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.