JangChoe.name

I was going to write a long diatribe about Atlanta gas crisis. I had it planned out: my theories on why this is happening, and how I was going to fix it. But I decided I won’t write about it. You can find about 700 billion comments on everyone’s own opinions on this matter. And my views are little bit too controversial, and I’m afraid of getting flamed.

So Atlanta has no gas and no water. We might have a Mad Max type scenario here. I’m thinking of getting a nice Mossberg shotgun and a bladed boomerang.

But instead of focusing on the negative, I’ll focus on something else–my wedding plans. We got our cake, groom’s cake, my tux, and groomsmen’s suits.

Me Playing Out My Fantasies

I would describe people who practice martial arts as funny. I can’t wrap my head around a suburbanite who wants to be a super fighter. It’s not like they’re getting into fights everyday. So they go and practice “martial applications” so they can look like t3h d34dly. I like what a friend of mine said about most martial arts classes–they’re just role playing for adults. They dress up in funny uniforms and act like they’re doing deadly techniques on each other.

Don’t get me wrong, I love martial arts. I practice it and watch it all the time. But I do know that I can’t fight my way out of a paper bag. Why do I do it? Because it’s an interesting hobby.

But a lot of people think it gives them ninja skills. I remember one of my old teachers saying how he used a certain technique at a bar fight. A bar fight? What type of bars does he go to? I’ve had a pretty prolific nightlife back in the day; and I’ve gotten into some hairy situations from drunken rednecks, steroid muscle heads, frat boys with backward caps and popped collars, little Asian thugs, etc. But it never escalated into any physical altercation. And I never seen any fights break out in clubs or bars.

Also, the uniforms are ludicrous. I can understand if the uniforms serve a purpose like in Judo or BJJ. And I can tolerate it if they wear it during demonstrations. But why would anyone practice in a silk tai-cheeese uniform or in a hakama? That’s pretty gay. Like I said, it’s a step above dungeons and dragons for adults.

But who am I to judge? If it makes them feel better about themselves, I guess it’s okay. But if I wanted self-defense, I would just buy a shotgun.

What Has Been Going on With Me

If you haven’t checked my facebook profile recently, here’s some news for you: I’m engaged. The typical questions always comes up:

• When are you getting married?
• How did you propose?
• Where are you going on your honeymoon?
• Are you buying a house?
• Where are you going to live?

So I’m going to answer these. If you see me and get into an awkward silence, I expect you to come up with something creative other than these 5 questions. Anyway here are my answers:

• Dec 20, 2008.
• I put the ring on her toe when she was least expecting it and asked her to marry me.
• Destin, Florida.
• No
• Smyrna, Georgia

Long Answers

The happy couple

Marriage Date

I’m getting married on December 20, 2008. Why that date? It’s cheap. We’re paying for most of our wedding costs, so we have to make it cheap as possible. If you want to be on the guest list, email me. We’ll consider it. Be aware that we are trying to limit it to 100 people.

Proposal

My proposal wasn’t romantic, but it was funny. Here was what happened: Hannah was working at 2 jobs at that time. Since she was making more money than she was used to, she shopped a lot. Being the frugal guy that I am, I nagged her about spending too much money.

So one day, we were watching TV. She was facing away from me so I began to massage her feet. As I was directing her attention on one part of the feet, I put the ring on her toes so she won’t feel it (old magician’s trick–misdirection). Then I used my best nagging voice and said, “Hannah, what did you buy now?!”

She gave me a guilty look. She was probably thinking what I caught her buying this time. Lucky for her she saw the ring, and I proposed. But crazy things happened after that, but that’s another story.

If you want to see the ring, ask Hannah to show it to you. It’s a very unique design that took me months to find. I don’t want to say where and how I got it because I don’t want to share my “gokui.” Besides, it’s so unique I don’t want it to become commonplace where everyone follows my fad.

Honeymoon

When I tell some people where I’m going on our honeymoon they also make a disgusted face. I don’t understand their logic. They know we’re paying for 90% of our wedding. And that’s a big expense. So we have to cut corners. We can’t afford to go to a nice place. But they think we should because, “it’s our wedding so it has to be special and romantic and exotic and…” I would like to make a gagging sound on that comment. We’re going to Destin.

Why Destin? Because we get to stay at Hannah’s mom’s friend’s condo for free. And we can save money by driving down there. And it’s away from Georgia. That’s good enough for us.

Trust me, we tried many nice places to go: Cancun, 5-9 day Cruises, Jackson Hole, Munich, Peru, etc. But they were out of our budget. So the only place we could afford was Destin, Florida.

If you guys still think going to Destin is appalling for our honeymoon, by all means give us $4000 so we can go to a nice place. We’ll give you a nice thank you card.

Are We Buying a House?

We’re not buying a house yet. No matter how many times you’ll tell me that I’m throwing my money away, I need to build equity, I can write off a lot in taxes, the market is good right now, blah blah blah; I don’t have the money to buy a house. So stop giving me “advice” to buy a house.

Once again, if you have about $30,000-$50,000 to give me for a down payment for a house. I would gladly listen to you and buy a house. I’ll send a 2 thank you cards too. Other than that, don’t nag me about it. I pay $615 in rent right now. There is no decent house I can get that will be cheap as the rent I’m paying now.

So until it makes economical sense for me to do so, I can’t buy a house yet. Trust me, I went to several rent/buy calculators and worked out the numbers. I read several financial blogs and articles about it. I think I know what I’m doing instead of listening to outdated advice.

The Place We’re Living

Finally, we’re going to live near Smyrna, GA. It’s close to both of our work. So it’s convenient. Besides, Hannah is allergic to Dekalb county for some reason.

My old version of Wordpress was giving me problems in webkit browsers (Google Chrome). I so decided to upgrade to see if it made any difference. Since I was upgrading, I decided to spruce up the place a little bit with a new theme. It’s my kind of theme–very simplistic.

There were a lot of things I wanted to write about–for the enjoyment of my fans–but I couldn’t because my old version of Wordpress was incompatible with Google Chrome. I’m hoping that I’ll write more instead of micro-bloggin in Twitter all the time.