It has been a while since I wrote something on this blog, but with the new Live Spaces upgrade, I started to feel the need to start writing again. A lot of drama and adventures took place in the past few months, exciting and devastating all at once, so much that I don't even know where to start. Maybe I need to look forward instead and enjoy the uplifting holiday spirit, maybe I can start with sharing some photos here. Enjoy!

Summer finally showed us its existence with the three-digit temperature and humidity

There is no doubt that this has been a cursed winter with never-ending snow/ice/sleet that led to numerous car whrecks (including two contributed by the same co-worker of mine within a couple of months) and all the planned-then-ruined days. So please bring this to an end and let the spring kick in ASAP. PLEAAAAAAAAAAAASE!!!

The business side of this trip wrapped up Thursday night after three exhausting days of preparation in my hotel room at Wuhan Shangri-La and one day of customer event at Shenzhen Crowne Plaza. In Shenzhen, college buddies Fan, Zhiwu, Jie Miao and Bin Chen gave me a big welcome (as well as some big hugs) and the great opportunity to finally meet them after almost three years. They all have been doing extremely well in such a great city, although everyone looked exactly the same since last time we met in Hefei

 

As planned, I called my mom one hour before my arrival at the home door. Her initial response was, 'You must be kidding me?!', so it took me a while to convince her that I was actually coming home. The same situation occured to the rest of my relatives, I could imagine their faces at this even through telephone line. This whole surprise thing worked amazingly well My mom has already started to fear the possibility of suddenly finding her first grandchild in the frontyard someday. Well, nothing is impossible

Another trip to the motherland is only one week away and I hope to use the spare time between meetings and flights to see some friends in Beijing and Shenzhen.

 

I also had to lie to my mom about why I couldn't make it home even I'll be in the country, this way she wouldn't have to be too looking forward to seeing me and preparing too much for my arrival. Considering showing up suddenly at her door front might trigger way too big a surprise, I might give a call back home after I get into the taxi. Shhh... Help me keep the secret, my friends.

Here comes the last piece of good news in 2007 - Haifei finally woke up from coma and was able to speak!!! My blessings totally worked Hopefully he can recover completely soon.

 

Looking back the past 365 days, this has been quite a fulfilling and exciting year. Btw, I worked out over 80% of the items listed on my 2007 resolution, plus some extras. Moving forward with 2008, it will be an even more interesting year. Let's wait to see what happens next.

 

Goodbye 2007, Hello 2008!

You have to promise us to wake up soon, since you haven't showed me around Berkeley campus yet.

 

And we all know that you can win this!!!

Although snow arrived quietly right before Christmas, it had already doomed to be a black holiday a few days ago.

 

On a nice winter day in California, a good friend went unconscious out of a sudden and has stayed in coma for more than 4 days so far. No one knows when he will wake up and everyone is trying their best to help. Let's pray, pray, and pray, please bring him back as soon as possible!!!

 

For everyone else reading this post, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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???