it's been nearly a month but i figured i would update on my life.
1. i graduated! well not officially, but i walked and am talking the last class of my undergraduate career. woohoo!
that's me waiting to get my name called!
2. sadly, i had an allergic to reaction to something i ate and it escalated to a skin problem my mom had when she was younger, so pretty much i inherited my moms skin problems :(, im taking like 2 pills per day and like 3 lotions, such a pain in the ass
3. i met hung huynh from top chef last night! me and alex went to pick him up with his manager tom, funniest guy ever, turned out tom went to the 1997 mtv music awards! hahahah hung was a crackup too, he was a down-to-earth kind of guy who exuberated the same confidence that was shown on topchef. funniest conversation was while driving around d.c. i pointed out a hookah bar and hung goes "hookah? you guys smoke herb?" i nearly crashed my car lol, that and conversations about playing pool for cocaine and stuff, came to a funny car ride taking him to the restaurant. all in all hung seemed like a cool guy, he's past the top chef point and he's trying to get his career started by opening up a restaurant in NYC. shout out to alex who fucking ratted me out to the restaurant boss to make me clean, you bitch.
some pics
him teaching people how to make nuoc mam lol
me and his manager/friend tom, funny guy
food being served was delicious, banh cuon, bun cha hanoi, pho, mi sau, it was deliciousss
so this is the weekend before finals so i decide to go home and see my brother and my uncle since my mom is in vietnam. so its friday night (yesterday) and daniel and i decide to go to cafe asia per request from alex. yup cafe asia was fail, and not just like me lighting the wrong end of a cigarette fail but super fail. the lights are on people are sitting oh well, alex says hey come to gtown! sure, georgetown is always fun right? hop on to M street, park on prospect, start our walk. first stop, THE TOMBS. now daniel said it best when we entered "i feel like im in a bar in aspen colorado" now here's what i imagine when he says that, wooden bars, white people everywhere, dressed in american eagle polo/buttonup and khakis with loafers. open my eyes yup thats what i see. so after 20 minutes slowly absorbing and trying to adapt to our newly found environment, daniel and i take a shot of tequila and draft alex with us to m street.
now on M street we go to a student bar called the rhino, walk in and yeahhhh there's 20 people there, couple of shots and a beer later we are upstairs of rhino listening to amilli by lil wayne coming through kmart speakers surrounded by girls who have huge knockers but faces that look like they've been dragged through spikes covered with caterpillar eyebrows. (shallow i know)
so we move onto a bar named modern which a friend of mine sometimes DJ's at, not only is there a $10 cover its fucking empty inside! like 30 people, a bunch of dudes and a couple of cute girls. so a couple of overpriced tequila shots later we go BACK to the rhino, drink more and then attempt to walk around semi-drunk and hungry. after getting some cheap pizza and dousing some girls in our ranch dressing, we go back to the tombs to find out that it is more fail and is playing sweet home alabama.
this pretty much ends our night right? nah one more great event happened. so i got tired of standing around near our cars so i went inside turned on my car and daniel said i got a sweet song that im going to play. BIGGIE - JUICY. greatest song ever, so we start the song, the blackest people at georgetown (which isn't saying much) told us to turn it up, so we did, AND THEY STARTED DANCING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET! ahahahhaha we had a fucking dance party in the middle of the street for the duration of this song. that was the best thing ive ever seen in my life! hahahaha, needless to say that capped off the night.
hahahah so i just got back from fail night with hugo and dan, we met up with vitya, took shots at ara's. that place is pretty sick, 120 ounces of beer for $25 so thats like $2.50 a beer. SWEET. after that we just drove around annandale lookin for places to get our grind on but to no avail.
the real fun this weekend came on friday night when hugo, myself, daniel and his weird ass friend went to this bar/dance place called carribean breeze. it was real fun, we had some beers, played cornhole or whatever the heck it is and danced the night away. we met up with our old friends from elementary school natalia and her cute ass latina friends :D. but holy crap funny shit happened, 1st of all, yours truly, austin van, actually went up to a girl, got her to dance and talk with him.
. ya that was my face when she said yes lol. so turns out she's filipina, she thinks im cute and wants me to come back next week, but i forgot her name! haha. second, daniels friend, we'll call him michaelangelo, is a weird ass kid who has no friends and talks alot of stuff but can't back it up, long story short, dan has a new friend LOL. 3rd and probably the most funniest, as we were leaving the bar hugo gets headbutted by some frat white boy and before any of us could react, the whiteboy just walks away. so he got headbutted and ran. ahahhahah.
haha its been nearly a month or two since i last updated, not really much has changed.
i got a new roommate, a russian named alex, cool guy, could've done worse ive been trying to study like mad, even though im only taking 3 credits senior seminar is one of the most demanding courses i have ever taken, its absolutely killer.
spring break was last week, i didnt do shit other than take my brother to school, play dota with hugo and bullshit with arash on AIM, interspersed with studying. in other news, i finally finished all my graduation stuff so im officially done this spring/early summer! woot woot.
but seriously, dan and i forgot to pay our electricity bill for the past 4 months so they shut it off until we pay it back, but they wont let me start a new account with them (dominion that is) until dan closes his out so im temporarily in midlothian with my cousins until we get that sorted out :(
but now onto my favorite moment of march: MARCH MADNESS!!!! :D
college basketball in the spring is one of my most favorite times of the year. obviously since VCU got in it's even better. VCU is projected against UCLA in the first round and every sports analyst lists that as an upset, as it should, but i think its going to be a very tough game. my final four as of now is memphis, louisville, pitt, and UNC and will probably stay like that.
as for poker, i havent been playing much because im obv busto, but hopefully when i graduate and get a job i can get a small roll going and start a small grind.
