jchu.

I was in Ottawa this past weekend to visit my parents with my sister and her boyfriend. The idea was to spend some time out in the city for Winterlude, but we ended up doing nothing of the sort! It was a great weekend nonetheless. Spent some good times with the family and also with my good friend Daryl who moved back to Ottawa almost a year ago. I flew there on Friday afternoon and then my sister drove me home.

Now it’s Monday and it’s a day off for Family Day or something. I’m planning on seeing a movie - maybe Doubt - with G today.

I can’t believe I’m actually awake before noon on a day off. What’s happening to me???

what’s happened lately? Hmm, let me think. Oh, yes. Keith was here for about a week. He stayed with me for a bit and stayed in a couple of hotels, too. While he was here we went out a few times, it was pretty fun. We also went with Guillermo and Lora to see Jersey Boys. I thought it was pretty good, and also really cool that I ended up knowing the guy who was playing the lead role.

my sister and her bf were here on Saturday - that was fun. Spent the day with them and my cousin Geoff, then they went home and Ronnie joined his brother and I and we watched a movie.

Oh yeah, and I joined a gym again. Trying goodlife this time! Lora said I could go with her - she goes pretty often - and so far I’ve gone more times (four) in the past 2 weeks than I did in like 6 months the last time I joined a gym. I did a spinning class yesterday (my first) and i thought I was going to die. it was fun though! and felt great afterwards!

Tonight colin and i are going to DD and BR’s place to have our second ninja night. actually it’s not really ninja night… but DD, Colin and I are really into martial arts films so we decided over a year ago to get together once in a while to watch them. we’ve done that once and it was a really long time ago. DD banished Barb for the night.

We’re either going to watch Old Boy (doesn’t really fit the bill but is kick-ass/violent enough to squeeze in), Red Belt or The Protector. And we are ordering sushi as we need to eat something asian.

Hopefully I will get to see Barb! I haven’t seen her since her last day as my boss here on 9 January and I am having withdrawals.

i went to DC with justin for obama’s inauguration ceremony and it was crazy! an amazing experience to be part of such a monumental event. i went with democrats abroad. there were 3 buses. we left at 8pm on monday night and arrived in DC at around 8:30am.

the day was insane - so many people. we were in the mall almost as far back as we could get - right by the washington memorial. it was an unforgettable experience. it was also very, very cold. we were outside for about 5 or 6 hours, and ended up watching the parade from a warm and cozy cafe. we were watching just as they got out and walked, so it was good timing!

on the way back, we ran out of gas. ridiculous! it took about 15 hours to get home. apparently the driver was fired.

full gallery is here.

and here is the video I took:

Ok so clearly I did not continue posting here during the trip. Things got busy and then in Barcelona we ended up not having internet access. in summary, the trip was amazing (good summary, yeah?). Spain is beautiful and Barcelona blew me away.

I’ve started to go through my photos and will be posting them as they’re done. Here is the link, enjoy!

daryl and maureen’s wedding was great. so much fun. flew back to toronto at 2:30, went home, started packing and then Lora came by to hang out for a bit.

Guillermo and Sergei met me on a subway platform and we took the ttc to the airport. we had a very smooth trip from toronto to jfk and then from jfk to madrid. the flight was an hour quicker and i was able to sleep a little bit. we were in madrid at around 8:30am (2:30am home time!) and then we took the metro to the city centre. our hotel is so central, it’s awesome.

since we were early we couldn’t check in but they did allow us to leave our bags while we started walking. we saw a bunch of stuff, took some pictures, had a starbucks, then went back to the hotel, but they still weren’t ready for us.

anyway now we’re in the hotel room and it’s so tiny! but it’s cool, we are only here for 3 nights and we’ll do fine. gonna relax for a bit now before going out tonight.

my friends daryl and maureen are getting married on saturday. i’m in the wedding party so i am here (thursday night) for tomorrow’s rehearsal. my dad flew in to toronto today to attend meetings and he changed his return flight to 9:30 so that we could fly together. we were supposed to have dinner together but then he decided to visit his mother and siblings in scarborough and it was too much of a rush for me so i was able to have a last-minute dinner with lora instead.

