and played two games of it.  Ray beat me both times lol.  After that, we played a little pool.  During that time, we met a couple of Metro students that lived at Campus Village as well.  It was pretty fun playing with them.  When I biked home, I called home to see what's up and everything.  On the way home, I decided to try and apply to one last place.  It was a coffee shop across the street from where I lived at.  They seemd pretty nice.  Hopefully I can get the job over there.

11:13 AM

 

So I woke up later than I did yesterday.  I got ate some food for breakfast, listened to some music, dressed up, then headed straight out of the dorms to go to school.  When I got to the bike cage, I found out that the rear tire on my bike was flat.  I tried to repump the tire, but unfortunately, I found a hole somewhere in the tire.  Hopefully there's no problem with my spare inner tube, because that will suck.  When I headed to class, I was expecting to find my classroom somewhere near the Tivoli.  I was wrong.  I soon realized that the "SO" building's the South Classroom.  I was on the opposite side of the whole place.  Luckily, I left the dorms more than an hour before class had actually started.  When I arrived, the environment of the whole place was different.  It was different in which it felt like I was walking through a high school hallway.  There were lockers and everything.  The thing the seperated the other buildings I've went to the most compared to this one was that there were different clicks like you would see in high school.  I soon found out, as I was walking through the building, that I was at the Community College of Denver.  The area where my English class was at was parallel to Harrison pretty much.  There was even a cafeteria like you would see at a high school with different groups of people sitting at the tables.  It's a different experience.

 

1:27 PM

 

My first class of the day wasn't too bad.  The class felt like it was a regular high school class.  The students in my class seem to be mixed from all three college here: University of Colorado Denver, Metro State College of Denver, and Community College of Denver.  The first class of the day was Core Comp 1020, an English Writing class.  After the class, I checked out the campus's gym and looked around there.  It was pretty big and pretty cool.  I felt really hungry too, so I went to the Tivoli to grab something to eat for lunch.  I wanted to get Chick-Fil-A, but it was a pretty long walk from where I was at.  Instead, I went to grab a "Denver style" hot dog, which included pickles, relish, mustard, onions, and jalapenos.  It tasted pretty good, but it didn't fill me up.

 

9:31 PM

 

The day just went by fast after the second class started.  I walked around more before heading into my last class of the day.  The class was Sociology: Races and Ethnicities in the U.S.  It was an interesting class.  From the looks of the people, I can probably make friends with many of them.  There was also a couple of girls in that class that made me turn my head.  Shoot, pretty much the whole time I've been in Denver, I've done been turning my head a lot.  We got out of class early like my history class yesterday.  The first thing I did after class ended was that I went back to the dorms to go repair my bike.  By the time I got to my room, I realized that I no longer had my mini-bicycle pump in my bag no more.  Luckily, no one took it.  Someone was kind enough to put my pump to the side of the cage.  After repairing my bike, I chatted and surfed the net for a little while.  I then took off and biked to King Soopers to pick up some pictures and Miracle Whip for my tuna sandwiches.  Right after, I went to the Tivoli to start on my math homework.  I realized that there was actually a lot I had to do.  It sucked.  Some of the stuff had drifted away from my mind from Calculus class last year.  I forgot the domain rules so I called and ask Jon if he knew the answer.  He didn't know, so I asked Jeff ..... He didn't know as well.  I made one last attempt by asking Kailaini and Darlene.  Again, nope lol.  I decided to take a break from the homework.  I went straight to the gym to check it out.  It wasn't too bad there.  I did a couple of lifts before going back home.  Going back home was the worst.  When I looked outside, it was POURING.  I biked as fast as I could to get back to the dorms.  That pretty much ended my day today.

First day of school.  I woke up freezing and cold.  The air conditioning really surprised me with how cold it made my room get.  It was nice ... as long as I stayed within the covers.  The minute I got out of them, I felt like freezing and everything.  I woke up about two hours before my first class started.  I got dressed and went downstairs with 3 bananas to eat for breakfast.  I wasn't expecting any free food, but there was.  The apartments gave us a bunch of bagels and pop tarts.  That was pretty sweet.  I'm hoping that they're going to be doing this everyday.  I doubt it though.  After I ate and surfed the net for a little while, I went straight to the biking cage and got my bike.  From there, I went straight to class.  The first class I had was Calculus.  It took me a while to find the class cause I had an idea of where the building was at.  But that's what got me lost.  Eventually, I found the building as well as the classroom.  The class was surprisingly small.  But then again, who likes to do Calculus anyways.  Well the teacher was alright and taught basically everything that was taught to us from high school.  The same was pretty much said about my next class.  The History class, Past to Present: blah blah blah.  Yahh, I still don't know the exact name of the class.  That class size was like my graduating class.  It was huge.  The class seemed boring to me, even though they tried to entertain us.  30 minutes into the class, the instructors let us out ... EARLY !!

