New Year 2006

I have to write something in memory of the year 2005. I can't find a better word to describe this year except "five flavors mixed up".
you should know what i meant, if you understand chinese. Many different feelings mixed inside and i can't find a proper line to express my true feelings, or i have too much to say so that i didn't know where to start.

in short, no matter whatever new year wish i made last year, it didn't come true. Maybe except getting a driver license. i should feel bad about myself for not achieving anything but personal life, this is not a bad year at all. i have to thank my family for understanding me and supporting me.

my 2006 resolution would be, achieve more than year 2005 and make people around me happier.

one more thing, looking at Seattle's new year fireworks from TV is not cool, i feel kinda bad coz it really doesn't look too good at all compare to Sydney. But sigh, it's better than last year when we standing in the wind next to people smoking crack.

happy new year people, hope you all do something you like and like whatever you do in year 2006.

Snowing like Michigan

It's snowing, it's snowing! I am so excited!
I didn't realize I missed the snow in Michigan until now, it totally reminds me those days when i stayed in my little dorm room, i always looked outside the window the blizzard and the snowplough working at 4am. oh i love it so much, and i missed Michigan, in this strange way. it's normal to walk and drive in a snowy day like this, but i know seattle people really hate it bcoz it will soon turn to be ice and become extremely dangerous to drive.
sadly michigan was so dry so we always get couple sunny days after snowing, and the sky would be perfect blue, we had to wear sunglasses while going out. it's funny when i talked about these, there are only good memories left in my head, and i almost forget about those annoying dirty snow in spring and how the streets got nasty after few months of snow.

But i am glad i've been there and had those memories.

Let there be light

As I said, let there be light. Do you hear me?

When we get lost

We stopped and the traffic kept on moving.

To Franny: not good, not bad

A lot of thoughts in mind, but i don't know how to transfer them to words.

this morning i was watching a concert DVD borrowed from friend, Karajan in new year concert. there is ballet dancer footage in one of the songs, and it totally reminds me of my school years. that made me want to cry.

I felt i lost a lot after college, and i am transfering to a different person. God knows how i wish i could turn back time to my blue college years.

Somehow i am more straighforward and outgoing than before (if you don't agree i am outgoing, then you can imagine how pessimistic i used to be). the darker side of me didn't go away, i just learned to hide it better.

Mt. Si

Before we visited Mt. Si, I have read an article about it saying it's one of the most popular hiking trail in Washington, and if you have lived in Northwest area long enough, you have to do what local people do -- Mt. Si hiking.

This is really a punishment for not working out regularly. My legs are so sore to the point that I want to walk with my arms. This trip is fun and pretty, very enjoyable, stunning view at the summit, but serious, for a lazy person like me, I should really try Little Si before going on Mt. Si.

For those of you don't have an idea of this trail, it's a 8 miles(12.8km) roundtrip hiking trail. It started at 500ft(152m) and elevation gains 3500ft(1066m), summit is 4167ft(1270m). Yes this is a small mountain, but believe me, if you walk 3-4hrs uphill, this can really drive you nuts.

!! adding a "lousy" homemade panorama view

Hello Ophelia!

Eddie and I are going to North Carolina this weekend to visit his college friend. How many times of the year will there be a hurricane threatening North Carolina? I don't know, maybe one or none? And how many times will we visit North Carolina in our lifetime? Probably only this one.

And we're that lucky.

It's so dry in Lake Chelan area

Last weekend we went to Lake Chelan area for the first time. I didn't want to go there at first, coz I know it's desert area and it's corwded, and our experience this time proved that I was right.

It's desert, so drrrrry. Not only the air, I feel my skin is shrinking too. So dry. and I wanted to see some green so badly. I didn't realize how much I love trees and forest, until I came to the desert. You must think I've never been to a desert, but you are wrong, I've been to New Maxico, and Lake Chelan totally reminds me how I felt in New Maxico -- I missed trees.

There are some good things about this area, first it's hot. I felt like getting more sunburn than the rest of the summer. And I don't like the feeling coz I grow freckles easily. But also bcoz it's hot, the water was warmer, and we got to play more water sports, such as jetski or simply swimming.

However, hot weather also bring bugs, a lot of bugs. We got surrounded by bees in our campsite, and one of my friends got stung. I felt sorry for her and seriously, I hate bugs, and I don't think we will go back to that campsite again.

