04/02/2008 - Washington, DC

I know I've been kinda quiet these past few days but once I get home and sit down in front of my machine I'm simply too tired to start writing something up. Call me a *****, but getting up at 7 a.m. every day and working for 9h (mostly doing database-entries and related research) is kinda exhausting. And no, I can't really go into more details into what my job involves, mainly because I signed a contract that keeps me from doing just that.

Anyway, I've been spending my evenings in a relatively quiet way. On Monday and Tuesday me and my collegue went to a place close to work that comes with a happy-hour until 7 p.m. (beer at $2.50:-). Afterwards I went home to spend some quality time in front of the TV or getting to know my housemates. Today the routine was a little different, we were already on our way to the happy-hour when I suggested heading to Chinatown here in DC. Well, Chinatown is basically just a block of houses (well, frankly speaking rather only half a block) with some Chinese shops, restaurants and Chinese signs on the wall, nothing really to call home about. However what did make this night special was that it marked by first visit to Hooters, now don't judge me, it wasn't even my idea. Only having heard of Hooters in American TV-shows I wasn't really sure what to expect. And yes, the girl's outfit is quite appealing, but again nothing to call home about. At the end of the day I went their for the wings, not the legs. However I have to say that the waitress worked extra hard for her tip, I mean just look at the cute text and smiley on our bill, who wouldn't want to tip her? (And yeah, admittedly she was hot.)

On our way to the next Dunkin Donuts (I know which people will laugh at this point because they were the ones that traveled with me in Lima, Peru back in February 2001;-) we also stumled across these fellas who were livin' it up with some cool beat-boxin' and improvised drums made of buckets and traffic signs. Good stuff indeed and again they also deserved the buck I threw into their bucket. (Now I wish I had taken a short video or at least an audio-recording of their performance.)

Then I met up with the one and only Wayan Vota (from OLPCnews.com) and his significant other. Of course I had had dinner already so I only sat there and drink beer while they enjoyed their 'pescado entomatado' and whatnot. As always I learned a lot (this time about taxes, the price of housing in DC, salaries, etc.) by talking to Wayan and it was definitely a very nice chill-out for an otherwise rather busy day.

Well, I guess this will have to suffice for tonight, I'm off to watch some TV with my housemates... Take care everyone and speak soon.