engagement & wedding

So much has been going on since I got laid off. Let me see, ok, 1st I got laid off, then we went and get ourselves a marriage license, then picked a date to get married, shop for rings and then get engaged officially. Yes, it's all screwed up. We kind of did things backward. But there is no time for screwing around. Gotta act realistically.

Ok, so I got laid off, what's next? There are so many things to take into consideration. Can I find a different job with my H1B visa? Is it worth tranferring my H1B visa? Aaron is very kind enough to offered me job with his other company and is willing to apply green card for me. Sounds like the perfect option for me but the problem is his other company is at Torrance. That is a hell of a drive. Doesn't seems very practical. So I thought .... I should really be looking for something I really want to do instead of letting my visa status be a burden. John and I decided to get married asap so it will solve the many problems of my visa. We were planning to get married anyway at the end of the year, the laid off thing just accelerate the process. :) With such a short notice to get married, it leave us with not much choice than to do it at the courthouse. I really wanted my family to be here to witness my wedding, after all it is a big day for me. We decided to do it at the courthouse and the real wedding will be some time later when my family can make it here. We got our marriage license at the Van Nuys office and picked a "good" date to do the ceremony. I finally picked 5/25/07 to be our important day!

PART 1

Then he is sweet enough to follow up with an official proposal. :) He took me to the beach at Oxnard to spend the weekend. So he did the whole proposal thing. Yes, on the beach, during the sunset, on his knees... actually I think he was on his both knees..... =)... all romantic and stuff *blush blush*.

Oxnard is a beautiful place... here are some pictures we took during the proposal weekend. ;)

taken right after the proposal.....

at the balcony right outside our room.... yes, ocean view.... :P

us.... all smiley outside the seafood restaurant where we had our dinner

PART 2

LOL, 6 days later we got married at the Van Nuy courthouse. It was real simple. I invited a few of my close friends and he has his family and close friends come too. Of course my close friends are including but not limited too Jocelyn, Net & Jimmy and Alan. For John's friends, Steve and Shane. We tried to minimize the number of ppl we invite since there will be a real wedding soon.

Our friends took lots of pictures for us... thank you guys!! Here are a few I managed to upload. There are a short movie clip too that Jocelyn took. Pretty cool...

that's him with his buddies, Shane (far left) and Steve (far right)

us with his dad, sister, Jacob... his mom was actually at the far back

us with Jocelyn

me with net!!

awww....... the "I do" "I do" part........

the exchanging ring part

the documents that will bind us forever.........

officially Mrs. Mallard *grin grin*

Right after the ceremony, we went to The Vines for brunch with his family before we head to Laughlin for our "so-called" honeymoon, which was planned way earlier than our wedding. :P

the day after i got laid off

I got laid off. John took the day off to take me out of town, to cheer me up. We went to Chumash, Solvang & Santa Barbara. It was a very nice day, the weather was sunny with a cold breeze. It feels so nice to be able to spend the day outside when everyone else is working in the office. Hehe...

We stopped by at Chumash, had our lunch and continued on to Solvang without gambling. Here's a picture of lobster with lobster at Chumash casino.....that's his nick name because he is always so red. Net & I gave him a nickname at work so we could use his nickname instead of his real name. Everyone else has a nickname too so no one knows we were talking about them. Slick huh?? Well I guess we don't need to use it anymore. :(

Solvang, the dutch town

more solvang

and then some

cute mini outside the winery we visited

john did wine tasting, bought a bottle of wine for his mom, Mother's day gift

beautiful Santa Barbara

the ellen degeneres show

My new idol, yes Ellen!! Net got 2 tickets to watch the ellen degeneres show and she invited me!!! I was really excited and happy. As the day come closer I got even more excited. I think I even mumbled something about watching Ellen's live show the night before in my sleep. :P

It was on tues May 8th. Again I took 1/2 the day off , drove down with Net to Burbank. We were there really early and had no trouble looking for parking. It was a pretty warm day and we had to stand in line to get our guaranteed tickets. To our dissapointment, we were not allowed to bring our cameras in the building. So we snapped as many photos as we could while we were waiting outside and as we were going in, we had to leave the cameras in the car. More waiting as we were brought into an open area with benches and people sellings drinks and snacks. We sat there with the rest of the anxious audience for another couple more hours and then finally were brought in to the shooting set. Very cool!! Finally into an air conditioned building. We got pretty good seats. People started cheering and dancing. Very very nice experience and I would love to go watch her again!! Our special guests that day were Kate Walsh (frm Grey's Anatomy), a 4 yr old boy who saved his mother's lives, and Kanye West and his mom. I love her even more now. Thanks Net for the tickets....!!

the NBC entrance

our precious tickets

here's net posing with the sign.... :)))

Too bad, no more photos after that.

dinner at Parker's Lighthouse

We were all invited to join Alan's birthday dinner at the Parker's Lighthouse located in Long Beach. It is a seafood place with a spectacular view of the San Pedro Bay and Queen Mary. Dinner was at 6pm and as usual, we were all late. John who was supposed to be our driver (again!) wasn't feeling too good so he has to passed on that at the last minute. Jocelyn became the back-up driver and since there was plenty of room left in her car, we all rode together with Janet & Jimmy. We got there at 5 past 7, the last group to arrive among all. Oh well, we have a very good reason to be late... we live the farthest and the traffic was really bad. ;P

