In 24 hours...I'll be here:

Oktoberfest in Munich!

This is the second year in a row I've gone - I'll make sure to post up pictures too....

hey everyone,

just arrived here in Hong Kong, after a 13 hour flight from Los Angeles....meeting up with Pat et al to play some poker, but on the way I figured I'd stop by the alivenotdead office to hang out with Mark.

Here's Mark generously playing the role of tour guide...figuring out where I'm going on the map:

A shot of the Heavenly Kings poster...

And finally, this is how I look after a 13 hour flight:

Okay, time to go lose my money in poker!

This week has been a treat for me, since I had training in Belmont (near San Mateo) and so was able to sleep in my own bed every night!  In fact, because I had jury duty last Wednesday, I will have been in the Bay Area for 12 days straight, the longest time I've spent here since I graduated in 2004.  Kind of depressing huh?

Going to Vegas next weekend......can't wait..... 

Here are some photos from my trip to Pamplona two weeks ago, where I ran with the bulls...the festival of San Fermines runs for an entire week, with the running of the bulls occuring every morning at 8am. 

We arrived in Pamplona around 2am, after a 4 hour bus ride...as you can see, the party had been started LONG before we arrived.

The streets of the city were packed with people, literally, everywhere you looked you'd see people dressed up in the same costume, white pants & shirts, red sash, and a red scarf around the neck.

Some people from the group that I went with.  As you can see from the daylight starting to come up in the background, we partied well through the night and into the morning.

Around 6:30am, I left the group so I could make may way over to the route of the run.  Take a look at all the trash on the ground, the city was full of trash and broken glass after a night of partying.

Here's part of the route, the bulls actually run in between the wooden fences that some people are sitting on.

I decided to wait for the run in the Town Hall plaza, shown above.  The plaza was full of people, packed in like sardines waiting for the bulls to come.  I waited here for about an hour, nervous as hell wondering what the hell I was doing there.

I met a Canadian named Devin, whose birthday it was.  Since it was his first time also, we decided to stick together during the run, since we were both equally scared for our lives.

Everyone's getting psyched up, the run's about to start!

Here are all the drunkards running as the bulls approach...unfortunately, I was too worried about the bulls to get any pictures of them.

Basically what we did was we started to run, and then after about 200-300 meters, we pulled over and hid on the side of one of the walls lining the route.  After about a minute or so, 6 massive bulls came speeding by, paying no ttention to us scared foreigners hiding.

And after that, it was over...it all went by pretty quickly, I think the toughest part was the anticipation and nervousness associated with the long wait.  Overall, the actual run part was pretty anticlimactic, since the bulls run so fast and they finish the route in about 2 to 3 minutes. 

We decided to celebrate being alive by enjoying a few (read: many) beers, after that, we headed back for the LONG drive back to Northern Spain...I promptly fell asleep and didn't wake up for 16 hours, as I was still recovering from my jetlag.

Hey everyone, just a quick update from Spain.  Two Saturday´s ago I was in Pamplona and ran with the bulls....it was probably the scariest thing I´ve EVER done.  The actual running part wasn´t too hard, because it happened so fast, but the wait was what made me so nervous and scared.  I´ll be posting up pictures when I get back...

Going to Barcelona tomorrow for two days, before I head back to the US on Friday.  I´ll have the weekend to get back into the swing of things before I have to fly down to LA on Monday for work in Burbank....luckily I may have jury duty in the Bay Area that Tuesday, so hopefully (crossing fingers) I´ll be back in the Bay sooner than I think.  I´m probably the only person who´s ever been excited about the prospects of serving on a jury....