30 August 2009

pandarific

It wouldn't be a trip back to China if I didn't go see the oh-so-lovable pandas *u*








However, the weather that day wasn't all that nice, so all the pandas were just lazing around.

As I walked around, I came across many other animals:

This fish pond is outright scary.
Some kid beside me actually managed to grab one of the fishes, mmm.



Some foreign people was playing with this snail on the fence to the panda's area. This was one of the better dsrl pictures that day, hurray for shallow field of depth!


Lastly, as I was about to leave, I noticed this pair of peacocks resting from the rain underneath a tree. Cyuuuuute!

28 August 2009

Reading List

Books

  • The Omnivore's Dilemma-Michael Pollan

  • An Incomplete Education

  • The Gastronomical Me-MFK Fisher

  • The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing

  • The Elegant Universe-Brian Greene

  • The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?-Leon Lederman(5th time lol)

  • Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid-Douglas R. Hofstadter

  • Paradise Lost-John Milton

  • How to think like Leonardo da Vinci-Michael Gelb

  • The Lost Symbol-Dan Brown

  • The Elegance of the Hedgehog-Muriel Barbery

  • I, Lucifer-Glen Duncan

  • Microserfs-Douglas Coupland

  • The Gum Thief-Douglas Coupland

  • Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture-Douglas Coupland

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being-Milan Kundera

  • The Infinite Book-John D. Barrow

  • Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit-Jeanette Winterson

  • An Abundance of Katherines-John Green

  • The Happiness Hypothesis-Jonathan Haidt

  • How We Decide-Jonan Lehrer

  • How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe-Charles Yu

  • The Denial Of Death-Ernest Becker

  • Then We Came To The End-Joshua Ferris

  • A Cook's Tour-Anthony Bourain

  • Fast Food Nation-Eric Schlosser

  • Heat-Bill Buford

  • I'm Just Here For The Food-Alton Brown

  • Commedia-Dante

  • The Selfish Gene-Richard Dawkins

  • The Emperor's New Mind-Roger Penrose

  • Infinite Jest-David Foster Wallace

  • Breakfast of Champions-Kurt Vonnegut




Leave a comment with any suggested materials below! A short description/genre would be very helpful :]

ripppptide


sunset @ wild beast in wonderland at around 9pm.
The colours were GORGEOUS in real life, such a rich shade of magenta *u* Unfortunately, because any sane person wouldn't bring an slr (cough cough) to wonderland, my crappy cell phone cam washed the colours out.

Due to Helen's "we must go to wonderland with everyone this year!" request, I set off to Roy's house with 5 hours of sleep at 8:30am. After sitting in an overloaded car for half an hour, we arrived! We paired off at the entrance, janice and mimi with their slightly overpriced tickets, grace and helen with their season passes, alex and I with our 2010 passes which comes with a free 09 admission and tony and roy who has to buy theirs on site.

Once we got in, we headed straight for topgun, which "has the crappiest lines". Luckily we were the second ones in line, unluckily they had to run test runs for 15mins. Then it was time warp, and behemoth! *u* The 79degrees drop never gets old.

Right after behemoth, Lisa and Amanda came. It was their first and last time at wonderland, so we just went around the park going on all the coasters with a relatively short line. We went on: riptide (bad, bad choice. it got soooo cold right after), vortex, wild beast, orbiter, shockwave, and thunder run.

By then it got pretty dark and my legs were tofu-like after waiting in hour long lines for the entire day, so we exited and headed towards the go bus stop. Too bad for me, there was a line to get on the bus too. Finally the bus came and I happily went home.

26 August 2009

小猪猪&小狗狗

I'd like to feature an awesomely awesome friend of mine: Lolo (blah pinyin will have to do.)

Since our parents were friends since university, I've known her literally since she was born. We've had our secret language, secret base, pretending to be spies and figuring out who was writing on the walls of our apartment complex.

So when I went to visit her this summer, we went to eat good ol' hotpot *u*


oh yeeeeeeahhhh.
you've not been fully alive unless you've eaten this.

Apparently 蜀九香 is one of ChengDu's best hotpot restaurants, though my first impression of it was: "woah the pots are pretty!"


At first it wasn't all that spicy, my tongue and throat only started to burn a few hours after lunch.


Top to bottom: potatoes, winter melon, lotus root, tofu skin, mushroom, some sort of internal organ of a pig... and empty plates >D


My very terrible attempt at light graffiti on my way home from her house. It'd turn out a lot better if I had manual shutter adjustment.

