Archive for the 'family' Category

europe : six ( and last )

Published
by
michaelchan
on July 5, 2008
in family and travel
. 1 Comment

i’m not sure if dad just wanted to make things difficult on himself but the two countries that we rented cars in where among the 4 that actually drive on the left side of the road.  of course, we found it just slightly ironic that we got lost by the driving test centre.

eye-rland

this place was the sweetest cafe i’ve ever seen.

ok, this one’s preeeetty good…

oh o’neill’s!  i shall never forget thine buttery guiness!

it was a VERY windy day as we drove around ireland.

soooo zen.

we cracked up when ryan bought this.  yes, it is a bear-giraffe.

fun!

london baby! home of the the eye.

one tourist thing that i totally recommend checking out is the tower of london.  terribly impressive!

this is paul sebastian.  we ran into him coming up from the tube.  the beauty and heart of his music are beyond words.  we watched him play for about a half hour before making our way to the next stop.

and he didn’t appreciate me taking pictures of him.

hello oxford!

one last note… for three days we carted around eight people and their luggage in a car designed for 5.  

well for now, that’s pretty much it.  we had a great time, thanks for tuning in!

stay close, stay alive!

europe : five

Published
by
michaelchan
on July 2, 2008
in family and travel
. 1 Comment

more lounging around in switzerland…

nellie and i decided to grab some fondue when a drumline paraded it’s way down the street. “why” you might ask… well, because it’s sunday ( of course. )

so, the euro cup ‘08 is kinda a big deal. such a big deal that when we got to the zurich train station we were greeted by a massive replica of a team huddle…

just how big you ask…

this pictures needs no explanation but that are now in france.

my beautiful bride…

our fearless leader

that ryan’s sooooo hot right now…

notre dame’s buttress is better than your buttress

guinness!!

Published
by
michaelchan
on June 28, 2008
in family and travel
. 1 Comment

i dare say that i’ve never truly had a beer before yesterday. nellie and i went to o’neils in ireland to get an authentic irish meal, a pint, and watch the spain vs. russia soccer final. this was probably the best experience we’ve had so far and i say that it needs to be on anyone’s bucket-list.

stop drinking guinness from a can. buy it in ireland. ;)

europe : four ( swiss! )

Published
by
michaelchan
on June 22, 2008
in family and travel
. 1 Comment

switzerland is something else! and easily a country i could see myself moving to.  the country is breathtaking and the people are milky-choclaty sweet.  i’ll admit that, at times, it’s felt a little zoolanderish, everyone walking around in their little happy swiss goups, wearing their little swiss hiking outfits, smiling in the relentlessly-happy swisstastic way — it’s like a moving REI poster and i’m not even kidding.

we spent a lo of time on the train today and seeing “sights” i’d rather look at the wikipedia picture of but here are a few of us enjoying swiss transit.

ryan and i began a little wager regarding the hit single he is going to right by next year.  he’s not at all discouraged by the fact that he hasn’t seriously played an instrument since he was 12.  this is him writing a terminologically accurate song about child birth, i wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be “that” song ;)  ( tangent : check out flowbots if you haven’t. )

HURRAY???

either something got lost in translation or this is a refreshingly honest lotto advert.

lot’s of the love-birds…

seriously - come to switzerland.  it’s amazing!

europe : two ( reposted )

Published
by
michaelchan
on June 22, 2008
in family and travel
. 0 Comments

wordpress, has apparently adopted the microsoft ethic of software building by making v2.5 great lookin’, easy to use, and horridly buggy. bravo for them right?  it has decided to eat all my images and clever antics for the first part of the trip. so here’s the unfunny third attempt - ala wordpress.

 

funny story, we had quite a few celebrity run ins.  not a-list celebrity sightings but c-listers, you know the kind you can barely recognize hiding behind a wall of ashtrays and european beers — much more fun.

 

remember the “INCONTHEVABLE” sicilian pirate in the 80’s classic “the princes bride?”  yah, stood by him in line.  how bout Job from the cult classic “arrested development?”  yah, ’bout near took his foot off with my luggage.  and to top it all off, our plain was delayed on the runway for 45 minutes while air force one made a “secure” take-off from heathrow airport.  read into that what you will…

with all the advancements they are making in compost processing, along with the sharp decline of the us dollar, i wouldn’t be surprised if pure cow feces made a run on the dollar soon.

like picking a favorite child… but harder.

breakfast. can you spot the nutella?

poor kid…

europe : three

Published
by
michaelchan
on June 20, 2008
in family and travel
. 0 Comments

i’ve only got a few minutes left before we hitch a train for lucern but i wanted to drop some goodness for you.

