The countdown to my long time overdue personal vacation to China has officially started, you can imagine how bad I'm looking forward to this trip. With everything falls into place one by one, it's finally the time to give my mom a big hug.

 

On the other hand, the ticket agency informed me earlier last week that my bid for 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and some games didn't make the cut since too many people requested these tickets even in the United States. I'm afraid I have to watch the games on TV next summer. Maybe I will get lucky next time China hosts the Olympics

 

Alright, the heavy clouds over my head finally cleared up.

 

The mysterious rash on my legs turned out to be bug bites according to the dermatologist, who happened to encounter the similiar problem recently. So I took the medications orally and externally and the rash is fading away drastically. I was given great relief that it's nothing major or fatal, and I don't have to keep away from seafood any more. Attention, guys and girls, remember to have some bug-free spray next time in wild, especially when you are wearing shorts and walking+sitting+jumping in an exotic zoo like I did two weeks ago.

 

In unrelated good news, my boss just gave me a raise after my first half-year anniversary and I was also given a free smart phone with paid service, I guess my broken windshield should be taken care of easily with the extra money I also got my new apartment in Kansas City with all-new interiors and appliances, let's hope I won't need to put up with overflowing toilet again.

I totally got a big bang for my bucks on Transformers, an action/cgi packed blockbuster originated from the 1980's animation classic. The movie is slightly longer than it should have been, but it gave me excitement and surprises almost every few minutes. The perfect balance between real-person performance and the special effects made it enjoyable to watch these spectacular fights. With multiple story lines, the director was obviously ambitious but didn't hold up all of them together very well, but this did leave a huge potential for the upcoming sequels. And suprisingly, this movie gave me more laughs than many so-called 'comedies'.

 

As my most anticipated movie of the summer, Transformers successfully transformed an old cartoon epic into an exciting masterpiece. Btw, I almost wrecked my car after leaving the cinema since I was still soooooo into the story and tried to naively maneuver my ride as one of the giant robots

I didn't even notice that the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival was coming until I was invited (as a spectator) to the event at the creek of the Country Club Plaza. With little practice, the team members in those boats had a really hard time in managing to make the boat move straight forward. So it's the volunteers' job to push these boats back to the right track whenever they hit the banks. After a few rounds, my friends and I were almost ready to leave since there were only two teams left. However, the real fun just got started.

 

One of the boats went out of the right direction, as always, so some friends of mine pushed the front end of the boat toward the center of the creek, as they did before. But they pushed too hard this time, the boat lost its balance and went upside down, pouring all the people on board into the water. People, including me, ran over there to pull them out of the water. Luckily, they were all wearing life vests, so it didn't take us too much trouble to save them all. The people dumped into the water were suprisingly entertained by their own incident, so this special event conluded with laughters from inside and outside the creek

 

Here are some photos taken by a friend:

Maybe there wouldn't be a better place to spend the Memorial Day weekend in Washington D.C., a city full of monuments and memorials. My last-minute decision to visit the capital city left me little time for planning, but the concentration of major points of interest in downtown made my job a lot easier. Basically, I just walked around the national mall area and most of famous destinations were able to be covered - White House, Capitol, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and numerous museums. Apart from finally seeing the presidents' house, my favorites include the Air and Space Museum where I had some direct contact with planes, satellites, space shuttles; Holocaust Museum where you would discover how precious your current life is; and the National Zoo where I was able to see giant pandas again after almost 10 years. The biggest surprise came to me when the annual Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally started right in front of me and lasted for hours, with hundreds of thousands of Harley-Davidson's roaring in the streets of the capital. I haven't seen and probably won't see so many motorcycles at once in my whole life, it was just so amazing. Unfortunately, ten more soldiers died in Iraq on Memorial Day. People, please end the war! Because it's just killing me to see people dying everyday, no matter where they are from...

Well, the actual title should be: My First (Time as a Guest at an American) Wedding. Now you may be less confused

 

It was a sweet and romantic Christian wedding of a very cute couple and everything went through nicely and elegently. But there're some interesting moments in the ceremony and the reception:

 

1. After the bride and groom lit the Unity Candle with two small candles, the flame of the Unity Candle went off (at least from what I could see). Everyone was kinda holding the breath at that moment, but a few seconds later, the flame came back to life magically. Such a drama!

2. Traditionally, the groom blindly threw a garter removed from bride's upper leg into a crowd of single guys including me. Although a bunch of guys fought for the garter, it ended up in the hand of a 5-year-old boy. What a waste! And I think I will have to find another shortcut to reach my big day...

3. Another wedding took place the same day at the other side of the town and that one involved a relative of my boss's wife. So they had to go to the ceremony of wedding A, then the ceremony of wedding B, then reception of wedding A, and then reception of wedding B. Maybe this is the so-called "wedding crashers"?

 

Btw, almost everyone is getting married now! Like my labmate Lie, who just turned a married man earlier this year. My friend Jay is flying home to get his bride, and Mandy is also on the right track of nailing a Korean hunk. Where is my girl???

