I saw this photo in one of my Fotki friends Gary's albums. This was actually a photo of him and his son sitting on a patch of snow on top of the Swiss Alps. The clouds were in the background and looked awefully similar to the snow, so I could not resist to do a little photoshopping to make the two mountaineers have a Heavenly Lunch. I also created Photoshop album where I will post all of the photos that I personally photoshopped. By the way, when I say photoshop, I don't mean that I actually used Adobe Photoshop. I use this term the same as Kleenex for any nose tissue. I use Corel Paint Shop Pro for all my photo editing. I find that software to be more user friendly. To see all photos that have been photoshopped by me and other people, click here.

It's that time of the year for the company holiday party. We rented a restaurant for a private party during which we received our Christmas Gift.

Today I had a pleasure of meeting Miss Universe 2005 at the reception for the upcoming Viennese Opera Ball. The reception was held at the Austrian Consulate in New York. Miss Universe turned out to be a native of Russia and I had a quick chat with her in Russian. Her name is Natalie (a.k.a. Natasha) Glebova. She is very tall and obviously very beautiful. She came to the event accompanied by one of the "wellness providers" who happend to be also Russian and a person working for Miss Universe Organization. I resent the fact that I did not get a chance to take a photo with her :( But here is what she looked liked on that day.

At the ball last year, Miss Universe 2004 Jennifer Hawkins appeared in her fancy leather gown. Checkout top-to-bottom photo in Daily News article.

Related Links:

missuniverse.com Report on today's event vienneseoperaball.com

By request from a fotki.com user Gary I published how to make the custom tab menu that you see on the top of my website here.

Chi and I went to visit our friend Meg in Sea Bright, New Jersey for her Birthday Bash. The party was held at The Quay restaurant. As soon as I walked in to the huge building of the restaurant, I heard Meg's voice singing so I knew were I should head. She was singing under an accompaniment of a James Lafferty on Keyboard and a guitar player. With the wireless mic she walked around many of her friends singing just for them.

We finished the night with some karaoke to the sounds of my laptop that I brought with me.

What was amazing is that I met 5 people there who had the same phone as I - Treo 650! I had no idea it was so popular in New Jersey!

All Photos

Meg's Website

What's in common between bowling and DDR? Not much, with exception that you can do both at Port Authority Bus Terminal, which the huge multi-story bus station in New York City. Since two of my Brazilian co-workers who were visiting us for two months were going back tomorrow, today my team at work went out for some social bonding at the bowling alley. I was not as much excited about bowling than about showing DDR to my co-workers afterwords. After bowling the loosing team ended up paying for me and one of the Brazilian co-workers Herval to play it at the arcade as the rest of my co-workers were watching. Here is the video:

Joanna and I went ice-skating at Bryant Park. If you have your own skates and lock, it's totally free. Inspite of it being free, there were not too many people and skating was great! Finally I felt like it was Winter!

More Info in my Dance Blog.

Click on the picture to hear a great parody on Gloria Gaynor's hit I Will Survive. If you don't see the animation,

Many old videos in my Videos section have been offline because they were hosted on some Australian webhost called myacen.com for which I stopped paying. I opened an account with them because at that time it was a cheap deal, but then they raised prices and now their website seems to be down. I backed up all my videos though and today I transferred them on my main server hosted by ipowerweb.com that seems to give me unlimited space. So if you had trouble seeing some videos, rush to the Videos section and try again!

If you still have a problem with a particular video, please let me know by posting a comment.

I've heard about Capoeira while I was in in Brazil but actually have not seen it there. Today, with my Grand Canyon buddies, I took on another physical challenge - a Capoeira class offered in New Rochelle. Boy, am I sore after taking it! Capoeira is a 400 year old Brazilian martial art form which combines dance, martial arts, music and gymnastic.

When we entered the studio we saw several people chanting and playing drums and some other mysterious musical instruments. I quickly changed, grabbed extra cow bells and joined the group not to miss a chance to be part of the percussion jam. Then the class started with some stretching exercises, followed by practice of various Copoeira moves. At the end of the class we got into a circle and various people came into the middle one by one and did the actual Copoeira fighting to the sounds of drums and chanting. Here is the video:

All Photos

Related Links:

• Capoeira in Wikipedia
• Capoeira On Line
• Capoeira Performance Arts Center - the location of the class

All Photos

This is my second time watching this amazing dance troupe perform the most amazing routines. It was impressive how much control and balance the dancers had! Some of the moves seemed to defy the laws of gravity.

After the show the dancefloor opened to general dancing during which there was another show.

