Pintmaster

HoustonChronicle.com - ‘Green’ power offers energy at rate matching Reliant

It is good to see rising energy prices as long as they arent yours. Veronique and I made the decision to go with renewable wind energy in the “Energy Capital of the World”. We were paying a little more per KwH, but according to this article, it seems that Reliant and other dirty energies are catching up to us! Conscionable capitalism does pay off sometimes!

Well, it is Black Friday, the hottest shopping day of the year. I went with Kristian this morning to Best Buy at 6:00 am which is when the doors open. The line to get in was all the way around the block. The parking lot overflowed into the empty lot next door. We joined the end of the line with a bunch of people in front of us all coordinating their Black Friday shopping with other people on their cellphones. Once we got in, all of the $29.99 160GB Harddrives were gone. I ended up leaving with an APC Battery backup saved 40 bucks on the lowest online price (since we always lose power in H-town and the new U2 cd. Kristian bought a Canon DV Camera for 269.99. The price the day before at Best Buy was 349.99. The price elsewhere was $399.99. After Best Buy, we headed over to CompUSA. I wanted to get an Antec Sonata case for my computer. I had previously bought this for my grandma and the thing is so quiet that I decided to get rid of my green case that sounds like a jet engine and get something quiet. It will be so much better for watching movies. All in all, I guess we made out ok today. Black Friday is not the best deal of the year, it is more like a bunch of good deals all on the same day.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I am going to Kristian Zuzek’s house and Veronique is back home with her parents. I couldnt quite scrounge together $400+ for the ticket to NJ. I will surely be posting some pictures later of the event. I hope all of your turkey days go well.

Thanksgiving pictures now available!!!

People in the pictures are Andrej Zuzek, Liza Zuzek, Sonia Zuzek, Kristian Zuzek, Kelly Huddleston, Pat Zuzek, Aleks Zuzek, Jeff Fahys, Veronica Fahys and others.

Im bummed today because it is raining which means soccer is cancelled because they dont want to ruin the fields. My team made it through to the 3rd round of the Memorial Cup, and it is a little disappointing to not be able to play today. This means we will play in a couple of weeks time since Thanksgiving is next weekend.

Veronique and I just got back from spending saturday in Austin. She was super tired after her third week in her new job, so we left on Saturday after breakfast at Chachos. We were in a stinky and empty pub at 3:30 and after a pint, decided to go to eat at Trudy’s Texas Star. Austin Scott from Tasis was down from Canada working for a few months so we hung out together since we havent seen each other in a few years.
Here are the pictures from the evening. It was really enjoyable to be able to park the car and then walk to all the bars. A nice change from H-town. I am looking forward to Kristian moving to Houston in the next few weeks so then we can terrorize downtown. Expect pictures when we do that.

It looks like Kristian posted pictures also

Hello again, and welcome to my interesting vacation. This week is filled with more exciting news. This time, it is about Thailand, coming to you live from Australia! I am on my third day in Oz, and I am having a great time. The Holland vs. Portugal match is on tonight and we have to get up at 4:00 am if we want to watch it. We will.

The pictures are here by the way.

So, about Thailand. I spent all of my time in Bangkok staying with my friend Bob from RPI. He has a car there and drove me around everywhere. I saw the major touristy sights, a few of the Wots (temples) and the Royal Palace. I had a big night out one night and I did some shopping at the night markets there. I have to say though, I like a lot about Thailand, I have a few things that were sour milk to me. I made a list below:

I really enjoyed my time in Thailand, and I would love to go back. I hear that in the beach resort areas down south, the food is a little different (better) and people are different too. Every big city really will end up being the same. I saw McDonalds in a lot of places, and I got a great shirt there that has the logo and says ‘McShit’. Doing it again, I would definitely get out of Bangkok. There is a lot to see there if u are interested in Temples and Night markets, and I had a nice time when we did that stuff, but I would definitely like to get out of Bangkok into the countryside more. Im sure you are all excited for my updates on Australia. It has been great so far. I will write towards the end.

