Anny’s World

Can you believe it’s been a year since I moved down to LA? I moved down April 30th last year. This past year sure flew by quick. It has been a very productive one tho.

When I first moved down, I started doing things I’ve been wanting to do but didn’t get a chance to up in the bay area. I started getting facials every week (now I get it every two weeks.) After my first summer down here, I started studying for the GMAT and applied to two business schools.

After I got into USC, I had a ton of free time and played PS3 (Lemmings, Oblivion). I discovered that I got Video Game Sickness on the PS3 from playing games where you control where you look with one hand and control where you move with the other. Luckily, Oblivion is on computer and I was able to play on computer without getting sick. It was such a great game. (I love RPGs and played Ultima, Final Fantasy, and a bunch of the classic Sierra games…and Oblivion was an awesome game…Yes, I passed the game.) I have also been occupying my time with Blockbuster Online subscription, Magazine Subscriptions (Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, Economist). I was way behind in the magazines but finally was able to catch up. From reading the magazines, the topics covered were mostly War in Iraq, Election 2008, Globalization, CEOs. There were many major themes like how quickly things can change in a matter of seconds. Examples: CEOs fired, religious groups changing sides against each other, the cycle of businesses doing well and poorly, US sentiments, life…

Having done and read all that, I will come back and be a little more diligent about updating my blog. Well, at least for the next three months. I have three more months and after that, my blog might be abandoned again. I have orientation the last week of July and then the first three weeks of August, I signed up for the optional Math & Accounting Camp at SC to brush up on my Calc, Stat, and Accounting. Then I have two weekends in August that I will be spending with my future classmates to pick the teams that we will work with during the first year. And then school starts. I am extremely excited to be going back to school and to be joining the Trojan family (I met up with Irwin and Jackson a couple of weeks ago and just hearing their stories has made me even more looking forward to school.)

My blog will be a little boring because I want to touch upon the topics that I read about in the magazines, so bear with me.

I finally had a chance to update my 2007 Goals, Trips, Pictures:
2007

I was in Vegas last week from Wednesday until Yesterday (Sunday). It was fun (we went swimming, gambling, shopping, ate a lot, met up with Jane & Brian who were in Vegas too celebrating their 1 year anniversary - we ate and gambled together…Jane and I were getting some kickass hands.) I had today off, and in two days I will be going to Hawaii for 5 days. The next three months will be busy, but I will try to keep my word and update often. Here are Vegas pix…I will post Hawaii pix next week when I get back.

For a while now, I have been wanting a device that allows me to consolidate all my other devices. I had a phone (RAZR), a pda (HP Pocket PC), a camera (Sony DSC-T1). I synced my pda with my computer and had my calendar and contacts on there. As an alternative to the iPod and not wanting to be boggled down with another device, I used my pda as my music player.

All this changed when roomie 33 recommended a new phone to me: Samsung Blackjack.

My life is forever changed, yet again, thanks to roomie.

This device has everything…phone, internet, pop mail, windows media for music and video. And best of all, it runs on WindowsMobile which allows me to easily sync it with my computer to upload my calendar and contacts. I didn’t even have to sit there and re-enter any phone numbers like I have to when I upgraded my phones in the past. Since I sync it to my contacts, my phone also uploaded email addresses so I can easily email people.

And there’s more…the phone lets me log into AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger all at once…considering Wells Fargo blocks chatting programs and Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo! Mail, now I can have access to all that on my phone…with chat programs, I feel like I am in touch with the world and friends. When I lived in SF, I would sometimes be up at 3am and it was always comforting to log onto AIM and know that there are still people up at that hour that you can talk to. Seeing those names in odd hours of the night was very comforting and even now when I log on, it feels like I’m still connected with them somehow. There are people whom I haven’t seen in 2-3 years who send me occasional IMs. It’s nice to see their names online on my buddy list. Having chatting programs while I am working out at the gym also helps me pass the time quicker and not think about how many minutes I’ve been cycling or on the eliptical. I can easily spend 30 minutes to an hour at the gym on a machine chatting and time passes by fast… 
 

Another incremental benefit of the phone and another device no longer needed is the very sweet Google Maps for Mobile Phones. After I got my TL, I completely regretted not getting a Navi, especially now that I live in LA and there is more territory to drive and places to go to down here. Although my phone does not have GPS (I can get an extra adaptor if I want), it is still a great tool b/c essentially, I have a walking map and can take my phone anywhere (whereas, a navi in my car would have had to stay in my car.) What’s so sweet about Google Maps is you can look up the usual Driving Directions and Local Businesses and there’s a feature to directly call that business once you pull up the information. How neat is that?

I’ve been discovering new features about the phone with each week…the latest is MusicID. I kid you not when I say, a lot of people ask me if I know the names of songs or if I own an MP3 of a song. I don’t know why they think I know…well, most of the time I actually do if the song is mainstream and when they hum it…one of those people is my brother…considering he got a Blackjack too (my whole family’s cell plan is under me and I upgraded my brother’s and my phone when I got my Blackjack) now I direct him to the handy feature inherent in our phone called MusicID. When you open MusicID, you simply hold up the phone to any music playing (in a car, on the radio, at a bar/club, etc.) and the phone will match the song to the feature’s database of 300 million songs and it will show you the name and artist of that song on your phone. It gets archived in your phone and you can forward the name to friends or even download the ringtone or song. 
 

I basically have a mini-computer in my hand with the Samsung Blackjack. I loved it so much that I recommended the phone to Dufus and he went and bought one too.

If you are shopping for a phone, go take a look at the Blackjack. (I was actually going to wait around for the Apple iPhone, but iPhone = $599…the Blackjack = $199…I decided to just get the Blackjack.)