i have been deleting those .THM files that gets stored in my CF card every time i shoot a video. i thought it was just for internal use. i finally decided to look and see what it is for. it turns out it is a thumbnail of the video. just the first frame. i can definitely make use of these thumbnails. too bad i have thrown all the other ones away. it is usually the first thing i delete. i'll keep them from now on.



here is the play by play of my last weekend

friday i met up with wendy and raymond to get pho at pho hoacali. then we went to tapioca express to chill for a bit. after that, i dropped wendy off, and ray came over to watch american idol. jeff called and wanted to know if we wanted to cruise in his GTR. so we met up. cruised around rancho santa fe. we did some drifting. and on a perfect straight, we high somewhere around 142 - 149mph. that marks the fastest i've done in a car. my car only does 135.



video of our drive through rancho santa fe. [6.35 MB]





we cruised till about midnight then we drove back to IG and played with Raymond's Skyline.....a RC car. :)





here are some side by side comparisons of the real thing and a RC car.





more pics found in my photo gallery



the night was a blast. especially for raymond since it was his first time riding the real thing. we called it a night around 1am.



saturday, i met up with ray, his uncle mark, mark's wife trish, mark's friend, and mark's friend's brother and drove down to mexico. destination: Puerto Nuevo. with scenic stops along the way.



we wanted to get lunch over there, so we stopped at rosorito to get some tacos, and check out the beaches. we got some tacos and burritos at this place.



someone asked me if the burrito was the best i had, and i said it was certainly up there with the best. but now that i think about it, i think it was the best carne asada burrito i've had. the spicy green sauce, and the toasted and crispy tortilla around the burrito were its highlights. now, why don't they do that over here? is it that hard? such a simple idea, and so good. maybe if quiznos also sold burritos. the prices weren't any different from san diego prices. i guess they go for quality. and they are in a tourist filled town.



i think i actually spoke spanish the first time out of need after learning spanish for 4 years in high school. i ordered 2 beef burritos and asked how much it was. and it wasn't a phrase i learned. i assembled the sentences together. and the odd thing is, it felt really natural. and i was picking up on most of the language people were speaking in mexico. it was pretty bizzre. because i didn't think i remembered too much from class, but i guess i do.







that kid in the red apron, reminded me a lot about myself when i grew up. from when i was 7 to when i was 17, i always had to help in the family business wheater i liked it or not. my brother, my sis, and i have all worked a lot in swap meets, and various stores...

thrift store in hollywood. a pet store in anehim. gift shop in gardena. and a few days coffee shop in gardena that my parents still own today. the 2 worst ones in that group was working in the swap meets and the gift store. only complaint about the gift store is that come christmas, everyone has to work there from morning to midnight. so there went my winter vacation. i considered christmas break the worst time of the year for about 10 years (the entire time we owned the gift store). and the swap meets, you basically have to wake up before dawn and sell a bunch of junk....even though we sold junk by choice... my dad is an antique collector...i consider his antiques more of a crap collection......so that's what we sold. he still collects for hobby purposes. and yes, he does watch antiques roadshow on TV all the time. and if all that crap is considered antiques, man, we sure got a lot of "antiques" in our garage. to be honest, for swap meets, i think selling antiques and collectibles are a good idea for a swap meet. its either that or sell generic knock off of something new.



so going back go why i originally brought that up, i kinda felt bad for the kid. working in the stores, i always felt like they were stealing my childhood away from me. and being a kid, i thought it was unfair for us to spend all weekdays in school and have nothing to look forward to on the weekends. most kids sleep in during the weekends right? well, more than half of my weekends from when i was about 8 to 12 yrs old, i had to wake up around 4:30 am to go to the swap meets with my dad. and probably 5 out of 7 days of the week i had to do that if i was on vacation from school. yeah, that's what i did on my vacation. from when i was 13 to 17, we owned the gift store in gardena. and yup, the same routine. we just didn't need to go in as early. just leave later. but when christmas came around, it was mandatory that we were all there working 14-16 hour days. looking back now, i think it was soo unfair. but in perspective, i am soo very lucky. just look at the families you see working the quarter mile stretch at the boarder crossing in mexico. they work in between the lanes. and things probably won't get any better for them.



a picture of ryan, me, and ray at the taco shop.





then we went to the beach in rosarito. me and ray rode atv's. and the rest of the group rode horses. here's a pic of ray doing a jump where he almost ate it.