All Photos

Related links: Performance in March Gehring Dance Theatre official website

Today we escaped the hustle and bustle of New York by taking a day trip Upstate. Driving there was fun. Our resident expert on scenic routes James made us take a very nice scenic route, albeit going in a different direction of our destination. I was admiring the views so much that he had to yell STOP!!!!!! STOP!!!!!! STOP!!!!! as I was slamming the breaks heading straight into the congestion of cars at a traffic light which seemed to appear out of nowhere. The healthy eating apostle Joanna made James have mere 3 spoons of oat meal for breakfast which caused us to stop on the way.

Our first destination was Awosting Falls. As the picture here shows, we all made it there. It was just a short hike from the parking lot right outside the entrance to the Minnewaska State Park.

I finally tested the cool special waterfall effects of my camera. Compare this photo with this.

Then we drove to the other parking lot on top of the mountain next to Lake Minnewaska. We started on a hike along Castle Point Carriageway. The hike was a very easy one since we were walking along a road similar to the one in Central Park. But unlike the ones in Central Park, our road lead us to several spots which were especially enjoyed by our scenic expert. Sue and Joanna made the famous song by R. Kelly come into reality.

Joanna and I were planning to go Upstate for a while. We wanted to do see the Fall foliage, but with me going to Norway and other scheduling conflicts we only were able to do this today... which happened to be the exact same day when our friend Tim and his wife decided to stay at The Mohonk Mountain House. It is a Victorian castle built in 1869 which is one of America's oldest family-owned resorts. It is located just minutes away from Lake Minnewaska where we were hiking, so it was a great opportunity for us to visit this grand landmark of the Hudson Valley... for free. (Unless you are visiting someone who is staying there, the admission to the property on a weekend is $16 per person.)

After hiking for several hours, nothing beats coming inside a house and sit on the comfy chairs. We also got some free hot chocolate and cookies (not sure if we were supposed to eat that since we did not stay at the house, but no one checked) and chilled out in the rocking chairs on the veranda overlooking Lake Mohonk. Before it got really dark we walked around the surrounding areas along the shore of the lake. There were plenty of gazebos and rock formations. (Yes James, rock, not disco).

We took a tour of the house and saw several dining rooms, but ended up in a small private dining room of our own with self service right out of my backpack.

After catching on with the news and having heated discussions, we finally got ourselves together and headed out to New Paltz for some real dinner. I've been to plenty of White Tie affairs in New York City, but who would have known that this quaint town of New Paltz has them too!

All Photos

Related Links:

• Minnewaska State Park Preserve
• Lake Minnewaska Website
• Mohonk Mountain House

Tonight Joanna came over for dinner for potatoe pancakes. I finally was cooking for someone who is a cook expert. Some nice advice from Joanna was to use butter instead of corn oil. And also not to put as much butter on the pan as I did. We made an experiment. In one frying pan we had potatoe pancakes cooked with corn oil and in the other with butter. The ones with butter tasted much better. So from now on - no corn oil!

Went to the Scottish Ball rehearsal today. It was a rather tiring but fun experience of group Scottish dancing. This ball is ideal for those who don't know ballroom dancing because all steps are choreographed and that's why the ball patrons need to come to several rehearsals before the ball. For each dance you have a designated partner, but the steps that you do involve other couples. I have to say that for a newcomer the dances can be quite confusing. I already attended this ball back in 2003, so I was a bit less lost than the people who came there for the first time. Good thing that in the group of people that you're dancing there are people who have attended this ball for decades and they helped everyone out. I still prefer partner dancing without predefined choreography. This allows me to be as creative as I want to be.

Photos

scottishball.com

• Realistic looking tabs on top. They match the ones used by fotki.com. I hacked their code to get them to show up, but now I am dependent on their style sheets. Hope they don't change them too often.
• Moved the logo from top to the side bar on the left. This allows more vertical room for the photos so on screens with small resolution you don't have to scroll down every time a new photo is displayed.
• The side bar now has special links that are present on all pages
• Every page now has my picture. Surprisingly I've talked to people who have seen my website but had no idea it was mine.

Let me know what you think.

What I like about Times Square is that among the crowd of tourists there is always someone who really stands out.

I think that's what Joanna was doing at the Farmer's Market today.

Oh and I changed my website layout to match Joanna's sweater.

After Joanna cleaned up the city at the farmers' market, we came to my place and later James joined us. Yet even later Clayton was supposed to come as well. As soon as my doorman called me and told me that Clayton was on his way, James' idea was to play Clayton's theme song as soon as he walks into the apartment. I cued it up and started it as Clayton walked through the door. The rest is on the video: