okay, you want to send me e-mail but you don't remember my e-mail address? no problem! you found this site, didn't you? well, you're halfway there! you see, the way i registered for my domain name, i also have anything sent to @iamtonyang.com forwarded to my real e-mail account. why is this cool? well,

me@iamtonyang.com

is just the same as

raging_pedophile@iamtonyang.com

see how much fun it can be to write me? before you even start writing, the yuck yuck is already starting! so don't be shy, send me a note, i always reply, and i'm always happy to hear from fans. don't be that guy or girl who reads my stuff in the shadows like a crazy stalker! reach out and touch the author! (that's me!) in the most platonic metaphysical way of course.

some call it the booze cruise. for us, it was our 5th year anniversary party onboard a ship in boston harbor that just happens to be serving alcohol.

the highlight of the evening was seeing my bosses cut up some rug on the dance floor. i make no judgement on styles or techniques since i can't dance to save my life (i can on occasion do a dance sprint, which is just a short quick burst of spontaneous dancing usually followed by me running away with my hands over my face in sudden embarassment). the lowlight? come and speak to me in person, that knowledge i do not make known in public.

my friend amanda rawson bagged on me at the last minute (an apologetic e-mail arrives in my inbox 30 minutes before i left for the marina). although it would've definitely been more fun with her (by many magnitudes at least, especially towards the end when the bosses made people dance for booze tickets, i'm sure she wouldn't have been dry the whole night), i have grown accustomed to her mysterious unpredictable ways!

however, on the upside, our mutual friend dan kuehner made a surprise last minute cameo appearance. (special note for those friends who are now wondering, "tony, how come i wasn't invite?" friends, we were limited to one guest per person, we don't make up the rules!). dan brought onboard an objective 3rd party point-of-view to tonight's festivity, and i'm sure he will tell all about the madness that is six red marbles and warn prospective employees from applying for any jobs at our company.

as mentioned, it was suppose to be free booze but that was a conditional free. free up to 5 drinks, everyone was given these little tickets than could be redeemed for ethanol-based libations (after 5, you have to start paying for your own drinks). a few days prior to the actual booze cruise, amanda garnier tried to get me to give her all my booze tickets since i wouldn't be drinking. thing was, as soon as i got onboard, i was given 5 non-acoholic drink tickets, so i had no booze tickets to trade (i wouldn't have given her these tickets anyway, at least not for free). but how were they to know that tonight i wouldn't fall off my proverbial sauce wagon and start getting shit-faced like the rest of god-fearing society? i mean, the chance of that happening is very remote, but it could happen!

after 3 hours out at sea, we came back (prematurely i might add, the dance floor was just starting to cook, although the weather was getting sort of cold out there in the harbor with the strong sea breeze and our ship plowing 5mph <thank you gps!>). i opted to go home while (i think) a handful of my fellow coworkers are going off to a hotel somewhere and getting hammered for real. we shall see tomorrow morning who decided to take the booze cruise on land. i'll be sure to SPEAK EXTRA LOUD in case they don't hear me so well. dan kuehner, take notes!

one of the most often complained about item of this website is the fact that i only have small thumbnail photos, that you're constantly being teased if you try to click on the image in the hopes that you'll see a larger photo. i'm telling you, i hear you, i totally agree! the only reason why i'm doing it this way is the isp i'm serving these pages from (tiac.net) only gives me 10MB for webspace. i've already used up most of it, and now i only have a few MB's more that i can't spare in order to accomodate larger images.

but know what? i'm thinking about moving to a bigger server (like, 100MB of storage space at least!), and when this happens, i swear to you on all that is holy and true, that i will start to put up bigger images so you can see all the thumbnails in their gory details! those who know me know that i *only* take big images, so i have plenty to offer! all this teasing is going to pay off in the end! stay tuned.

michael showed john and i his photos from turkey when he went on his honeymoon last year. having a first person eyewitness account through photographs really made my autumn trip more real. the excitement level rises a little bit today. i am already strategizing the various places where i can get some sweet turkish money shots!

i don't know what my priorities are for this trip. am i there to take photos? am i there to relax? i think it will be a little bit of both, which is the best kind of vacations. last year my trip to china was not relaxing at all. moving from one place to another constantly, i didn't rest until i came back to boston. the good part is that we got to see a lot of different places. the bad part is at the expense of our physical and mental well-being. i wouldn't have done it any differently though. but sometimes it's better to go somewhere and stay there and explore and really soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the fact that you're not at home but someplace exotic and far away. that's what istanbul is going to be like. i will be there for a week, so hopefully that's enough time to do a little bit of cultural soaking.

i am also thinking, if this year i go to turkey, what will i do for next year? i know it's kind of far off into the future, but nevertheless, i'm thinking about it. how will i top this year's exoticness? in 2002, my travel destination will be: afghanistan! i hope that little taliban trouble thingy will be settled by then so it will once again be safe for americans to travel the middle east with reckless abandon! everyone knows kabul is the party center of the world. fundamentalist muslims really know how to have a good time! where do you think the F-U-N in fundamentalist comes from?