here's a video of another jump [5.23 MB]



they really didn't give up any jumps or hills to ride in. so we had to manage with what we got and made the best of it (basically we carved our own ramps). but let me tell ya, that small amount of air time is pretty scary when you take it the first time. one thing i found out a little too late is that you can basically make the atv jump by jumping in place with your body weight. and you can put some height in the jumps. too bad i had figured this out way too late. next time i'll know and i can get some serious air.



here's a video of our slow ride back to return the ATVs. [13.8 MB]





after that, we drove through a really rough part of mexico (took the local, non toll road route to puerto nuevo from rosarito. basically a dirt road...and saw some real ramshackle neighborhoods. we were thinking of stopping by foxploration (they filmed titanic and other movies here) but we had spent all our play money on ATVs we decided to pass.



we got to puerto nuevo, and shopped around a bit. then we decided to eat at the restaurant called Puerto Nuevo #2. If we had the choice, we would have eaten at Puerto Nuevo #1...but they had big lines of people waiting outside. so we ate at Puerto Nuevo #2 which was owned by the same owners.



at Puerto Nuevo #2





some mariachi entertainment [16.8 MB]





lobster was good, but it wasn't the best i've had. we asked the waitor if the lobster was fresh or frozen? and he couldn't keep a straight face. actually, he was one of the worst and most apparent liars i have seen to this date. you would think that they'd be good at lying because they have to do it so often. the prices were okay...but wasn't spectacular. even though other restaurants there were offering lobster dinner for as low as $9 a plate, we chose to put our health at a higher priority and went with a place that charge $15-$18 for small and med sized lobsters.



after dinner, we headed back to SD...and everything had gone so wonderful until the drive home. driving back to the boarder, we didn't make a U turn we were supposed to make because it was not clearly marked, and we usually don't expect the road to drop us off in the wrong direction and make us make a u turn to get us going in the right direction. but hey, its mexico. so for a bit, we were driving towards Tecate. if i remember correctly, tecate is known for 2 things. one is the beer...



so we finally somehow manage to make a U turn about couple of miles down (we had no choice), and while driving towards the boarder, a guy washes our windows even though we're both telling him to stop. and when we refuse to pay, his buddy whacks ray's left fender with his fist. ray thought the guy might have slashed his tires. but he didn't cause any damage. and then when we were about 1/4 a mile from the boarder, it took us 2 hours to to cross it. now that i know that you can't avoid this shit coming back from the boarder, even after such a good time, i'll be hesitant to go because of all the hassle. what they need to do is get rid of those window washers...there were about 30 of them in that 1/4 mile strip. because no one really wants their windows washed. everyone has wipers. they are just running an extortion gig. and these guys are totally ruining it for the guys that are trying to sell you stuff. nothing wrong with the guys that are actually selling stuff on the road, even in between the lanes. but by the time you get there, the guys washing the windows have already pissed you off to where you want to go postal on the next guy that tries to put a hand on your car. i hope they know this. it really hurts their business. some actually sell pretty descent stuff. i thought of actually buying the laundry basket (made out of hand woven wooden branches), but i was really out of cash. then there was a ship carved out of wood. then there are some crap that i don't think would sell very well. there are the winnie the pooh porcelain statues...and get this...they were all putting these "cute" statues up to their faces and pressing their cheek to get you to buy it. uh....trust me buddy....you're not making the statues look any cuter. maybe if you were a 4 year old boy doing that to sell the statue...not a 40 year old hevily tanned ugly man with a ugly moustache. we finally got back home about 10pm. and called it a day.



on sunday, i missed church again cause i slept in. i was going to work out on sunday, but the ATV ride really thrashed me around pretty good. my forearms and traps were especially sore. so i passed on the gym as i watched the first season of "24" all day. i had downloaded all 24 episodes through bit torrent (10 gigs total) i watched about 22 episodes of 24 (44 minutes each) until i finally gave up. going through 2 bowls of cereal and 6 protein bars as i vegged in my room all day. in between i had also downloaded the tyson vs etienne fight, and watched that...that was about a 5 minute distraction.



today, i came back from pilates class, still sore from the ATV ride, took a 2 hour nap, and i watched the last 2 episodes of 24. and wow. i loved every second of it. now that i'm done watching, i have to watch the whole thing again because now i know who's a spy and who's not. so it should be pretty interesting the second time around. but i'm not doing another 24 marathon.