44 pictures!
1. Dragonfly outside of Hualong Cave
2-4. Inside Hualong Cave...lots of pretty colors. There are many rooms acessible inside of the cave which is kinda more
impressive than Carlsbad Caverns. Also the lights make everything really easy to see even if the colors are fake.
5. This bridge made me think of the bridge in Lord of the Rings. It's smaller but you get the idea.
6. Yep, the cave features an underground river that we rode boats on. Kinda like "Small World" but cooler cause its a freakin
real cave.
7. Street vendor outside the cave. Selling all sorts of fried things. Fish/shrimp/little crabs
8. The guy in the ugly beige shirt is the "manager" of this jade store. We figured out that the whole thing was a setup
that's played out to every tour coming through the area. This guy was talking about his 3 wives which made out to be a funny
tale even if it probably wasn't true.
9. Ate dinner at this centuries old house. Pretty scary cause we took a tour of the house afterwards and I couldn't help
commenting that it'd be pretty scary of some ghost appeared in my photos or if something would follow me home. Shudder
10. Zhangjiajie airport...when you're bored you start noticing the things happening around you. Take this fellow for
instance. Look how comfortable he is. He's taken off his shoes and pulled up a pant leg.
11. Also Zhangjiajie airport...These girls were fighting over something to do with a carryon bag. Lots of tugging back and
forth and screaming. Ahhh the drama at the airport.
12. I've never boarded airplanes on the tarmac before. It's kinda cool cause you're right next to the runway so you can see
the planes take off and land up close. Well closer than being in the terminal.
13. Jiuzhaigou airport...it was so cool landing on top of a mountain. Plus it was a SMOOTH landing...something that is quite
rare in China I think.
14. That's right...yak meat. It's actually quite tasty. Just like beef really.
15. That's a small yak.
16. Main St. in the town near Jiuzhaigou. This is where tons of people bought tons of stuff from the stands.
17. The altitude is high enough where having a oxygen canister is recommended. This probably saved me during the climb up
Huanglong. Oh the pain.
18. This little falls is at the beginning of Huanglong. Huanglong lies in a valley about 4000m high. The entire trek from the
bottom (where our hotel was) to the top is also around 4000m. Crazy stuff. The worst part of it was that it was raining the
entire time making taking pictures and climbing a tough ordeal.
19. Look at me...I'm almost dying! hahaha jk but I don't look so good. I was pretty much sweating the entire time and had
this huge headache 2/3 of the way up. The oxygen would help the headache for a couple seconds but it really didn't go away
until I descended and left Huanglong. Look at the background though...I love misty mountains.
20. The goal of the climb. Five pools or something like that. The water there is calcium rich so you get a lot of
structures/colors due to the calcium and other deposits.
21. View from my hotel. Yeah, it was pretty spectacular waking up to that.
22. Ethnic folk show.
23. I didn't know they used hair extensions! :-D
24. Lots of different costumes
25. That guy has tons of animal skins in his costume. It's pretty cool looking.
26. Norilang Falls at Jiuzhaigou Park. I wish I could have stayed there longer.
27. This is the bus that is actually a porta-potty.
28. This is our tour guide from the indigenous tribe in the Jiuzhaigou valley. She spoke some pretty good "pu-tong-hwa" or
"common language" or Mandarin which is pretty rare in this region.
29. Hahaha...this is pretty funny for some reason. Isn't the lamb cute?
30. The Jiuzhaigou lakes are pretty amazing. Just look at the colors!
31. Tibetan architecture abounds in the valley since the people here are one and the same.
32. Crazy marketplace. You gotta be able to bargain well. Starting off at 10% of the asking price is a good start. Hahaha
33. Funny shot of my dad looking kinda bewildered like he doesn't want to jump into the sea of vendors.
34. The logs in the pool are slowly getting calcified as well. That's the pasmina scarf that I got.
35. This is the lake where one of the scenes from "Hero" was filmed.
36. I love the way these lakes look with the mountains all around. It's really hard to get clear shots cause there are so
many people around.
37. Look at this guy! He was trying to get a shot or something and starting climbing a tree. This is a freakin national
forest and he's next to some really fast moving rapids. Stupid idiot.
38. My filters really helped to get shots like this in bright light. Without them, I wouldn't be able to do such long
exposures.
39. Some Japanese chick was doing a TV show at Jiuzhaigou. Surprisingly, this was one of my best pics of the day, with the
perfect focal point and everything.
40. This was taken on the way back to Chengdu. That bus ride was something else...basically barreling down these mountain
roads...looking over sheer cliffs...honking all the time cause we're on the wrong side of the road and want to pass cars.
