My Christmas gift from Mary...

...Technically, she "got" me this after she found out I ordered the seat and then claimed it was my Christmas gift from her. Cheater. :P The steering wheel and pedals are from Karen and Jae and I love my new set up! I've been logging quite a bit of hours on GT5 with this setup and I'm not exactly sure I'm ready to go back to LA this Friday. I might miss my new toys!!!

But I heard Santa thought I was a good little boy this year so he might send me one more present via UPS on Tuesday... ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving felt different this year because we weren't around family. I even got teary while watching Home Alone during the part where Kevin goes "Mommmm??? Mommm??" on Christmas morning because no one was home yet. Still, we were around friends and Zack's family, which was very nice. We were all happy to help out, so his mom gave the Tufts people an apple pie to make. It turned out pretty good even though us future doctors had no idea what we were doing. I even made a pretty star design on the pie crust, but I miscalculated so the star is a bit off. >.< Anyways, His mom's cooking was so delicious! Even though I don't like turkey that much, her turkey was really tender and yummy. Thank you so much for having us Zack!

Zack had this really awesome cat named Speck. He loves to hang out on people's shoulder/neck. It's like having a cat scarf around your neck!!

Well, I hope everyone had a really awesome holiday. We miss you guys lot and will see you in a few weeks!!

Mmm Gingerbread Latte

I love winter time @ Starbucks. I normally don't drink coffee that much because it gives me a major headache, but this drink makes it so worth it!! Anyways, I got my first pair of scrubs this week. My scrubs are gigantic!! I could fit another me inside easily!! The smallest size the linen department had was a size small =*(. I also started Gross Anatomy. o_O I thought cadavers would make me feel all sick and woozy, but it didn't. Phew!! I still haven't cut into it yet because I am a bit of a germaphobe and don't want decaying juices flying at me yet. Lunchtime is right after Anatomy, and some people actually eat their lunch in their grimy scrubs. Pretty disgusting...

New Last Name

A few years ago at Josie/Tim's Wedding, Brian couldn't find my name card at first. After a few tries, he finally figured out that this anonymous "Mary Tran" assigned to our table was really me! We think that they forgot my last name and just picked one of the most common Vietnamese last names. Today, we got a wedding invitation in the mail that was quite amusing as well.

Brian said I should just change my last name to his to make things simpler LOL! Maybe in the future when I actually have time to plan a wedding. Okay back to studying!

Update!

Sorry it's been awhile since I've updated. When I did have a free weekend, we were always busy doing something else. >.< Let's start from the top. I had my White Coat Ceremony on September 18. One of the doctors who gave us a speech made me all teary because she said, "If you are thinking the admissions office made a mistake in your acceptance to medical school, it's not. You deserve to be here." Something along those lines, but I sometimes still wonder though hehe! Anyways, the smallest size they had was a 2, so it's a little big on me. Lameee!! What ever happened to size 0?

Two weeks later in October, Mr. & Mrs. Wong came to visit us. It was so wonderful to see them again!! We miss you guys already! They landed on Saturday, but Brian had to work that day. I took them to the outlet because Massachusetts doesn't have tax on clothes and shoes (my selling point for trying to convince people to visit haha)!! On Sunday, we were all being touristy and went to the Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall. I forgot to take a picture of the lobster roll and clam chowder before digging in, but we got pictures of desserts. Oops! >.<

Three weeks later, Brian finally had a weekend off, so we decided to visit his cousins in NYC. We were both tired from work/school, so all we did was relax and eat to our tummy's delight. We also did a lot of sight seeing when we were there in May. I think the most filling meal was during Saturday's lunch when James decided to change our original orders of 13 dishes to 23!!! Needless to say, we had plenty of leftovers lol. I've never seen so many dim sum plate on a table at one time!! We FINALLY got to have some real Korean bbq while in NYC. Boston's Korean food is mediocre at best.

Last night, it snowed... in October. Weather.com called it historic snowfall in October... Snowtober. It's way too early for snow. Wahhh!!! I am so not ready for this type of weather. Here is a picture of our car before we went out to do some errands. At least tomorrow's forecast is a high of 51 degrees.

