http://www.dcruzin.com musings on photography, travel, God and just life Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:47:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's hard to believe that two years ago today my brother Oliver passed away at the age of 28. I had been home only a week after graduating college and going on a retreat. Yet I felt lucky to come home to the fragile and frail arms of my older ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/07/01/2-years-ago-today/ in 4 hours I'm departing for one of the 7 wonders of the world: The Grand Canyon. With 3 other friends crazy enough to join me, we're driving over 1400 miles in 2 days (over 21 hours one-way), and will drive about 3000 miles in 1 week. Yeah, that's a ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/05/17/pilgrimage-to-the-grand-canyon/ I opened my inbox this morning and saw an e-mail entitled "Donations for Myanmar Victims." Blah blah cyclone this, death toll that. I didn't want to hear about or read another e-mail from the many non-profit e-mail lists I'm subscribed to. But looking closer I realized it's not from an organization, ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/05/08/even-the-little-things-count/ Today is my second to last day at Microsoft. This may come as a surprise to many of you who I haven't talked to in awhile. Why am I leaving? Well, the answer to that question is complex, but I'll attempt to explain. Up front, I want to say that I really ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/05/07/leaving-microsoft-to-change-the-world/ What a day. I woke up at 5am so we could get to the starting line by 6:15am and make sure we were ready when the race started at 7:00am. We had a really late dinner and didn't get home till midnight. And I couldn't really go to sleep right ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/05/04/at-the-finish-line/ I'm about to take off and drive the wonderful 2+ hours to the glorious land of Vancouver, British Columbia. This magical place has amazing Asian food (esp. in Richmond), beautiful architecture downtown, is home to my favorite places of Stanley Park and Granville Island. But I won't be enjoying all ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/05/03/vancouver-half-marathon/ 30 years old? I thought I just turned 24 back in February? It's not me. My older brother Oliver's 30th birthday is today. 30 is a big year. Something tells me that Oliver wouldn't make a big deal about it though. He'd be casual about it, probably still playing Nintendo with ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/05/01/30-years-old/ this has been a tough weekend for me. at least in terms of saying goodbye. i knew a total of 4 people when drove up to seattle from stanford over labor day weekend 2006. this weekend 2 of them left seattle. these were guys who i knew at school and ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/03/16/goodbyes/ Do I feel any different today than yesterday? Not in particular. Yet today is a day of some reflection for me. I've now lived in Seattle for 18 months. I've been out of school for 21 months. At the same time, college doesn't seem so long ago, and yet I ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/02/21/24-oceans-24-skies-24-failures-24-tries-24-years-old/ I didn't grow up in the Chinese culture celebrating Lunar New Year, but I have enough friends who had the red enevelopes of money that made me jealous enough. But, now I'm just glad I get to celebrate with friends over Dim Sum and Hot Pot. I was reminded ... http://www.dcruzin.com/2008/02/07/its-my-year-of-the-rat/