Another good thing about Lake Chelan area is that the weather was warmer and nicer, since it doesn't rain as much as Seattle area. We enjoyed nice weather and took a lot of photos with bright blue sky. The colors of desert and sky created a strong contrast in the photo.

Alright, enough talking, check photos below and enjoy them. Be sure to leave me some comments :) one more thing, all photo copyright reserved.


Alta Lake, view from our camping site



Bridge over Lake Chelan



Columbia Gorge



Lake Chelan

Boy and Horse

Roach's animal logic goes to extremes

When I was in school, one day I asked my friend, what key words will you use if you want to search for human having sex with animals porns?
"uhm... girl and horse?" he wasn't sure.
"hmm..." doesn't sound correct but probably works.

Now I've grown up and learned two things:
1. the key word is "bestiality"
2. "boy and horse" works as well

Why is it significant?

The editing process always got stuck bcoz of a simple question: why is it significant?

We collect footage in order to make a sequence that has some meaning in it, and send out a message. But often time, I got confused by "what message do I want to send out and how?" Unfortunately the editing process has to go on no matter I have figured an answer or not.
So I have to do rough cut 1, then rough cut 2, then rough cut 3, 4, 5 and so on. Suddenly, it's due. I have no choice but to hand out my rough cut 19.

And I still haven't figured out why.

Camping in Olympic National Park

We've been to Olympic National Park three times (including this time), averagely once a year. However, there are still a lot of stuff left unseen and many points of interests left unvisited. We probably will go again sometime in the future.

Hurrican Ridge, never been there in July and we all agreed that July and Aug are the best months to visit this area. (and of course Mt. Rainier too)


We met deers no matter which national park we go. No exception this time. There was a deer (not this one shown in the picture) actually led us to the trail which we already planned to walk, it feels like she's one of us, maybe she would like to go to our camping site and stay on the grill too, hahaha. (just kidding)


Lake Cresent. Looks different everytime we visited her. This time we rented a boat and paddled to the middle of the lake, enjoying sun burn. Oh! And had quite a lot of fun of arm aching after returning to the shore.


On our way back home, while waiting for the ferry I took this photo. The sky was pretty clear and we were able to see the whole shape of Mt. Rainier. It's so cool no wonder Washinton State would like to put it as the symbol of this state. There's another interesting observation: the tiny city with buildings is Seattle, and you might find how small we are compare to the mountain. which means if there's volcano eruption, we will have to say goodbye to Seattle.

Feel like flying today?

When the sky is as blue as the sea, I feel like flying. I mean, flying as a bird. If you human beings want me to fly as sitting inside the tiny cabin of a trainer plane (as indicated in the photo below), I am sorry, ain't gonna do that...



Man... I love this new "insert pictures" function. (it is new... is it?) Oh, this reminds me something else. I love Google Map too, but just found out a weakness of it: I cannot save my recent searches as Mapquest did for me. That is my favorite function in Mapquest. However Google Map has this beautilful graphics and lovely shadow, oh, and satellite images.

So, Mapquest:GoogleMap 1:2, GoogleMap wins.

Lake Sammamish sunset

Diablo Lake and Diablo Dam

Diablo Lake in North Cascades National Park

Ross Lake in North Cascades National Park

What have I been up to

I am doing ok, coughing badly, we tried to go out every weekend to take photos. Last weekend there's Gay Pride, but I overslept. I heard the traffic was pretty bad and we have to be there 2 hours early and parking is extremely pricy. So, maybe it's a good thing that I overslept.
Compare to the rapid pace in Taiwan, it's really a peaceful place here, especially where we're living. This summer, as usual, is tourist's season. Several friends will stop by Seattle and stay with us for a while. That means we will need to clean up the house before they come here. Well, this will be a good reason to push me to do some housework...

Unknown Plant

Water Tower in Volunteer Park, Seattle

Lake Union

Lake Union, Wooden Boat Center

Fell in Love with New Camera

i didn't feel too fancy about it until now.
i just made some zong-zi and decided i should take a photo of it, but i didn't realize it would look so great! it made me fall in love with our new camera, and i feel i can make more zong-zi just for photo shooting.

zong-zi

more blogs

I have Traditional Chinese and English blog sites, and now i am thinking to have another simplified chinese blog site. I checked several chinese sites and trying to find a best place to continue my non-sense in simplified chinese. however, the server either too busy to response or it takes forever to load one page. I am not sure if it's the problem of the coding or my small bandwidth. more likely it's coding problem. and it's annoying...
hope i can find a fast and clean design blog hosting site.