Anyways, I look a little stunned at this point cause the guy who this yak belongs to just put his hat on my head without
asking me. I'm thinking "When is the last time this guy washed this hat?..."
41. Back in Chengdu (which has the most awesome hotel in the world)...this was taken at the Sichuan Panda Preserve which is
the biggest in China. I was so close to this panda...lot closer than you would ever get in America. I could have hugged one
but it would have cost me $50-$60. I probably would have paid it but we just didn't have the time for it and I let it go.
42-43. I didn't pass up the opportunity to pet and interact with the "Red Pandas" though. Actually they are different than
pandas and are more closer to cats then bears (which is what pandas are part of). Still they are just as cute as pandas. I
had like 4-5 around me looking for their apple slices. Tons of fun feeding them even if they had sharp teeth and claws.
44. For the Autumn Moon Festival, we had a whole roasted lamb. It tasted pretty darn good. None of that rare lamb taste.
I'll have pics of the Yellow Dragon Cave and Jiuzhaigou when I come back from there. I'm at Chengdu right now. I have so many stories but I guess I'll leave it for after I get back to the States.
I'm entering Hunan's mountain region so I'm posting pics when I can.
I'm in Changsha in Hunan Province now. There's going to be a lot of hiking and stuff in the next few days so I'm going to need a lot of rest. Uploading images is also a pain (I've already taken 1.2GB of pics/video already!) so I only have 2 pictures online.
I'm taking down notes so I hope to have a special China Trip site instead of just regular posts. Here they are...the first one is at the Mausoleum of the 72 Martyrs in Guangzhou and the second was taken at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou.
The weekend before I left a lot of things happened. Here's a pic of me at the TSA Movie Night enjoying (suprise surprise) a scoop of ice cream.
Hey, so I took the Kaplan LSAT practice test the day after I went to Karaoke and scored a 160. Got all perfect (except for 1) in the reading comprehension. That was my best part on the SATs too. What got me was the time on the Logic Games. I like being thorough and it hurt me on that section. Still I calculated that if I had the time, with my average correct percentage, I coulda scored a 169. I can't say if law school is for me, but it's definitely an option right? Good thing, I love work right now or else I'd have to pursue this thing a lot further. As such, I just love taking these tests cause it forces me to use a different part of the brain than usual. Call me sadistic but I'm signing up for another. Plus I figure that if I get a full nights worth of sleep instead of spending it karaoking and eating, I could get a better score next time. Plus I need to bring a clock cause I didn't even wear a watch, hehehehehe
Looking through my notes on my Clie, I see some strands of thought that for some reason got left behind. These poor orphans deserve the light of day I say. So here's quite a few of them.
I saw a girl puking in the street when I went on the town with Chu. Ah, the good ol days.
I had this bread called Pugliese (Pool-yee-AY-say). It's basically like breadbowl bread.
Would you hire a lawyer from the law firm of Duey, Cheatham, and Howe? Try saying that name again.
One of the girls from Twelve Girls Band looks like a female William Hung. Look below...it's not a Photoshop job...just go to the website and check it out.
You know how you go to places and people take pictures and you are sometimes in the background or off to the side so you're in the picture? These people could be international and so your face might be on some picture in some far away land. Dude, my mug could be all over the world. That's a scary thought. Hahahaha
Even the art students that hang out in front of the Academy of Art (which is right next to my building) have cliques. There's usually the asian clique, the cool artsy clique, then the people that don't have cliques. I always feel sorry for the people that still don't fit in.
Oh yeah, I was able to get the UTF-8 character set selected automatically in PHP by pushing it out in the header (in php not in html) at the very top. That's how you do it. It was really bothering me cause it wasn't working right for the longest time and was defaulting to ISO-8859-1 (the default character set for PHP).
I've already posted this in the forums I visit but I thought I'd put it up here as well.
There was a moment of silence for 9/11 in Washington.
Everyone has their hand over their hearts except for Bush...maybe he's hungry?!!!
Last Friday, I went Karaok'ing with TSA. Man, I miss these kind of events where a bunch of people just go out and have fun. I had to use Chinese pretty much the entire night which is pretty unusual for me since I only have a few friends up here that speak it, let alone use it as their primary language. I really going to improve my Chinese this way if I keep this up. I'm actually posting on forums in Chinese now as opposed to reading in Chinese and then posting in English. It's kinda slow so I keep it simple and concise. Hehehehe...anyways, a lot more happened this weekend so I'll post more.
The following pictures were taken by the TSA Historian, David Lin, I believe.
