syntax

lazy sunday

lolz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaiqvTn_WyA.

nothing crazy going on, just plugging away. spent my weekend at school studying like a big dork. just to clear my name, i was entirely reluctant.

it's cold again today. i'm tired of winter.

the exam fees are adding up. i'm taking the NY and NJ exams ($250 and $475 in cashier's checks, respectively), plus barbri ($2,600) and pmbr for the multistate section of the test ($499). doh it hurts. i need to get the NJ application postmarked by tomorrow or it goes up to $575 to apply. that means i have to start it. 27 pages! well at least i got my taxes done.

reminds me, less talk, more filling in endless forms. w00t!

in the ferrari, jaguar switching four lanes

so i've found my next car...

altho i have my doubts about the saab turbo x, i still really like it. i saw it in person at the NY auto show this past week which confirmed my desire for that car, despite that it's not quite the car i could get for the same price from other manufacturers.

at $42k, it's not cheap. and it's a limited edition. i hear there are only 60 left in the US. maybe 5 years from now i'll snag one. right now i'm content to admire from afar...

so i've had a busy past 2 weeks. i went skiing in park city, utah and then i took pics for the auto show for a friend's auto site. utah was awesome. i was pleased to have my goggles with me b/c the snow fell in such quantities that i could hardly see 10 feet in front of me on the slopes. the nicest parts were the gourmet dinners provided by every restaurant there, and relaxing in an outdoors hot tub. as the water seethed and bubbled, the snow hissed as it fell on our heads and into the tub.

the auto show was great fun. beforehand, GM took us out to a nice restaurant, put people up in a $1000/night hotel (why did i say i didn't need lodging?!), and took us to a party sponsored by saab at the IAC building, a glass edifice on the west side that had been designed by frank gehry. drinks abounded:

and there were models strutting around the 9-x and 9-4x concept cars, which displayed saab's new biohybrid future (ethanol/electricity/solar power). saab also has a new line of earth friendly clothing. i wasn't thrilled by the clothes and less so after i saw their prices. the cars themselves were clearly rough mock-ups. i hope GM keeps saab around long enough to realize these concepts.

the next day, there were multiple interviews of GM execs and designers. designers were young and hip, with nice suits and spiky hair. the head of GM NA design basically told me that the station wagon is dead in the US. i reported this to my dad who appeared to shed a tear. overall i had a great time. completely new experience for me.

well spring break is over now. back to the grind...

cause we're thorough in the boroughs and that's a must

i was ragging on NYC before but i wound up taking some photos of the manhattan skyline tonight. it certainly cooled down a bit. here are my favorites:

contemptible

ok i love NYC but its roads are a total disgrace. they're worse than roads in philly and i pay far higher taxes living NYC than in philly. funny that today i had to drive to queens to see if i could get my rear passenger tire repaired since it's been having a slow leak for the past 2 weeks. so i'm told that the tire is pretty bad and it's a sidewall leak that can't be repaired, and the guy shows me the inside of the tire and i quietly thanked the stars it didn't crap out on the van wyck. after paying a small fortune for a replacement, i drove a bit in queens, went to the largest korean grocery store i have ever seen, and then hightailed it back.

on the way, i was treated to the worst roads i have ever experienced. the BQE, going west and east, is an expressway that i've known for some time is absolutely abysmal. once i tried to play a CD and the car was banging up and down over the joints in the road and the unpaved sections and potholes that the CD was skipping so much that it couldn't even play for a second until i took an exit. well the roads were worse than the BQE. i had to take a weird off/onramp to the LIE and i hit a stretch of the road that, coming around a bend, must have been at least a foot of water deep. i thought my car was going to stall out. the entire several hundred yards was just me plowing through the water until i could get onto the next expressway. coming across the roosevelt bridge, i hit an enormous, unmarked pothole the width of my car and the depth of hell that made the most hideous sound ever. i was coming back from the tire replacement and i thought wryly that i should probably turn around and have them now check out both of the front tires. the whole trip was an absolute disgrace.

turns out the river i had to navigate was also extremely filthy as when i got out of my car, the entire right half was covered in white residue. what a mess. seriously, if you own a car here, you can't expect it to stay pristine. mine has dents and miscellaneous scrapes all over it. just taking it out for a drive guarantees that something will damage your car b/c of the ungodly state of the roads. and one other gripe that nondrivers can relate to -

why is it that there's construction constantly on the same roads year after year and nothing gets fixed? i remember living on 10th street and 5th ave - every year there was construction outside my window on 10th street. the jack-hammering would go on for weeks. i couldn't get any sleep at all in the early mornings. and this was an annual event. why can't they just FIX the damn problem? instead of coming back and reopening the road and paving it up only to reopen the road again and again, repeating this whole inane and infuriating process? same thing with the BQE. they've been working on the same stretches of road for a year now. there is NO improvement at all. same areas blocked off, same open joints and broken pavement. whoever is running this - i guess it's DOT - i mean i really question the judgment.

well my consolation is that i've bought the motherload of korean food and so i'm going to go have a phenomenal lunch. btw the luc besson movie, "Angel-A," is pretty good. it's in french, set in paris, and about a perpetual liar who's about to off himself whose life changes when he meets quite a heavenly creature. gets my recommendation.

weird story for the day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_and_Barney_Hill_abduction.