Nyanko's Basket

It's been a year since I last posted... whoa. Lots of stuff has happened, which probably should go under a cut!

( A year in a few paragraphs )

Work has been really quite busy, with the release of Windows 7 SP1 and other projects still in progress. I've sometimes gotten home around 12 midnight and fed Belle and Lillian, then collapsed in bed. Belle had a minor scare in March when she started losing weight rapidly and developed fatty liver. Fortunately, the vet and I - and other friends who sent their love, light and healing purrs/reiki - were able to reverse it, and she's made a full recovery (and gained a bit too!) She is a lot more agile now and likes climbing up on cat trees.

I recently saw The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which was a 2-hour monologue about Apple, Steve Jobs and conditions in the Chinese factories that produce the vast majority of consumer electronics. Some of the conditions described are literally unspeakable - 14-hour days, 7 days a week, rooms which have beds stacked to the ceiling with about 10 square feet of space, extremely low pay, lack of basic medical care, among others. I will make another post listing some of the things you can do if you believe that this situation should be changed; it's quite Apple-speciifc, but would likely work with other companies as well. summercomfort, have you seen this? (He started performing in the Bay Area/SF last year and came up to Seattle for a few weeks)

Just a very quick post while I wait for my flight to Singapore to board ^^;;

I went on January 19th with some friends to the San Juan islands, which are near Puerto Rico off the coast of Washington state. It was my first time there and I'd heard about it only because it's a very popular place to go to for whale-watching. It also happens to be very beautiful and has a lot of history behind it (did you know that the English and the Americans fought over it, and one of the wars was caused by a pig?)

We didn't get to watch any whales this time (probably wrong time of the year), but we had a lot of fun and I enjoyed myself very thoroughly. ^_^

( Some pictures )
San Juan Islands

I went skiing on the 22nd and it was pretty fun, even if I fell down a lot. :P I don't have a lot of pictures, but I do have this one which I asked itsacz to take while he was off being a snow bunny.

( Skiing! )

Things were pretty quiet after that, with a lot of time being spent at work getting ready for the release of Vista SP1. I did go to Hula-Hula in downtown Seattle for a karaoke event, though, and it was really good even though itsacz couldn't make it. For one thing, I sang "Summer Nights" from Grease with one of the people from work who was organizing it and she's a really good singer. We did a really good rendition of it (and she told me I sang well, too!) and I only wish I'd brought along a camera phone or something so that I could record our singing. ^^;;

Nothing much else happened, except that I took part in Chilly Hilly on Sunday which was at Bainbridge Island. It wasn't very chilly, but it certainly lived up to the "hilly" part! After 35 miles of cycling I was barely able to walk for a few minutes, and I had to stop somewhat frequently on the route to rest my legs. It helped that there were a lot of people selling Gatorade, water and edible snacks though, and some of them were very cute. :P I have some pictures, but I'm too lazy to upload them right now so I'll post them when I get to Singapore.

Anyway, right now I'm off to Singapore (via Tokyo-Narita) for a week actually 4 days to relax, get some paperwork sorted out, catch up with my friends and go for Touch 2008. It's all about the Gershwin, baby :D