 

in other news, i’ve tried posting “europe : two” 3 times now and have developed an increasing hated toward wordpress. i’ll keep you posted.

killer shop.  this is beer soap!

this coffe shop rocked my world and the mead kicked my but

as i mentioned in the ( yet to be seen ) post before, we ended up coming at a very unique time.  the euro 2008, european soccer cup is in full swing.  we got to watch a game in old town prague with about 300 screaming russians.  RU-SSI-A, RU-SSI-A!!!

airport fun…

oh the swiss and they’re dramatic irony.

and i thought we had it bad ( btw… swiss francs are just about 1 to 1 one the declining dollar )

this is our new backyard.

’till next time…

europe : one

Published
by
michaelchan
on June 14, 2008
in family and travel
. 1 Comment

word up!

we’re in the throws of packing for europe and, after two weeks wheezing our way out of the “ignorance bomb” that seems to have blown up around us, the trip can’t come soon enough. of course, i’m sure that europe will deliver a fair share of nescient delights.

in other news… no laptop. which means no pictures — making this a text-only blog until further notice.  maybe i’ll take my thesaurus along to spice things up… then again, maybe not.

till then… stay alive.

grad time

Published
by
michaelchan
on June 3, 2008
in family and pictures
. 1 Comment

it’s that beautiful time of year when the earth gets a farm fresh batch of new adults. adults who, while not working, don’t have enough time to ask their brother for a proper photo shoot and spring him with a 10 minute deadline before invitations need to be sent out. ;)

of course, he just so happened tot ask while i had a 5D and 35L on loan. so, how could i say no? we had a great time, we always do and i’m pretty stoked on our 10 min photo shoot results.

folk ‘n roll

Published
by
michaelchan
on April 5, 2008
in family and moments
. 0 Comments

i was hangin’ out at my brother ryan’s house a few weeks ago — assisting his acclimation to the mac platform. his previous computer died on him and, by some bizarre occurrence, could neither hold a full charge or stay on while plugged in. so, in order to port over his boundless libraries of music we had to let it charge for an hour, transfer as much as we could before the battery crashed and start the process again. sounds silly but it actually took us about 6 hours.

anyway, after we ran out of DVR’d family guy episodes to watch, we decided to visit giacoletti music — the shop where we took music lessons as kids. we saw some old teachers, shook hands, recalled old times, the whole nine yards. of course, what we hadn’t expected, after 12 years of not visiting, was inherent power that our instrument-lust still had over us — as up in the corner were a couple of brand new, never been played, freshly strung, mandolins.

of course, after about 5 minutes of staring in silence i asked the inevitable question.

“what d’ya say we take these mando’s off their hands?”
“i don’t know. which one do you like?” ryan platonically retorted.
“yellow, you?”
“red… you got cash?”
“no.”
“…”
“…”
“let’s do it.” he said, sounding defeated by the inevitability of his costly decision.

to make a long story shorter, my brother is the man and straight up bought me the mandolin - one of the radest gifts i’ve ever received. accompanying mine, he purchased his mando AND a ukelele ( long story ).

it set him back a bit, but it made the rest of the uploading sesh fly by!

thanks for a great fun afternoon bro ( and a kick-a mando! ).

“tate pit-cha”

Published
by
michaelchan
on July 24, 2007
in family and travel
. 5 Comments

in my opinion, the 24 hour travel day is a huge test of personal strength. many a men have cracked - missing connecting flights, sleeping through an important air-meal, or accidentally entering a women’s restroom in a bizarrely modest culture; we all have these unfortunate travel mishaps and most of us are better for them. however, it is the seasoned traveler that enters the last leg of this race with a euphoric and effortless ease about him - more cunning and creative then when he began.

as we hit our final stretch, in a busted down bus toward shanghai, we found such a fusion in time-passers. tired of practicing chinese conjugations, ryan wisely inspired us to evolve our technique and test out our chinese expressions. this type of genius might be baffle some of you less experienced travelers. do not worry, careful study of our art will help you channel your own delusions… genius.

** changing gears **

on a more serious note, God has been so gracious to us blessing us with safe travels and good rest thus far.

** back to the pictures **

based on the friendly asian expression, leave us a comment and cast your vote for the person you believe to leave this country with the most friends!