Well, that's all. I didn't post all of the pictures on here, but the rest will be on fB in a couple of days. Until next time.. <3

Week 16 Update

Can you believe it? We've been here three and a half months already and it feels way longer than that. Mary and I both miss Socal very much and everyone we've left behind. But guess what? We're going to be back in a little less than three months for vacation! YES! Get me out of here! :P

Just wanted to update the blog and since I have a little free time today, I guess I'm going to ramble a little bit about what's been going on here. My work week is done and I get one day off from my evil boss, Satan. The reason why I call him by that name is he's worse than Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada." Don't confuse that movie with the tv soft porn movie "The Devil Wears Nada", starring Meryl Strips (guessing the name since I never watched it, but that probably is the character's name. I should ask Mary though since she accidentally watched it when she thought it was the legit, blockbuster movie). Anyway, I'm pretty sure my boss eats babies too.

An update on Mary? As many can guess, she's studying her butt off for a test this coming Monday. What's worse is this past week was a bunch of season premieres for the shows she loves to watch. Lucky for her, we have DVR and she'll have some time to catch up after her test.

Well, that's that. But here's a little bonus for you guys! For those of you who forgot what we look like, here's me after a 10 hour shift at work:

And here's Mary:

Hahaha! She was taking a nap when I was trying to take a picture of her drooling, but she quickly moved when she knew what I was doing. Oh well, I have 3.5 more years to snap candid shots of her napping. :)

UPS package?

I'd like to start off by apologizing for the lack of updates as of late. With me pulling 60-72 hours a week, I tend not to want to do much when I get home from work. In fact, on my day off, I like to do my best impersonation of Jabba the Hut. Meaning, I sit on my couch like a big fat slob and not move unless I have to.

Anyway, the reason why I'm posting today is because I got a lovely package from the UPS man at work. The BEST FRIEND EVER sent me a care package since he's heard me whine and complain about how I miss driving my sports cars and how I wish I could still visit race tracks every so often. So this is what he got me!

SO AWESOME! I've been meaning to get this for a while now, but Jae helped me take the big step and ordered it for me! Hahahaha. Nah, he called me telling me how Logitech sent him a 50% off coupon and that if I wanted it, I could finally apply it to this sweet set up. Is that not the most awesome friend ever? THANK YOU JAE! I was going to play a bit tonight, but I'm already way past my bedtime and I have to be at work early in the morning. Maybe I'll pull an all nighter after work and sleep through my day off! That sounds pretty fun to me. :)

Are you kidding me?!

First there was a tornado in Massachusetts in May right before we came to sign our lease. Then on Tuesday, there was an earthquake, and I found out there's a fault line in Boston. Apparently, I moved from one fault line to another. >.> Now Hurricane Irene is heading toward Boston and is expected to hit the city on Sunday. Seriously? What is going on with Mother Nature and Boston?! Or maybe I'm just bad luck... really bad luck! After all, there was a tsunami warning when we were in Hawaii and a major earthquake and tsunami in Japan a day before we were suppose to fly out.

Anyways, I am done with the first week of med school. Even though it has only been a few days of lecture, I'm already overwhelmed by the massive amount of materials that I need to memorize. Plus, they threw us into interviewing patients already without much direction. My classmate found this YouTube video below, and it's totally how we all felt! Oh how I miss the summer of just MBA classes, which I thought was hard, but I was wrong. Oh so wrong!! I'm beginning to rethink my decision to pursue a MD/MBA...

First Summer Down...

This week has been torturous. I had an accounting final and two presentations to prepare for. Not fun!! I've learned that in the future I'm going to hire an accountant! Good thing I did not major in it. Would have probably failed out of school. Anyways, I'm happy that the first summer of MBA classes is finally over. Four day weekend... here I come before med school starts. Weee!!

So what to do on my first day of freedom? Brian's busy at work now, which kind of stinks. I was getting use to coming home from class and having someone there to make me lunch and wash the dishes. Sigh!! Just when Brian was making progress on being domesticated. Oh well... it's all for the best. At least I will get to shop again soon. Bahaha!!