with that being said, back to studying for senior seminar as i have a presentation tomorrow!
if any of my readers want to chat, just message me on facebook. all 3 of you :D
woot, sorry for not updating in a good bit, been a little busy, some cliff notes on the past 2 weeks
-i signed up for 3 classes cause i thought thats how much i needed to graduate but turn out i need four :( so im staying until the summer -senior seminar is quite possibly the hardest class i've ever taken -diana, jeanine and myself are teaching a workshop on networking for MAUVSA summit -i got 3rd in some poker tourmament online for $300ish -i applied for 3 internships and am awaiting.
lol its late and i cant sleep, like 5:30am, this song is currently crushing me now even though i hate kanye west auto tune
and this song, it kills me. neyo is sick fabolous is sick, jamie foxx is aite
i love playing poker i love playing games like warcraft3/starcraft and counter-strike i love playing football/basketball and im decent at baseball i love watching the NFL/NBA and post-season MLB
for the first, i already wrote how i got into playing poker
for the second, when i was in 7th grade my friend jonathan and joshua yoo along with kelvin, sharif, lawrence and other asians got me hooked onto a game called starcraft. its a strategy game where you pit aliens vs humans vs alien-humans. it is a great game. i started playing this game and slowly got addicted to it, i played it religiously unti about 11th/12th grade when i started playing warcraft3 which is essentially the same thing but with different units and a different style of gameplay. i am still somewhat decent at both games but im all giddy awaiting the arrival of starcraft 2. :D call me a nerdy asian, whatever!
as for counter-strike, living in an area with an inane amount of PC cafes, you eventually learn to play a shooter game called counter-strike that pitted terrorists vs counter-terrorists, you buy guns, kill other people, it was a fun game as well. i actually played this game to a serious level where i would "practice" every other day and go to live tournaments and stuff, i think i won about $1000 in prize money playing lol. cool shit.
to this day i still play wc3 randomly during the week as with starcraft, cs not so much, havent been getting into games that much. i do wish i would get better at madden though
for the sports, its pretty cool i think how i got started. when i was 4-5 years old i got started in pee wee soccer like all kids and i fricken loved it! i played till i was about 7-8 and my mom got me started in basketball! oh how do i love basketball. i played every day, was on the all star team for annandale boys and girls club and was there every winter, it was GREAT. during this time i was 11-12 and needed a sport inbetween basketball seasons so my dad thought i should try baseball, it was okay, i played outfield and batted 5th most of the time, i loved to play the field but i sucked as a batter. this is about the time my cousins got me into playing football, i loved football and i still do. the contact, the accuracy of throwing the ball and catching passes. i quickly started playing every week with my family just throwing the ball and running routes and stuff, i still think i have a decent arm now and have decent hands. fun stuff! i was a nomad among little league sports cause i think that its cool to try new things. ive tried ice skating (lol as my cousin natalie was a ice skating trainer), lacrosse (meh), swimming (for brief bit), and a handful of other sports.
nowadays i just stick to playing basketball and pickup football games, i havent thrown a baseball in years but would love to, let me know if you want to play catch :D
the last thing i love is watching sports. my friends and i are sports junkies, i follow all sports by reading, watching, anything. lets see, kevin, me, chung, alex, vernon, phillip ejaz and tahir all follow sports and we're pretty knoweledgable on all sports whether its the NFL draft, NBA draft, huge MLB signings, NHL records or even swimming events, we know most of them. i believe its a conversation piece in 70% of our conversations lol. theres nothing more relaxing to me than having a drink in one hand, remote on the other and watching the slew of sunday football or the excitement of the NBA finals or even the cool days of the MLB post season.
the teams that i follow NBA - wizards NFL - redskins MLB - nationals College BBall - VCU College Football - VTech
not a bad weekend in football picks though won some change from this
chargers win outright - W ravens win with 3.5 - W cards outright - W minnesota with 3.5 - L
not that bad imo. next week is going to be tough here are some predictions pending i see the line
baltimore at tennessee, i like the titans in this one, chris johnson is good out of the backfield and lendale can pound the goal line, titans offense is much better than baltimores and their defenses are about equal, i pick the titans 13-10
san diego at pittsburgh, upset pick of the week, chargers over pitt, even though pitt has a great defense, their offense has little to be desired. i look for chargers capitalizing on mistakes that ben roethlisfjkslfjager will make. chargers win 21-14
eagles at giants - ugh i hate both teams cause they are in the same division as the skins but the giants are going to win this one 31-17. earth wind and fire will dominate and eli will be efficient
cards at carolina - panthers win 38-31 because both team can pass and run all day on each other, in the end, identity and theft will win the game against the cards shitty run d and the cards will throw all day if the oline protects warner enough.
welp! now i'm done :D. sorry for reading all of this if you're a non sports junkie but hey!
these picks will probably be edited further along this week when news breaks.
as the new year begins and the old one ends, its time to make resolutions for this coming year.
here are my resolutions -start working out again (yeah i know) i would start working out for like 2 months straight then give up and get lazy lol, now lets make it year round -graduate -earn $10,000+ in poker winnings (feasible if i get a roll started) -limit my degeneracy in gambling -spend more time studying rather than fooling around and -find a longterm girlfriend
word, all of these seem possible if i actually put my heart into it and try. so long 2008! hello to 2009!
. ya that was my face when she said yes lol. so turns out she's filipina, she thinks im cute and wants me to come back next week, but i forgot her name! haha. second, daniels friend, we'll call him michaelangelo, is a weird ass kid who has no friends and talks alot of stuff but can't back it up, long story short, dan has a new friend LOL. 3rd and probably the most funniest, as we were leaving the bar hugo gets headbutted by some frat white boy and before any of us could react, the whiteboy just walks away. so he got headbutted and ran. ahahhahah.