Happy Birthday to Eric Chu and my Mom!!! It was actually yesterday. hehe
You know what reminds me of home? Food. Esp Chia-Ah-Mee (Good Time Cafe calls it Check-A Noodles). It's a great combination of DIY food with fun. I just love bobbing that wicker basket. Last time I had this (Christmas time), I said that I wanted to do it back in the Bay Area and all I got was..."It takes too much time to prepare...Forget about it. Where are you going to get the pig fat?"...I guess they never heard of lard. Hahahahaha
I really want a small portable camera to go along with my freakin large one. Everytime I bring out my Sony 707, it's like people gasp and think I'm crazy. It makes me really self conscious about it cause it's not like,"Oh...I just happened to have this camera along." Eric has started to call it, "The Predator" cause of the lasers that shoot out of it. I couldn't take pictures of the REM concert either cause the 707 is not something you can just sneak in.
Anyways, I really like the small Sony cameras. The U40 and the T1/T11 are on my list. The T1 is much more expensive than the U40 though. Both use the Memorystick Duo which is a bummer. Maybe I'll get the step up from the U series which is the P series I think.
Some links to the cameras...
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Ah my arms are so sore...taiko was tough today because it was a lot of drills emphasizing the hard-soft (dong-tsu) technique. Our class just isn't ready to perform the song in time for Solano Stroll so the intermediate class is going to take over. I don't know the other songs so I guess I won't be performing after all. Oh well, a lot of the others were going twice a week (Wed and Sat) so it's no wonder the other instructor said I was doing pretty well considering...still I'll probably go to Solano Stroll and support the group.
Aargh...my vacation to China plus my business trip to San Antonio is going to make me miss some TSA events.
For my benefit...
9/9 General Meeting
9/10 KTV Night
9/17 Movie Night
9/25 Beach Event
10/1 Ice Skating
10/8 Sports Day
10/15 MYOTF
10/29 Night Market
11/12 K-Contest IV
11/19 Officer Election
I'm also participating in a group Fantasy Football league on Yahoo. I only know a couple of the guys but already the smack talking has begun. I didn't do too well during the draft although I have McNabb. I even included Kyle Boller (ex Cal QB) in it. We'll see how my team does at kickoff.
For the last couple years, my dad has put up quite a few albums from his trips all over. These new ones are all with my mom and sometimes with my sister. Never with me though, I wasn't able to go with them on all these trips. He also has a few from Disneyland and Piano Tuning.
2002 Summer Vacation
4th of July Fireworks
Alaska Cruise 2003
Disneyland at night
Hokkaido - Biei & Furano
Holiday Disneyland
Mexico Cruise 2004
North Eastern and Hokkaido of Japan 2004
North Eastern of Japan 2003
Piano Tuning at UCI Barclay
Spring Sonata
Tateyama, Kurobe, Kanazawa...etc... (Central area of Japan)
Tour of Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto and Nara in September 2003
My sister also has some albums...
Wasabi and Sashimi Memoriem
My First Car
My littlest cousin Raymond Fang has his own website (actually administered by his dad). I've added him to my sidebar. That's right...his last name is Fang, so don't mess with him. Actually the actual pronunciation is more like "Fahn" not "Fang". Oh well, it'll be interesting to hear all the stories when he's growing up. Probably the same kind of stories like mine.
Sony released the manual for the TV!!! None of the electronic stores around have it yet. Sony has it in its store as a pre-order still.
Have you seen this? They're supposed to give off pre-programmed scents. Don't know if it runs out after a while. Kinda interesting.
Alli made dinner a couple nights ago. It was Baked Chicken with Breaksticks and Crepes for dessert. Everything was awesome and I even had a crepe even though I usually don't even touch the stuff. Just a crepe though, I didn't use the pudding and all the other things people were smearing onto theirs.
Saw "Vanity Fair" with Leah. Wasn't quite sure whether to clap for Reese Witherspoon or to boo her. Ending was pretty sudden too. Mmmm...interesting movie but I liked Dangerous Liaisons/Cruel Intentions much more. Funny...Reese was in Cruel Intentions as well.
It was Jasmine's birthday last week but she was busy that weekend so we ended up not celebrating it till Friday. We ended up going to Outback (which is funny cause I hardly go anymore and the last time I went was also with Jasmine). I contemplated getting just a sald but they have some pretty expensive salads. Btw, this was with Chris and Lori. So I ended up getting my usual enormous prime rib steak although this time I did something that I've NEVER EVER done before. I got a salad and steamed vegetables. No soup and fries. Yeah, I was pretty surprised at myself since I've been going to Outback for such a long time that for some reason, I wanted to eat a bit healthier. Didn't put too much dressing on it, even accidentally ate a raw cucumber. I ate the vegetables first too and only ate half of the prime rib. Everyone was kinda surprised except for me cause they still think of me as this enormous meat eater. I mean I have my moments and all but I've really cut back on that.