Oh yea.. Where was I? Before Brian left for work, he gave me the okay to buy him ties at Macys.com for work, so I decided to sneak in some shoes too. Oops x 4!! >.< Looking around, I noticed the apartment needed to be tidied up a bit. I decided to clean and organize the whole place! I have just been so busy lately that it started to get a bit dusty, especially since it's been cool enough to use the window fan instead of the darn AC. After I was done, I took a nice long nap until Brian came home from work. It felt so awesome after being sleep deprived this week. Okay, time to get some goodies at H Mart. Nom nom nom...

Little update:

The apartment management just finished installing our new windows. Rejoice! Double pane windows! Now the noises from Commonwealth Ave are just small murmurs and it doesn't get as hot in the apartment.

But as much joy as I thought I'd have with this new addition, I'm totally not digging the small wood particles left by the install. Don't get me wrong, Paul and his helper were awesome on cleaning up as much as they could. All the big chunks and most of the dirt was swept up, but there's still the miniature splinters left everywhere. They feel like little razor blades when they're against your skin! Mary and I have spent hours trying to clean every surface in the apartment, but I guess I have to clean everything yet again. I think that until we do another complete clean up, I'm going to be walking around, randomly wincing in pain for the next couple of days. People on the street are going to think I'm nuts...

A little something from California...

A little surprise from California came today in the mail. 'Lette Macarons!! Thanks Leanne for sending such a sweet present. They are so yummy and colorful!! ^_^


Also, we forgot to post these presents from Jae and Karen from awhile ago. We were still settling in at that point. Thank you for the housewarming gifts! We use the Clocky as a timer for cooking now! <3

I am SO ready for the fall season!

Look at what I got from Amazon today! So who's with me to visit the TD Garden???

Mid-week update!

Yesterday, I decided I should look less like a bum and get a haircut. So I shaved my man beard I've been growing for a couple of days, made an appointment with the hair stylist located right next to our apartment and prayed to God that he wouldn't totally screw up my hair. As a precaution, I printed out one of my favorite pictures of Mary and me on the day I proposed to her. That way, he could see how I normally get my hair cut.

So I arrive promptly for my appointment (I think it'd be pretty sad if I was late considering it's literally 20 steps away from the apartment) and start by showing him the picture. He said that's fine and we go chatting away about random things. Apparently, we find out that both of us were stuck in Hawaii during the 9/11 incident. He reminded me how some hotels were kicking out guests cuz their reservations were over to make room for the new guests and I told him how a cop kicked me off the beach and told me to go back to my room. Sad times, but crazy how I found some other traveler that was stuck in Hawaii at the same time I was. Anyway, 15 minutes later, he said he was done. I looked in the mirror and deemed it alright. I definitely miss my stylist CC but at least it wasn't a catastrophe.

Later in the day, Mary and I decided to go return some AF clothing I ordered online that didn't fit me. Last week, I found some khakis on the website in the clearance section but they only had 33x30 sizing left and decided to see if they fit. They fit just fine... if I wanted to wear capris. So off we went to AF! I checked around the store to see if they had the same khakis in my sizing, but they were sold out of my model and only had full priced new stuff. At the register, the manager tells me he has to manually enter my returns cuz they weren't even in the system anymore and that means he can't enter it under the clearance price of $19.99 per khakis. He then hands me a gift card that was worth $150! I told him that wasn't what I paid and he said there's nothing he can do because full price is the only way the system is allowing him to accept the returns. I tried to be fair since I didn't want to rip off AF, but if there's nothing I can do then I guess I got PAID yesterday! Is this considered my first paycheck in Boston? Do I have to file taxes and say my employer was Abercrombie and Fitch? Haha, I kid I kid.

So fast forward to today. I got a care package from my good friend, Ken Hong!

Inside is an extended 8 cell battery for my Lenovo X61!

Now I should be able to have 5 hours of run time instead of 2! Thanks Ken!

I swear, I'm one of the luckiest people in the world to have friends as good as I do. Thanks again you guys!

Cooking Fiasco

Since we've moved here, I've been trying to cook more. Not only to cut cost here and there, but to eat a little healthier. Also, I don't want Brian and I to grow so plump that you guys would hardly recognize us when we come back to visit!!

