halloween costume party by.peter october.27

On Saturday we held a halloween costume party at our house. We decorated our place with various halloween themed items and everyone brought a dish for the party. Cristina decided to dress up as a fallen angel and Lana dressed up as a little angel. I was supposed to be dressed up as an Australian convict but since no one got the joke I decided to change it to the 'married man' serving a life sentence :P

my phone to iPhone by.peter october.10

Yes, I have an iPhone. I admit I'd been eyeing it since it came out, and finally on the night of Cristina's birthday, she pulls me into an apple store and pushes me to finally buy it already. Ok so I tend to procrastinate when it comes to buying myself these sorts of luxuries. But I did it.

Like the iPhone, my old XDA IIs has a 3.5” touch screen, wifi, plays mp3s and can browse the internet. In fact, my old phone was much more feature rich than the iPhone. But of the few things the iPhone did, it did it very well, and now I can't imagine being without it.

to

cristina's bday by.peter october.10

For Cristina's birthday this year, I decided to take her down to Portland on a shopping spree. Portland is just across the Washington-Oregon border and about 3 hours drive south on the Interstate 5 (I-5). We left about 6am in the morning on Saturday since we wanted to have breakfast in Portland. On the way there we passed Olympia. Despite being the capital of Washington state, Olympia is much smaller than Seattle and few know it exists. It was raining lightly for most of the trip but luckily the rain cleared before we reached Portland. We quickly found our way to the Northwest District of Portland, parked the car and strolled along the streets looking for a place we could have breakfast. We came across many people going for their morning jogs and walking their dogs. The area was also filled with boutiques that were converted from residential terraces. It didn’t take long for us to find a café called Noah’s Bagels that served coffee, soup and bagels.

The soup and bagel went down pretty well, helped by the fact that it was our first tax-free meal in the US. Unlike Washington, Oregon does not have a sales tax so what you see on the price tag is what you pay. However, Oregon did have a bizarre law that perplexed me to no end. When I went to refill the car at a gas station, I was interrupted by an attendant who seemed really annoyed. I was told that it was illegal in Oregon for me to fill my own gas. Apparently, the state of Oregon deemed its citizens too incompetent to fill up their own gas so a professional gas-filler-upper-er was needed.

After breakfast we spent more time visiting many of the stores in the area. While we were in the Pearl District we also visited West Elm, which was a store Cristina has been keen to visit for a while now...

We also made sure to visit Powell’s Books, a giant store selling new and used books. We also visited the Portland Saturday Markets and then it was back to shopping at the Lloyd Center shopping mall. Yes, there was plenty of shopping going on.

We considered staying another day but didn’t think Portland could offer another day of shopping.
On the evening of Cristina’s actual birthday, we had a table booked at the Piatti Restaurant in the University Village in Seattle ...