i had no idea that Porter had its own little ferry dock. So I just assumed that it was the same one as centre island, which the bathurst streetcar does not go to! so after waiting for the bathurst streetcar for a few minutes, i took the subway to spadina, then got on the spadina streetcar and just sat there waiting for it to move. when it did, it was so slow! all i can think about is how my dad is just waiting for me at the airport thinking “dammit, my son is always late.” got off at Queen’s Quay, called my dad and he said “i’m at the top of the escalators waiting for you” and i was like… huh? where are you??? so i had to take a cab to the correct place. sheesh. at this point it is shortly after 9pm… cutting it a little close.

so then i’m at the airport and i go to the metal detector thing and she’s like, “boarding pass please”. so i give her what I have and she’s like, “this is not a boarding pass, this is just your itinerary.” so i was like… ok. i just printed out something and wasn’t paying attention. i did the online check-in but after selecting my seat i didn’t pay attention to what to do next. this was probably because i am always rushing in the mornings. woudln’t have made a difference anyway as my printer hasn’t had ink in it for over a year. so glad i bought that thing, anyway, i digress. i had to haul ass back around the corner to the check-in while I hear them calling for “mr. chu” on the PA.

so i go to go through the metal detector and some dude is like, “are you mr. chu? ” and i say yeah, and he goes “they are calling for you”. i’m like, yeah i know, but i can’t get there any faster than this, there are 2 people in line ahead of me… i go to through the metal detector and have to take off my belt and try again. go up to the counter to get onto the plane and my dad’s like, “where’s my boarding pass??” So he goes back to find it and the guy says, “are you mr. chu?” and i say yes, well there are two of us, i am jason. and he says, “there’s only one mr. chu on this flight” and i’m like, no… the other one is eddie. he says, “no”, i say yes… he looks it up and says, “oh the other mr. chu is on the plane already” and i say, uh.. no, he’s right there.

my dad comes back and thinks that somebody accidentally took his boarding pass. actually he thought he had his but he was holding mine. for some reason he took it from me and even though his was a computer print-out and mine was from the check-out counter, he still thought it was his. anyway we got on the plane at 9:29. I was quite grateful for the free can of stella.

My Bloody Valentine was ridiculously loud. It was pretty awesome, though. Their final song (except for the encore) was 26 minutes long, 22 of which were pure noise. My body was vibrating. That’s what she said.

Lora, Guillermo and I went out to the Village the next night. It was fun but I was so tired and we only went to one place. We tried going to more but none of us felt like standing in line. Then we met these guys afterwards, one of whom made a point of saying how Lora and Guillermo look smart… he was like, “YOU look so smart! and YOU look so smart!” and I said, “… and I look so smart!” and he ignored me. Haha!

Saturday was, um.. on yeah, spent the day with my cousin Geoffrey. I don’t see him that often so it was cool… we ate some food, watched some stuff… the regular.

Sunday night was the Janet concert. It was cool, but the sound was absolutely terrible. It didn’t help that Ben sat there looking as if his first big concert experience was the most boring thing in the world. My sister and I had a blast, though! We took tons of photos and videos, none of which I have posted because they are still sitting on my desktop.

I took 6 days off for TIFF. I saw 27 films and it wiped me out! Since then I haven’t had much time to rest. Daryl’s bachelor party was this past weekend. We went white-water canoeing. I was pretty nervous about it (if you know me then you know that this is NOT my kind of thing!) but I had an amazing time! Ian and I drove down from Toronto. Got to crash at my parents’ and have lunch with them on Sunday before going home, too, which was great! I will post pics from the weekend later.

Tomorrow is My Bloody Valentine.

Sunday is Janet Jackson (haha!).

I don’t know what to do with this blog. Maybe that is why I rarely update it.

I’m going to see Radiohead tonight with Lora and Barb. It’s pouring now, though - hopefully it will clear up by the time the show starts.

Justin is asking me if I want to go watch So You Think You Can Dance when they’re here in Toronto. I said yes but I was lying. He likes Katee… “she was brilliant.”

I have a bit of a headache so I took some stuff. Lora and I are going into New York tomorrow to do a bit of shopping… maybe Brandy can make it too, but it depends on when exactly her sister’s baby is born! Brandy’s on her way there right now since sis’ water just broke.