Afterwards, we all went to play glow-in-the-dark miniature golf. Got 1 hole-in-one. Jasmine pulled in 2 of those. Although I went under par, I still lost to Chris by 2 strokes. It was his 4th time there though and I must have been already conditioned for the putting on Bermuda grass...the difference in drag resistance and all that must have caused it. Hahaha 
Today, I saw "Garden State" (which I actually talked to Jasmine about the night before...how I loved the soundtrack but hadn't watched the movie yet) and "Hero" (which would be my 4th or 5th time watching it, cause I saw it on a bootleg DVD in Taiwan a year and a half ago). They showed a preview for "Infernal Affairs" before Hero which came out in 2002. At least they kept the name. During Hero, I kept on noticing the difference between the subtitle and what the person was actually saying. One of the biggest translations weirdness was the translation for "Tian Shia" which literally means "Under the Heaven". The subtitle for it was "Our Land". Of course, "Tian Shia" is supposed to mean something like "All-incompassing" or "Everything Under the Heaven". "Our Land" seems to be just a bit simplistic. Perhaps they didn't want to give off the impression that the Chinese are imperialistic land-mongering people. Of course, it was even weirder when the ending whatchamacallits (the text that kinda tells you what happens after the movie) claimed that modern Chinese people still call their country "Tian Shia". I can't recall ever hearing any Chinese person calling it that...it's always been "Zhong Guo" or "Middle Country/Kingdom". There were some other errors but that one stuck out the most. "Garden State" was great and there were a lot of times where I noticed the similarities between Natalie Portman's character and Leah. Also they looked a lot more similar esp the crying parts. Awwww...
Alissa's mom got married today. They had the wedding and reception at their house. It was like a block party cause they basically took over the street (they live in a circle). The setup was pretty neat. Heard a lot about the wedding ceremony which gave me ideas about how I want mine to be like too.
On the new TV newsfront, Sony seems to have some problem getting the TVs out cause it doesn't look like they're going to be available in stores until October or something. Initial previews have been positive on the model but I want to see some good reviews before plunking a couple grand down. I heard the main problem has been lamp issues but Sony has been REALLY good about replacing them for free via over-night. The lamp for the Grand Wegas are rated to about 2000 hours or use. At 5 hrs a day, that's 400 days. I figure I won't use it that much so I'd be replacing it hopefully only once every 2 years which isn't too bad cause apparently it's very easy to replace and not too expensive ($200). A lot of places have been trying to sell off their older 610 model though before the new one arrives. Aargh...I can just see not actually having a new TV until November or something. Well at least it'd be in time for Halo 2 right?
Oh and it turns out that Heidi, the girl from one of the weddings I attended this summer, contracted meningitis in her spine so I'm definitely sending my best-wishes and prayers to her and Jesse. It's gotta be so difficult for them. Hard to imagine. Sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks.
According to this story from Yahoo, JK Rowling (the author of the Harry Potter books) has released 2 lines from the 6th book. I think it's describing the new Defense of the Dark Arts Teacher. Anyways, to get the lines, fans had to input codes or something ok Rowling's website which is a pretty cool Flash/Shockwave job. Of course, this little tidbit is perhaps only interesting to like 2 of the readers of my site that I can think of. Mainly my sister Cathy and Jasmine. Hahaha
3 day weekend!!! Hooray for Labor Day!!! Can't really go anywhere though cause I have sectionals on Monday for the symphony. That's so weird...sectionals. I haven't had to say that word since high school.
Oh yeah, I also had lunch with Andrew, our consultant from OIS on Tuesday. Turns out he had gone to China about a year ago so he had tons of pictures to show me. I'm gonna love seeing the sea of clouds and everything. I'll ask him if it's ok to post his pics cause he took some that were stunning.
I randomly found this guy from somewheres. He's a total food blogger too. I noticed though that he's more daring than I am in using the flash a lot in restaurants. I tend to not do that too much cause it does tend to annoy people after awhile. During this meal he had in early August, he used the flash 5 times for food. Even for me, that's pushing it. Still, the food looks awesome!!!
Ahhh....my old office. It's going to be pretty nifty in its new life as a conference room.
Lih-Chern and Jeff grilled steaks while I was at Taiko. Yummy. The smell of mesquite was exquisite.
Thought this might be pretty neat to put up here. It's a javascript slideshow. You can use your mouse to interact with the playback. Clicking on it brings up some info about the image. Taiko is a lot of fun! That's me on the left. I recorded our practice using my miniDV camcorder. Took some stills.