So what I did after that was that I walked around the campus trying to check things out.  I looked through the pool bar, pretty much all of the Tivoli.  When I got back to the dorms, I chilled out there for a little while before I tried to finish up my stereo system setup.  Well, Ray hit me up to hang out.  When he got here, I finally finished setting up my system.  From there, we took the shuttle to go to Office Depot down the street.  After that, we walked around more and checked out places like the ESPNZone, Wal-Greens, and Rite Aid.  We got tired of walking, so we went up to my dorm to chill.  Ray called it a day with me and went and did his own things.  I soon went out after doing some stuff online.  I biked around trying to check things out.  I later went to King Soopers to look around and see the sales they had that day.  When I got back to the dorms, I did some stuff online at the Internet Cafe before going back to the apartment and settling for the night.

Well the process lasted for two days.  The way things were going for me at first made me a little nervous.  That Saturday, the whole family went up to Denver to get things settled straight with the housing and all.  Everything in the end turned out well.  At first, when I knew that I wasn't going to be at the Campus Village, I was being negative about my whole stay up in Denver.  The alternative place I was going to stay at was the Inn at Auraria.  I double checked it the night before online.  I'm being very honest when I say that I thought I was going to be living at a broke down dorm.  No lie.  Looking at the pictures though, I found out the total opposite.  The place was huge.  Not only did it have a full kitchen, but I was going to have my own room.  That morning, I told just about everyone that Friday was pretty much my last day to see everyone.  I had so much going through my mind during that time.  Well, it wasn't compared to how much was going through my mind later that night.  Walking through downtown, I kept thinking of the fact that I was actually going to be living in Downtown Denver for the next year.  During our stay there Saturday,we got some frozen yogurt with a bunch of chopped up fruit on it from this ice cream place.  It was pretty good.  After we finally made my housing official, we all drove down to Alameda and Federal to the China Town they had in ghetto Denver.

The first thing we did when we got there was that we went to the Vietnamese restaurant we always went to and got something to eat.  Usually I would get the pork chops plate with rice, but instead I got a squid plate with lemon sauce with rice.  After eating, we walked around to the shops and picked up some food there.  Once we got done, we drove home.  On the way home, I passed out and woke up when we arrived in the Springs.  We stayed home for a long while.  Julie's head was hurting, so she didn't even leave the house any time after that.  I first went to Target to try and print out some pictures.  That didn't work out at all.  I then went to King Soopers to pick up some money to pay people back.  I dropped off the money I owed Geoff before heading to Joy's house to give her one last goodbye.  I stayed there for about an hour before heading home to meet up with Brian to help me finish up packing.  I didn't end up finishing up packing until about 2 in the morning.  And still, I still manage to forget a lot of stuff.  That night though before I even headed out to Target, I had a little private sad moment.  My dad came up to me when I was in my room and asked me if I was ready to go and handle Denver.  I told him that I was sure.  The second after he replied that he knows I could handle it, I started to tear u and breakdown.  I couldn't handle it, so I had to turn my head away so no one could see my face.  It was a sad moment that lasted for about 20 minutes.

The next day stayed hectic from the time we got there till about 4 hours later.  It was that bad.  We arrived on time for the move in, 8 to 8:30.  I thought I was bringing a lot by bringing my TV and my stereo system.  Nope.  There were people that were bringing washing machines, mini refrigerators, and 40+ inch screen TV's.  The worst part about it is that I had to bring my stuff to the 17th floor.  Since we were without a dolly, It was taking us about five or so trips to get all of my stuff moved in.  I can finally relax now that my stuff's moved in.  The problem now is that I still have to organize my room and set up my stereo system.

After moving in, the fam and I went to a restaurant called Picante, a Mexican restaurant.  When walking in there, it eerily reminded me of an exact duplicate of Chipotle, except there was a much better selection there.  Not only did they have a nice selection of burritos, there were choices for breakfast burritos as well.  There were taco salads available and combination plates available as well.  The best part about that place was that they gave us literally double the servings Chipotle has ever given me.  I love it.

After we ate, we went to a Super Target near the Cherry Creek Mall.  We went there to pick up some last minute things I needed to get.  We got things like a toothbrush holder, a soap holder, and a bicycle helmet.  I got dropped off and said my last goodbyes to my parents when they were dropping me off at the University of Denver RTD station.  I rode back to the Invesco Field stop and walked back to the dorms.  After laying down, Ray hit me up to hang out cause he just finished moving in.  I bike over there and met him up.  From there, we hung out and walked around downtown.  We also ate at Picante for dinner.  As we were walking, the food like hit me really bad.  I was looking for a bathroom on the 16th Street Mall.  It wa almost impossible.  Every store didn't have a bathroom and the one that did were locked to "paying customers only".  That was crap.  Thank goodness I found a nearby Starbucks.  As we were walking downtown, we discovered where stores like Ross and Walgreens were at.  We also discovered were fast food joints were at.  There was a McDonald's, Taco Bell, Arby's, Pizza Hut, Good Times, pretty much everything we would need while living here.  We also have a movie theater and a bowling alley nearby as well.  This place is great.