 

Today, my company announced that the corporate headquarter would move from St. Joe to Kansas City later this year. The move makes sense for the management level employees because most of them have their homes in KC and commute to St. Joe everyday; but it doesn't make sense to some other people living in St. Joe since they have everything here.

 

But for me, it's a great news. With 40 minutes' drive closer to the metro area, my social life could get much better then

I think Koala is one of the cutest animals on earth, along with Panda, Polar Bear, Llama, etc. It'll be super if I can buy one as a pet to keep at home, but my apartment doesn't even allow dogs. Maybe if I get the chance to visit Australia, I will steal a small one

My application for work visa was approved today, I can relax now

What a depressing day! The concert of The Fray that I was going to see tonight was cancelled this morning due to 'family emergency' of the band member, and all of my plan tonight was messed up:( Maybe I will go to see them if they come to KC again sometime, or check out some other show using the refund:)

This is going to be an unforgettable day in the history since over 30 people were shot to death on the campus of Virginia Tech. My sincerest prayer goes to the ones affected and maybe it’s time for the government to rethink about their gun policy…

The host city of 1996 Olympic Games, the headquarter of CNN, the hometown of Coca-Cola, the location of the largest aquarium in the world... These titles have made Atlanta an irresistible destination on my travel book for a long time, so when I started to choose the city for my Easter weekend getaway, it seemed natural to make the right decision to spend a couple of days in this interesting city.

First stop, World of Coca-Cola, a museum-like place showcasing the history of Coke and the whole Coca-Cola culture. It's amazing to be able to see the different types of bottles and accessories related to Coke in the past decades, and tasting the various flavors of Coca-Cola Company’s sodas from all over the world gave me a bittersweet time, literally. (Most people seemed to love the watermelon flavor Smart from China and hated a weird drink from Turkey.) The museum was closed permanently the day after my visit to give way to a new location opening in May, so people waited in long lines to pay a final visit to this interesting place, including two sweet Korean sisters standing in front of me.

The next morning, I almost couldn't wait to join a studio tour of CNN, one of my dream places to work, although it might just be a dream for good. During the tour, we walked through different studios of CNN and I ACTUALLY saw the anchors and weatherman reporting in the studio LIVE!!! How cool was that! When the guide was giving the speech, another anchor walked in the studio in her leisure outfit and a big coffee mug in hand, just like any person coming to work in the morning. The tour ended with a cheesy video presented by some famous anchors of CNN, afterwards I rushed to the gift shop to purchase the exactly same mug used by Larry King every night :)

Another must-see attraction in Atlanta is the Georgia Aquarium, which is connected to CNN center by the quiet and neat Olympic park. It’s not the first time for me to see so many fishes, but it’s definitely the most magical way of displaying all of them in numerous tanks. Btw, I still don’t like eating fish after years’ persuasion and education by my mom, so all the fish in the world has one less enemies now.

The high percentage of African American residents in Atlanta might seem a little bit intimidating sometimes, but you can tell from everyone’s eyes that they are just living their own lives, either colorful or not that colorful. Sometimes, the best way of avoiding being discriminated is to stop wearing the racial glasses when looking at other people, no matter who you are.

Every product needs a good name with a selling point, how about every university?

 

I personally don't think great universities distiguish themselves just by having fancy names, but so-so schools might actually benefit from a name makeover by attracting more innocent and/or naive high school graduates who choose their future colleges by names. You might not be interested in an ordinary electric fan, but you would definitely wonder what the latest "Automatic Air Circulator" looks like. This is basically the logic of the Chancellor of UMR. A proposal he made recently was planning to change the name of "University of Missouri-Rolla" into "Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T)". If he did make it happen after the approval of the school curators in April, I don't know what I should feel about having both my undergraduate (University of Science and Technology of China) and graduate universities with amazingly similar names.

 

Interesting enough

It's time to become Irish for a day

 

The freezing wind didn't stop the scream of the crazy spectators and the enthusiastic performers at the Kansas City St. Patrick's Day Parade, one of the oldest and biggest in the States. The after-parties and endless beers made the shamrock day even better. Luckily, my friend and I were among these excited people. Sometimes, we just need an excuse to have fun

 

 

Borat!

 

After missing the movie in theatres, I have been waiting for the release of its DVD for months, and its popularity at my local Blockbuster store made me wait for another week. But it's really worth it.

 

This fake documentary was about the fake adventure of a fake Kazakhstani reporter in America. Although the main characters were played by actors, the rest of the people interviewed in this movie actually thought they were shooting a real documentay, so their reactions to the bizzare behaviors of Borat were all natural. His racial and personal opinions were extremely offensive, but you couldn't get mad at such a fictional character. The mean jokes on Jay Leno and Conan O'Brian were like nothing when compared to his comments. My mouth was wide open half of the time when I was watching...

 

Btw, this is an R-rated movie. Be prepared to be shocked.