Engineer’s Attempt at Writing

After a long time, I have finally went back hiking again. I went hiking with my co-workers at the Saddle Mountain trail near Cannon beach. It is 5.2 mile round trip with about 1600 ft in elevation change. It had been a while and this trail was pretty tough for me. Not only was the elevation demanding, but the trail itself was in pretty bad shape. Some trails were kept together by steel fence wires. However, the view was great even in a cloudy day. Can you imagine the view if it was sunny?
The steel wires made the hike difficult because it was raining and so it was slippery. We actually didn’t go all the way to the top because of the rain. Near the Saddle of the trail, there was just too much rain and the clouds were along the trail. It meant, we had to see through quite a bit of fog. We decided to just not go forth, and instead went back down to the trailhead.

After we got into the car, we head over to Canon beach for lunch/dinner. Unfortunately for me, as I was walking on the sidewalk, I was hit by a bird poop. The good thing was that it hit my sweatshirt and not my head or face. I took off my sweatshirt and put it in a plastic bag. But the good thing was that after the ambush by the bird, I had a nice Reuben for dinner and got a generous scoop of Marionberry pie ice cream. I guess overall it was a pretty nice day.

Watch out bird, one of these days I will have my revenge.

I found this girl on the internet and she is a pretty awesome singer. She has a great voice and I really like her lyrics. Last night, my coworkers and I went to see her perform at Lola’s Room on Burnside and 14th Ave. The tickets were only 12 dollar each (what a steal for like 1.5 hours of great music). They were like 60 people there to listen to her music. I was thinking to myself if the total revenue from the tickets was enough to pay for her plane ticket to Portland.

I really enjoy the songs she sang and the stories she told. I am pretty sure she has told the same stories many times before, but I still enjoy the way she told them. One of my favorite phrase she used was “stone and alone”. I am not sure why I like it so much; maybe is because I feel alone but not stone sometimes?

My favorite song from her performance was the “Boob Song”. Too bad the song is not part of her album . I asked her if she was going to release the song, and she mentioned that she is going to release it on myspace sometime. In the mean time, check out the song from you tube.

P.S. Ticketmaster is such a rip off. For tickets of 12 dollar, they want to charge me 5.80 convenience fee. What the hell, that is almost 50% of the face value of the ticket. Good thing I just walked down to Lola’s room and bought the ticket there. There was still a convenience fee, but it was only 1 dollar.

I thought the days of me forgetting my key and locked out of my own place were over. When I was a freshmen living in the dorms, I’ve forgotten my room key many times and had to either wait for my roommate or my RA to help me open the door.

However, after more than 7 years, I was locked out of my apartment once again. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a roommate this time to open the door, and the apartment manager was already asleep when I locked myself out. I tried knocking on his door and ringing his door bell, but he didn’t wake up. I would’ve called my friends or drive to their place if I had either my cell phone or my car key on me. Sadly, I had neither.

As I was standing around, I suddenly realized that one of my coworkers lived near me. I asked this person who was in the lobby of the apartment if he can wait and open the door for me just in case I couldn’t reach my friend. With just a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and sandals, I quickly ran to my friend’s condo. It was drizzling outside, and running in sandals is freakishly hard. When I arrived at my friend’s apartment, I saw that his lights are off. I was disappointed because it most likely means that I will have to walk back home in the rain. But I was there already; what the heck, I went and called him on the intercom, but he didn’t answer. It was around 12am already, and he was probably asleep.

I walked home in the rain , and when I got back, I tried again to call the manager. Again, it didn’t work and so I had to sleep on the couch in the lobby of the apartment. Luckily for me, one of my neighbors lend me a blanket and a couple of pillows. It was hard sleeping on the tiny couch, and I woke up many times during the night. Finally at around 6:20am this morning, I was finally able to reach the manager and went back to my apartment. Sigh, it seems that stuff like this only happens to me.

I just came back from dinner with my friends and had a very interesting discussion about gun control. Some of my friends are for gun control; they think that guns should be banned and that no one except law enforcement should be allowed to own a gun. They didn’t quite say that, but I believe that was the gist of their point. They did have some good reasonings for their view. For instance, my friend pointed out that statistically guns do not make you safer. In addition, it was pointed out sometimes for the good of the general public you just need to take away certain rights from responsible people.

My other friend points out that making it illegal for people to own guns does not prevent criminals from getting guns. It is very easy for criminals to get guns in the black market, and preventing responsible adults from obtaining guns will not change that. Furthermore, owinging a gun is a personal choice and should not be banned for the perceived good of society. What is good now may not be good tomorrow.

What do you think?