We finished walking downtown and decided to grab some ice cream given free by my housing.  Then we decided to walk to the Campus Village, we Ray stayed at to hang out a little and check out his dorms.  I met his roommates and played some Guitar Hero III with them before heading home and trying to fix up my place.

Computer time's the only thing I've been doing till I went to 24 Hour Fitness with Anthony, Matt, and Steven.  I met up with them around 5:30 instead of the original time that was planned, 5:00.  I got there a little early.  So what I did before the others got there, I benched a couple of sets to kill some time.  We played a lot longer than we thought.  We didn't finish until almost 9.  My shirt was dripped with sweat.  Everything except my bottom of my shirt was sweated up.  When I got home, I basically stayed on the computer for a little while before I passed out.

That next morning, I woke just fine.  I woke up around 8 that morning to get ready to hang out with everyone.  I ate a bowl of Wheaties and grabbed a banana before heading to Dennis's.  I arrived at Dennis's on time, 8:45.  I waited for the dude to get out of the shower.  We then left to go pick up Jon, Jeff, then Steven.  The first place we went to was the Chapel Hills Mall.  We got there just on time.  It was 10:05 when we walked in.  We checked out the mall for a little while.  We walked around most of the mall.  The last place we checked out there was the store, It's Your Move.  There was a shocking game they had going on.  Compared to the gorilla shaking game at Chuck E. Cheese's, that was nothing compared to what we experienced at that store.  For about twenty minutes, the game got addicting.  Me and the rest of the others were hooked.  There was this other game we also found interesting from the looks of the box.  The game was called Dirty Minds.  Dennis ended up choosing to cop that instead of the shocking game.  The game was alright, but it was a disappointment.  Though there were many riddles that were hilarious.

We were extra hungry by the time we left the mall.  During that same time, that was when the soreness really kicked in for me and Steven.  It was pretty bad lol.  My butt cheeks were hurting and everything.  It really sucked.  Anyways, we left the mall to go to Cici's Pizza for lunch just around the corner.  It was a pretty good deal if you asked me.  A full buffet for under $6.  We stuck around there for a couple of hours before chillin' in my car.  After that, Dennis had to part ways as well as Jeff.  The rest of us went to my house to relax and chill.  I also gave Jon a tour of my house since it was his first time coming to my house.  Soon, Jon had to leave too.  He got picked up.  Steven and I chilled for a good hour or two before Matt arrived.  We soon left to the mall to walk around and then to Entertainmart to play some games.  At Entertainmart, I ran into Victor and Kevin D.  They were as bored as we were.  While Steven and Matt played Guitar Hero and Super Smash Bros. Melee, I got hooked on this first-person shooter game, Frontline for X-Box 360.  It was uber fun.  After Entertainmart, I pretty much called it a night and said my goodbyes.

The title pretty much explains what happened throughout my day today.  I woke up around 8 that morning to answer texts from Jon and Jeff about our status on going to the gym.  Even though I woke up and responded to them them pretty fast, I fell back asleep.  The next hour, I got a call from Jeff that they were on their way to my house to pick me up.  It sucked cause I ended up laying in bed for another couple of minutes before actually getting up and getting ready.  I went straight to the bathroom to brush my teeth and got dressed.  Usually I would go on the computer to do some quick check ups on some stuff, but that didn't happen that morning.  As soon as I got dressed, they arrived.  So I quickly made a sandwich consisting of ham and pepper jack cheese and headed out in my slippers.

When we got to Garcia, the gym in Fort Carson, we all got our rackets and googles and went straight to the courts.  We played a couple of doubles games.  But as I found out, two weeks without playing any racquetball had an effect on me.  My serves were really off compared to a couple of weeks ago and everything.  We all concluded that each of us were off than usual because of it being early and all haha.  We played all that way till about 11:30 that morning.  After I got dropped off at home, I didn't really do much.  I ate a meal and then fell asleep.

When I woke up, I had a huge headache.  It really sucked ... Steven called to hang out.  But he didn't call me back, so that didn't happen for me.  I ended up just sleeping the whole day and through most of the night.  I woke up around 11 and luckily my headache went away.  I ended up just typing up some blogs and chatting with some peoples on Yahoo Messenger.