Anyways... so today, I had time to cook even though I had tons of case studies to read and tons of accounting crap to study. I decided to saute garlicky broccoli and broil BBQ chicken breasts for the first time since we can't bbq here. It went all down hill from here. I sprayed the pan with nonstick stuff, hoping to make it easier for Brian to wash dishes. The stupid stuff was burning and smoking up the apartment like crazy, causing the evil fire alarm to go off not just once, but multiple times!! It was so bad that our eyes were getting super watery.

Finally, the chicken appeared to be done, so I cut into it. OH MY!! It was perfectly cooked and juicy... yay!! I went to plate the food, being all excited to have Brian eat my cooking. Due to our ridiculously small counter top space, my plate of food fell over and broke into a million pieces. The first thing I thought was "Oh nooo... my foodddd!!!" I didn't even realize my left foot was cut until Brian ran over. Brian, being the caring fiance he is <3, grabbed me some sandals, so I wouldn't get hurt even more. He even cleaned up all the mess and washed all the dishes. Then he made some ramen for himself (haha not so healthy), so I could eat the healthier stuff. I was nice enough to share my goodies... bahaha!! In the end, I wish we had gotten takeout. =*(

A nice and relaxing weekend

Friday afternoon ended fairly nicely for Mary. Firstly, she got a good grade on her midterm during the week, she thinks she did well on her Economics final, and it was going to be a free weekend for her as far as studies went. Time to celebrate!

Firstly, we did the most exciting thing we could think of. We headed over to Costco. Whoopee!! All joking aside, we really do like going to Costco. The hardest part is to keep the invoice low every time we go there. They always have something cool or yummy to get! At night, we ended watching The Mechanic that I got from my Netflix queue. I think I can safely tell people that you're not missing much if you haven't seen that yawn-inducing action flick yet. Everything was totally predictable and it wasn't very entertaining or even funny. We ended the night watching a couple episodes of Blue Exorcist, a new anime I've been watching. It made Mary cry. ^_^

Saturday morning started with Mary waking me up and asking "Can we watch more anime?" We watched the rest of the episodes available and... she cried again! Afterward, we did a little bit more relaxing before meeting up with our friends, Mary and Jason. They asked us the day before if we wanted to go down to Foxborough for dinner since Jason needed to stop by Bass Pro to exchange his fishing pole. I've never been there so I was very curious as to what the store was like. WOW! This place is cool! They go all out on decorating the place to look very outdoors like. Here are some pics:

A stuffed moose, overlooking the top of a waterfall.

Vast side of the waterfall and the pond with live trout in!

I saw this stuffed black bear and it made me miss Baloo!

Not sure if Mary was contemplating playing at their indoor shooting range.

I forgot to mention, Bass Pro is in a plaza connected to Gillette stadium. Hopefully, the NFL lockout gets settled soon cuz Jason's sister has season tickets to the Patriots. Would love to be able to go to a live game!

Afterward, we brought Mary and Jason to eat at Red Robins for the first time and it was favorable opinion of the place! Then we headed over to the movie theaters to watch "Horrible Bosses" at the Showcase. Let me tell you, AMC's got nothing on these Showcase theaters. You walk in and they have multiple options for food besides the usual hot dog and popcorn served at every other theater. Over there, they had full on restaurants, lounges and bars along with a separate stage for live concerts... inside the theater! Oh, and the seats were very comfy as well. All in all, it was a good movie experience even though we sat in the front row of a fully packed showing. Oh yeah, the movie was very funny as well. ;)

So that brings us to today. Mary decided to read up on her new class books (nerd) while I have a recorded BBC (yay, no commercials!) showing of F1 qualifying at Silverstone playing on TV. Later on, we're meeting up with Mary's classmates for dinner so I guess I have to dress to make a good first impression. All in all, it sounds like it's going to be a good ending to this very nice and relaxing weekend.

Fourth of July Weekend

Finally some free time to update the blog. Just took my final for Managerial Economics today. I hope I did okay!! Being back in a classroom after such a long period felt so weird. Sometimes I felt so dumb because I didn't know what in the world the professor was talking about while other people seemed to understand it perfectly well =(. At least it's over now!!