Im doing my entry for Spain from Bangkok since I didnt really get a chance in my 6 hours back in London. So far, I havent been to somewhere I didnt like. I had a great time in Marbella with Duncan. We spent a lot of time in Puerto Banus at the bars down there. Duncan is working for a promotions company called Sintillate doing a lot of "PR"ing (I guess that stands for public relations) with the basic goal of trying to create awareness of the various events Sintillate is putting on. I flew over there on Easyjet which was pretty reasonable and compares with Southwest, however I think the planes are newer. The plane I had back was only seven weeks old. You can really tell based on cabin noise that Airbus has an edge over Boeing. The plane was pretty quiet, and I was right next to the engine! So as for my trip to Spain, we hung out a lot at Lineker’s which belongs to the brother of Gary Lineker (the famous british soccer player). One night we went to Pangia where David Schwimmer and his gang were (i only saw them the next day at a beach party) and another night we went to Dreamers. The night we were at Dreamers, Teddy Sheringham (another british soccer player) got turned away because he had trainers/sneakers on. I guess in Spain, they dont know any of the British celebs. Unfortunately, while I was there I didnt take many pictures when we were out so all I really have to show is a few shots of Duncan’s place.

I got burnt the first day I was there and right now I feel like a snake shedding its skin. I met some nice people there, however, I think Puerto Banus is a really pretentious place. There were a lot of "beautiful people" walking around and all of the designer stuff got a little on my nerves. I had a great time hanging out with Duncan and I know that all the free drinks I was fed didnt hurt my enjoyment there. Thailand is great so far. It is my second day and I am loving it. Asia is awesome. I ate dinner last night for $1.50. Even the expensive restaurants are cheaper relative to europe and the states. Thailand is well worth the 10 hour trip from London. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

The verdict is in, and Turkey rocks. I had a fantastic time there and you can definitely see that from the Photos . We spent one night in Istanbul and were treated by some customers of my Dad to a fantastic dinner. I experienced an insane taxi driver who was overtaking on blind corners and proclaimed ‘If everyone in Istanbul drove like me, there would be no traffic’. Most likely because everyone would be in hospital recovering from accidents. Outside of Istanbul, taxi drivers are a little more relaxed. We flew to Dalaman the next day which is South East of Izmir which is the home of the first internet celebrity, Mahir Cagri whom some out there may remember.

We boarded the boat about 20 minutes drive away in Gocek and then sailed around the Gulf of Fethiye for most of the week. A lot of the islands we stopped at had ruins of Greek villages left over from when Turkey enforced their borders more strictly after world war one. A lot of the islands are not densely inhabited with usually a restaurant in most of the major bays. We stopped in Fethiye and took a trip to see the ruins of the cities of Xanthos, Pinara and Tlos. Many of the old ruins were inhabited first by the Lycians, then the Romans, and then by the Byzantines. Tlos was also used as an Ottoman stronghold.

Some of the highlights of my trip were: Getting a leather coat custom tailored (yes, they made it from scratch) for me in about 6 hours using incredible leather for about 1/4th of the cost of an inferior quality, mass produced one from Banana Republic; Being astounded when we stopped at a farm to get some fresh vegetables and they refused to take any money for the bagfull of tomatoes and cucumber we had picked. The people’s kindness towards strangers, to just give away something where we were completely willing to pay was tremendously kind; Lastly, buying a kilim was extremely exciting. I bought a small carpet for my living room which is a hand done, in two pieces, by two people on small looms and then stitched together. I will have a picture up there eventually.

I am now looking forward to going to Spain in a couple of days! More pictures in a couple of weeks!

I am in Boston until the 30th after a short stint in NJ at Veronique’s parents place. She is definitely moving to Houston which I am extremely excited about. I was with her when she got her first car in the states ( A cute silver Mazda Miata ). I will be flying to NJ in August to drive to Houston with her. I updated my pictures with some from Graduation. If you are looking for pictures from my trip, there should definitely be something up there on June 14.

In the meantime, enjoy the pictures that Kristian put up on his site of the move from Albany to Houston as well as a slightly odd video taken very late at night entitled "No Sleep in Kentucky"