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Never been to Tahoe, so when my friend Danny asked if I am interested in a ski weekend I jumped to the opportunity - it was fun, but somehow I still remembered the amount of snow we got last spring when visiting Mammoth (700+ inches in one season, supposedly)... all in all it was a fun weekend though - will definitely come back again!

Less than two weeks after my 1st trip to Tahoe I had the opportunity to go to Germany for work - a colleague of mine invited me to spend the weekend snowboarding on the Austrian Alps. Oh my gosh what a weekend... on the first night after a day of snowboarding (and a few feet from the edge of a cliff - GLAD TO BE ALIVE), we got to see a German cover-band called "Kuh and The Gang" (Kuh is "cow" in German)... a very funny performance, fueled by Jagermeister shots, beer, beer, Jagermeister shots, and more beer. I had no recollection of the remainder of the first evening.

The second day was fun-as-hell... although I spent the first few hours on the slopes recovering from the drinks, by noon I was doing fine and enjoying the resort built around a glacier... Will definitely come back next year!

The picture is of Bernd, my friend/colleague, and me around 300-or-so Austrian/Germans singing along to some updated remix of Rock Me Amadeus by Falco :)

During the week in Germany I also had the opportunity to stop by Cologne, even though it was just at the train station for a transfer to another town. I didn't take too many pictures on this trip, but for some reason I decided to take this one the moment I got off the train...

No idea what the sign says - as far as I know it could be ad ad that says "drink Köln-branded water" :P

Had a company event in downtown L.A. two days after I got back from Germany... on the way back home I decided to pull out my camera phone and snapped some pictures of the area surrounding my new hometown...

Pulled up to an 18-wheeler by a stop light, and found it amusing to take this picture...

Driving back from a business trip and I was wondering what was up with the traffic, only to realize that the mountain NEXT TO THE FREEWAY was engulfed in flames - if you look closely the reddish area in the picture are flames shooting 20 feet into the air... scary.

Got in to my shopping mode (happens about once or twice a year), and spent almost an entire month's salary on clothes (don't worry, I've saved enough to not go broke) in two days :P

While at Macy's I saw a cool vending machine selling Apple iPods and accessories. But nothing as fun as some of the more interesting vending machines I have seen in Japan...