23 August 2009

曾经温暖鲜艳过的画面



沉默着走了有多遥远
抬起头蓦然间才发现
一直倒退倒退到原点
倔强坚持对抗时间

说好了的永远断了线
期许了不变的却都已改变
紧闭双眼才能看的见
那些曾经温暖鲜艳过的画面

渐渐地忘记赶不上明天
只要用力地抓紧了想念
明天再也没有你的笑脸

渐渐地忘记忘记了时间
我只要沿着记忆的路线
到最深处纵然那只是瞬间

当眼泪滑落的是句点
心里面始终你从没有走远
耳边誓言还在回旋
我会好好珍惜没有你的明天

渐渐地忘记赶不上明天
只要用力地抓紧了想念
明天再也没有你的笑脸

渐渐地忘记忘记了时间
我只要沿着记忆的路线
到最深处纵然那只是瞬间

渐渐地忘记忘记了时间
我只要沿着记忆的路线
到最深处纵然那只是瞬间

20 August 2009

deep fried..bambo bugs?

(back to China series!)

Since my mom wanted to go see a few sights, we decided to go to PingLo GuZhen, which was about an hour away.


the weather was really hazy that day e_e
though that's pretty much how everyday was like: cloudly, humid and burning hot.


I never expected there to be french, though I must say the facilities are pretty decent there.


Gate of the town. Trying to take pictures on a moving car without manual shutter speed adjustment is pretty hard.


oh what gorgeous chili pepper~
one of the town's specialty exports (for a lack of a better word), others are beef jerky and this tofu thingy which doesn't have an English translation.


All of the buildings are renovated to seem like it's from the ancient times.


That tree is HUGEEE! although this photo doesn't best represent the immense size of it...


Yummy lunch! It was pretty spicy though, but the tofu thingy (not the export one) balances it out nicely.


Left to right: fishes that were caught in directly in the river, BAMBOO BUGS, and pretty sure the last one is shrimp.
They also sold this toy thingy that was like a pitchfork that had two alive bamboo bugs on the two outer prongs e_e



After lunch, we went on one of these bamboo rafts. One'd think we calmly floated down the river admiring scenery, but in reality my cousin, dad and I were playing poker. I won the 2nd round *grin*


Dinner!


Chicken on the left, duck on the right. They were probably the BEST chicken/duck that I've ever had. The meat was so juicy and melt-in-your-mouth *u*
Two whole poultry was gone in less than 5 minutes.


Another one of PingLo's specialty foods, directly translated as milk soup noodles. The name is a little deceiving as there's no dairy products in there. It's just plain noodles in some heavenly pork bone broth.

15 August 2009

"my blackberry!"

lawl @ kevin's reaction when we all surprised him at Asian Legend yesterday. Too bad all of Mel's photos were blurry.

Rui's genius plan was for 13 of us to hide in the pharmacy at Leslie&Finch (where Sunny supermarket is), wait for Jine to call Kevin into the washroom, hurry to infront of the washroom and shout happy birthday when they come out.


Delicious food *u*
There was...4 appetizers, 1 soup, 4 meat, 3 rice, 1 noodle and 2 veggies.


Kitty bought a HUGGGGGE card!


Cute present *u*



The cake was surprisingly good.

13 August 2009

pest control

a little break from my adventures china:

Remember the blood sucking bugs that I discovered on the corners of the fabric that I hung behind my bed? *great* new, they're baaack! hurray!

According to pestcontrolcanada.com, those bedbugs can live for a year without eating anything, squeeze into all sorts of tiny cracks and generally extremely hard to get rid of.

It was time to hire the professionals D<
So in comes the pest control guy (for the lack of a better word) and out goes my mom and I for 4 hours so we don't breath in too much of the fumes from insecticide. After reading in the library, we headed to Asian Legend for dinner.


Good ol' Chinese food~

11 August 2009

菜牙&猪婆


(chinese drama rant will naturally be in chinese)
太好看了!


left to right: 云something (forgot),重楼(<3!!),茂茂,龙葵, 景天 (so cool in 飞蓬's armor),雪见 (in 夕瑶's costume),some guy that worked at 永安,长卿 (lol@白豆腐),紫萱,土豆(forgot her actual name),邪剑仙.

