Off to Japan

I'm heading out to Japan today for 2 weeks. I promised Noah to post updates on my trip here, so I'll try to do so.

The good news is that we're flying business class for free using frequent flyer miles.

The bad news is we're connecting in Atlanta (instead of Detroit or Chicago) and have a 5-hour layover. In terms of hours (27 hours) it might be my longest transit to Japan yet.

With the advance in portable electronic devices like laptops and ipods though, I think extended plane rides have gotten considerably easier. Now if every international flight offered wireless internet, things won't be so bad at all!

Pavestone Patio

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm spending some of my time off this month building a pavestone patio behind the house. Basically, you mark off the area, dig up the grass & soil 6 inches deep, lay down base gravel, compact the gravel with a rented plate compacter, lay down sand, and lay 1'x1' pavestones.

We're planning of creating a patio that's approx. 260 square feet, so the material costs ended up being around $1000. Fortunately, my parents had donated $1000 to us towards a home improvement project as a housewarming gift last year. Compare that to $3000+ if we had a contracter do the work, so it'll definitely be worth it to do it ourselves. (assuming we do it correctly)

The challenge is going to be the sheer volume of materials that we'll have to move. Literally, tons of material.

5 tons of gravel
2 tons of sand
3.5 tons of paver stone

And we need to do it all with shovels and a wheelbarrow... Either I'm going to get really buff, or I'm gonna herniate a disk in my back.

Wedding Season

In 2008, I attended 1 wedding.
In 2009, I attended 2 weddings.
This year, I've been invited to 6 weddings with another invitation possibly incoming!

I guess it's about that time in our lives. I love weddings as they also seem to double as a reunion of friends you haven't seen in a long time. Tragically however, I may only make it to 3 out of the 6. One was a destination wedding requiring a week-long Caribbean cruise that would've drained $1500 out of each of our bank accounts and decimated our yearly vacation days. The other two are 500 miles away and on Sundays. This would require us to take the following Monday off as travel days, which would not have been an issue had they been before June or closer to home/work...

But I start my residency training in June.

I do get 3 weeks of vacation a year, but apparently there are only 3 designated months during which I can take the said vacations. Which months end up being these so-called "vacation friendly" months depends on your rotation schedule, but apparently June and December are "no-vacation" months for every resident. (June for new resident orientation, December to cover for everyone else taking Christmas vacation)

This has been a major disappointment for me, as the 3 weddings I'll probably miss are ironically the weddings I was looking forward to the most. (No offense to the 3 weddings I'll actually be attending...)

But in the end, I'm still very thankful to all the friends who invited me to their weddings. (My own cousin didn't invite me to his wedding last year!!!) Whether I'll be in attendance or not, I hope your special day goes well and that I hope to see you all again soon!