We all knew that Parker's Lighthouse is strategically located by the beach but coming here and see for ourselves the beautiful view is remarkable. We were all mesmerized by the beautiful scene of sunset and the ambiance of the restaurant.

just as we were getting in

a shot of the other side of the table, big party... 15 of us
the lighthouse..... ahhh...just beautiful

look at the beautiful pink sky or lavender sky... whatever.. it's breathtaking

that's my seafood linguine

net's seared ahi

and of course there's jimmy's fish & chips

ha-ha... that's the card we got him

here are the ladies

and then the gentlemen..... camera sucks at taking night pictures

everyone gets to take the couple picture and here's the alone me *sob sob*

Had fun that night. People who live up north went home after dinner and the rest went for the movies "Spiderman 3". I like the restaurant but would probably not go there again unless I was just happen to be at Long Beach. Nice ambiance and everything but food was just okay.

six flags

Six flags is famous for their fastest, tallest rides in the world. Our initial plan was to go there at 10 am but due to some unforeseen circumstances, we ended up going there at 1pm. ;) It was a very warm Saturday afternoon. We all got ourselves season pass because we figured we will definitely come back again since we live so near. To our surprised, it was packed with people and it's not even summer yet. That is not a good sign because that would means we will have to wait for hours to get on a ride. Sure enough, there were long lines at most of the exciting rides. We decided to go on Tatsu, the newest ride in the park. So we waited and waited and waited...... and we still have a long way to go. To make condition worse, the weather was so warm and at where we were standing, had no shade. We finally decided to gave up. Since we live so close by, we can come back anytime. The park closes at 10 pm. It makes more sense to just come back at non peak hours. We were all tired, hungry and didn't feel so good from the hang over. After spending about 3 hours at the park with no luck , except for the Grand Caroussel that Jocelyn and Eng Jo went on (the only ride with no line), we all went home kind of dissapointed.

We got home, took few hours nap and went back to six flags again determine to get on some rides this time. There were still long lines but it wasn't as bad as during the day. We first went on X-treme, Tatsu and Viper. We then had to leave because the park was closed. We were satisfied because we went on the 3 most exciting rides and I had to say Tatsu was the scariest one among all. I screamed at the top of my lungs from the beginning of the ride till the end and had my eyes closed almost the whole time. Yes, I know I spoiled the fun but what the heck, it was still fun. We will definitely come back again for the rest of the rides and of course during the off-peak hours. There were some funny shots of us on the rides. Enjoy!

huahahaha.... there is a funny story behind this picture. It was a warm day, so I was trying to figure out a way to air my armpit without appearing too obvious. Jocelyn won the best technique to air your armpit without appearing too obvious.

we were starving and had to settled with panda express, which surprisingly taste delish that day

them on the grand carousel

we were too bored waiting in-line.... we act silly to humor ourselves

the game that you usually see in the bar, one of the things we played to past time while waiting in line

infected eye

My left eye got infected. The problem was first detected about 2 weeks ago. At first, I thought it was the pollen allergy that got me, after all it's the spring season now. Then it got worse that even blinking my eye hurt. After being bugged continuously by John, I said yes to see a doctor. He even threatened not to take a shower until I finally agreed to call the doctor for an appointment. Yes.. gross! But he is very persistent. :) What can I say?

So I called and managed to get the earliest appointment available for my family physician. They managed to squeeze me in due to my exaggeration of my eye condition, which I think would normally take around 3 weeks to see her if I didn't do that. I went to see her two days ago and indeed, my left eye is infected. It is not at a very serious stage yet. The problem can be resolved by using an eye drop solution. She prescribed me with Polymyxin B Sulfate and Trimethoprim. I have to put 1 drop in my affected eye every 6 hours until the infection is resolved. During this period, I am not allowed to wear my contact lenses until it completely heals. After the infection heals, I need to use a new pair of contacts and new contact lens cases. The most annoying part is not putting the drop in my eye every 6 hours, it's the NO contact lens during this period that irritates me. That means I would have to wear my glasses for god knows how many days. I dislike wearing the glasses because it is the most troublesome thing in the world (for me). You take your glasses out when you take a shower, when you change, when you brush your teeth, and the list goes on. Also, I think my glasses don't fit me right, it is always hanging down at my nose which really bothers me. I have to constantly push it up so it will sit right at my nose bridge. Not only that, it also hurt the back of my ear after long hours of wearing it. I think the leg of my glasses is hooked to my ear too tight and it irritates the skin of my ear that it becomes raw after some time. No matter how much I hate wearing glasses, I will have to wear them if I want to have a pair of healthy eyes. I don't want my eye infection to get worse and go blind. Therefore I would listen to my doctor (and John) and follow instructions obediently. Here's a picture of my infected eye.

a closer look

here's a healthy blue eye, so you can compare the infected eye and the healthy eye

and this is me with glasses on..... :(

I want to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to John for photographing my infected eye so I can post it in my blog. Not only that, he also modeled his healthy eye for me so I could compare 'em. And by doing that for me, he was almost late to school. So thank you hunn!!