仙剑里的女人真的太有耐心了! 紫萱等了长卿一千年, 他们三世相爱最后还是还是因为爱分手了。景天说的好:相爱就是要在一起。他们喝忘情水的时候真是太感动了,紫萱的衣袖是湿的,她没有喝下忘情水,如果她可以忘情,根本就不会等他那么多年。长卿喝了,但是用内力把水逼了出来,他已经忘了太多次了。从 “相爱不如相知”到“爱就是要放手” 紫萱和长卿真的是有缘。 (no picture of them cause I like 景天和雪见 better)


飞蓬和夕瑶就更悲惨了!夕瑶也等了飞蓬一千多年,但是飞蓬是永远回不来地。夕瑶是神, 永远多死不了,她会永远的伤心吗?夕瑶不能离开她守的神树,只能创造雪见替她去找飞蓬的来世,景天


景天和雪见的爱对我来说是几个角色里最平凡却最真实。
雪见:那个字是抬头就可以看到的
景天:抬头能看见什么呀
雪见:云霆云霆,当然是云了
景天:那要是万里无云呢,这怎么说
雪见:你这是在找蹅儿
景天:其,其实不是每次都能看见云的,每次都能看见的,是天
这段对话真的是太完美了!景天和雪见之间的爱是多么让我可望的,他们平时吵吵闹闹的只是表面,他们心里头知道。
景天:雪 ,真漂亮
雪见:是啊,但是一碰就没了..
(景天一直盯着雪见看)
雪见:你看什么呀..?
景天:我说的是你..
雪见:你真肉麻.
这一段台词我反复看了三遍,每次都好感动。

但是最伟大的不是上面的人物,是茂茂或者是重楼。茂茂比景天大,但是维护着景天和喊他叫老大。一般拍不上用场的他在最后用自己的肉换粮食给天下的人吃。重楼他,sighhhh, 是我最喜欢的人物。他又帅,武功又好,还是魔尊,简直就是完美的!但他好倒霉,爱上了紫萱。当然紫萱是不会和他在一起的,他以没办法,杀了长卿紫萱就会伤心,只好站在一边看着紫萱开心的和长卿在一起。

不管是谁和谁,穿越三生三世还是穿越六界, 仙剑好感人啊。
bonus:配歌也很好听!

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My cousin got me the game, which has a happy ending (*u*). I was sooo looking forward to playing it when I got back, but for some reason my PC wont's read the disk
*sobs*

10 August 2009

of july 22nd

I thought I was extremely fortunate to be able to see the longest solar eclipse of the 21st century. There were news about it everynight, all the UV tinted glasses were sold out, tourists carrying professional looking cameras gathered...point is everyone was so hyped about it.

Until the weather forecast the day before the eclipse. It clearly stated that due to the thick cloud cover in the morning of july 22nd, residences in ChengDu will not be able to witness the solar eclipse. I could totally imagine 11million faces of disappointment.

Noneless, my whole family woke up at 8, gathered around the TV to watch the live broadcast. Seeing how the weather outside was okay, my mom suggested that we go to the rooftop just in case the weather forecast was wrong.


(very bad quality I know, had to make a gif out of the terrible photos that I took, dunno where my mom's video of the eclipse went)

...
I feel like someone just told me santa isn't real all over again.
seriously, a century just for this?

09 August 2009

sans fans

A few days after we landed, my mom dragged me and my cousins an hour away to my grandparent's house. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I noticed how BLAZING HOT it is. I quickly ran towards my grandparents house, yearning for the fan. Instead of a nice cool breeze, I was greeted by darkness and even more heat. Turns out that the electricity was out, great.

With nothing much to do, I started to build card house

All 52 cards plus jokers~

For dinner, we went to a family restaurant with superb roast chicken. Unfortunately, it started to rain heavily while we're on our way, we arrived at the restaurant soaked.

The pot 10 minutes into the meal.

The next day was pretty much the same, equally hot and without electricity. Walked around town a little bit, too bad that we didn't have enough time to visit a puma store with 90% off *cries*

For dinner, my mom's highschool friends took us to eat fungus hotpot.

08 August 2009

YYk to CTU

Turned out that blogger (and many of google's other services) were blocked in China, so I'll be posting up everything gradually these few days~

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Having never woke up this early, I was extremely excited to see the sunrise. I stood on my balcony in the cold wind for a good 10minutes trying to take pictures.

So I departed with my mom and Donna from Toronto for Chicago to transfer to ShangHai and finally back to ChengDu.


The Chicago airport is so pretty *u*

Fortunately all the flights were on time or early, unfortunately there was a lot, A LOT of turbulence. It was like a 13 hour long rollercoaster ride! For some strange reason, I ate alot on the plane and so my poor stomach was in so much pain for the later half of the flights.



First meal on the flight from Chicago to ShangHai. On the left is beef with mashed potato and corn, on the right is a surprisingly delicious salad with a balsamic vinaigrette.

Some views from 37000 feet in the sky:

Somewhere near ChengDu


The transition from dark to light is so seamless and pretty!