Fourth of July weekend was a blast!! We had our first guests over, Joanne & Daniel. Thank you so much for coming out from Chicago and showing us around Boston! We had so much fun learning all the ways to get around Boston, eating at all the yummy restaurants, and watching the fireworks with you guys. It was definitely one of the most memorable July 4th weekend. Thanks again!! <3

Here are a couple pictures, courtesy of Joanne. The rest are on facebook.

To: Steve and Debbie

So I just got this in the mail...

It's from our wonderful friends in Irvine! Guess they've been reading the blog, huh? Haha.

Thank you guys for the good laughs and seriously, thanks a bunch for all that money! The toll roads, parking meters and washing machines here are so ruthless. Always taking up all our quarters so thank you for the awesome gift! <333

July 4th Weekend!

We haven't updated our blog in a couple of days because life has started to settle down. With Mary starting her MBA classes and me doing practically nothing but watching Sportscenter, we've been quite busy! While the weather's been on the rise and I've been miserably staying alone at home in this humidity, this past weekend was wonderful.

I apologize as this will be a short entry since I still have to think of witty sentences to accompany the pictures we took. But I'll try to get that done in the next day or two! We just did so much with our first guests over the weekend that I'm still trying to sort through the memories as I type this...

Until the next entry!

And we're back!

Things are back up to speed and speaking of speed... this new modem is awesome! Beforehand, with the "borrowed" modem, I tested speeds up to 15mbps and now it's up to 22mbps! I can't wait for the next UFC fight so I can download... er hmm. That's illegal and I would never do that, right? Haha. In fact, what big files can you really "download" these days that's not illegal? I mean, you could probably download mp3's after paying for them from Itunes, but that really won't test the new speeds I've got. What are mp3's now? 5mb? That's less than 4 seconds! Lame. Maybe I'll go download some useless Microsoft add-ons for fun just to see what speeds I get. =P

Now it's time to go surf the free HBO channels!

And... the free cable is gone...

Well, not much to say about it at this point except I was very very bored the whole day. Thought about walking around the city, trying to familiarize myself with the neighborhood, but it's been raining non-stop since yesterday so I just stayed in the apartment. Although, on a good note, I was a lot more productive with housework and stuff without internet. ;)

Scheduled an appointment for tomorrow to hook up everything and hopefully I won't have to deal with Comcast again for a while. At least they're giving me free HBO for a year with no contract. Bad part is it's not free and actually more expensive than I thought it would be!

On another note, July 4th weekend will be pretty fun! Our good friends Daniel and Joanne are coming to visit us and Joanne offered to show us around town while she's here. She actually used to live right across the street from where our apartment is with Cat Ng! All in all, I'm excited to have them stay with us!

Weekend in Maine

Hi guys! So this weekend, we decided to head up to Maine with our good buddies, Mary and Jason! We only stayed for a night because I had to go get ready for Monday's first day of school, but that one day was really fun! While driving, Brian and I were talking about how we were in the farthest connected state in the US from California. We even had someone look at our car and point at the CA plates o_O!!

Jason's parents have a home in Maine along the lake, and it was so cute and homely! They had an extra room for us to stay downstairs... but Mary and Jason didn't mention how cold it gets down there. Luckily, they gave us a very warm comforter, and I had Brian around to cling on to. He calls me a koala bear at night... =*( Oh! Jason's mom is such a wonderful cook! After we came back from dinner, she had these yummy homemade brownies and homemade vanilla bean ice cream. Brian was in heaven!

On Saturday, we went to Freeport to visit the outlets. We really went all out on things we "needed" for the coming winter season. We visited maybe only 4 stores but came out with 3 big bags from North Face and Cole Haan. We decided to stop there because if we entered any other stores, we might've been in really big trouble when the bills came in! Afterward, Jason and Mary brought us to a yummy lobster lunch spot along the water called Harraseeket Lunch and Lobster.


I think I really confused Jason with the peace sign! Haha


While driving around in Maine, a lot of the scenery was so lush that it reminded us of the set for Twilight haha. It also reminded me of Disney's Pocahontas, causing me to randomly sing songs from that movie to keep myself entertained on our drive back to Boston.

We had such a wonderful trip and can't thank the Vienneau's enough. Catch you guys next time!