I'd like to make a toast

I'd like to make a toast to people who invented router. good job buddy! and especially for those of you who invented wireless router, thank you for making this world a better place to live.

Single Gal's Wedding Survival Guide

This is a cute article, i personally found it amusing, probably bcoz i am dating someone. even though i don't think i will get married soon, if by any chance i am going to have a wedding reception in Seattle, you bet i will invite a lot of nerds from Eddie's company for my single friends. The only problem is, they are nerds, i think my lovely single girl friends deserve better than that. But at the same time, nerds usually are nice people and straightforward, they might be good for girls who want security(of course i mean relationship security as well as money security).
And if you look carefully, a lot of nerds are not as nerdy as you thought, they are careless but they concern about you sincerely; they love computers but they might love arts as well (but honestly, only few of them...); they might enjoy reading novels (novels of Star War/Star Terk/Lord of the Ring...) as well as normal girls enjoy reading "Vogue". It's impossible to ask them to watch "Gilmor Girls" with you, but it's ok coz he can afford another TV and watch NBA by himself.

Vacation to Taiwan from mid-May

Ever since I decided to take a month vacation back to Taiwan, I became pretty loose and not wanting to work on anything. I have a short documentary project still in the outline stage and they have been wanting me to start shooting since last week, I feel kinda sorry to delay it but hey, I am really not in the mood of doing it. I will try, ok? I mean, try.

Another thing is, I've been working on this website project for Eddie's co-worker's father, who is a jewellery designer and painter and dianmond business owner. Yes he is very rich but he is Indian who is very rich and prefers his son to marry Indian woman from same social level. I am supposed to meet Eddie's co-worker to talk about some design ideas but since we didn't get a chance to meet last weekend, I just started to be lazy and not wanting to work as my departure date approaching.

Anyway, Eddie and I are plannning to go to the new opened outlet mall in the north of Everett on I-5 exit 202. It opens this week, actually, today May 5th, 2005. I am expecting it to be bigger and nicer than Supermall in Auburn. Probably I'll get some clothes and gifts to bring back to Taiwan. Oh I really have to lose some weight first...

Happy Birthday Lizzie

Of course not today. It's last Friday. So we went to this so-called "best steakhouse in seattle" - El Gaucho in Belltown. It's probably also the most expensive one. But it has good service and good food.
One thing I can't get used to is that when there's a lady needs to use women's room, the waiter will come over and walk the lady to women's room. (you know what i mean? no? alright forget about it) It seems to be polite but to me very awkward coz I don't want to hold a stranger's arm to the toilet, please let me go quietly! <-- And I can even run to toilet if there's no waiter.
Another thing is, it's very dim in the restaurant. There's only one candle light on each table. I asked Eddie if they did this in order to prevent us from seeing if the steak looks good or not, and he has not clue. When Eddie was signing the bill, it was too dark and he couldn't see the detail of the bill, so he tried to get very close to the candle while I was afraid that it's gonna get burnt. The waiter came over quickly and took out a flashlight pointing at the bill to make sure Eddie can see it clearly. People, if you know it is going to be too dark to read bill and menu and you even have flashlight ready, why don't you just put three candles on one table? I believe by charging 50USD for steak you will have enough money to but few more candles.
Overall, we like that restaurant, it has a small Jazz band and piano after 8:30PM (not sure). Excellent service, very nice garlic bread, good drinks. And I still can't figure out how they cooked the asparagus.
Eddie asked me when will I want to come back to this steakhouse again? I said maybe some anniversary. Such as engagement anniversary, ha. =)

Beagle in the pet shop

Buy a dog...?

When Eddie picked up the beagle in pet shop, I can sense that he wants it badly. But I have to stop him, one of the reasons is because I don't want to clean up the mass produced by beagle, they can be pretty rough.
Other reasons are like, we're poor, it's expensive to buy dog food and send dogs to doctor (you kidding me, I don't even go to doc myself, how come we're making the dog more precious than human beings?).
But don't get me wrong, I love dogs and enjoyed playing them (That's right, not playing with them, it's "playing them"). And I love the time when I can sleep on the sofa with my dog, holding him and kissing his head. Generally speaking, I get along with dogs better than people when I visit other people's place.

Anyway, it's still not time to get a dog.

Google Maps

I love google!!! this is soooo coooooool!! for a map lover like me, this satellite image makes me really excited and touching! I love dragging map around, used to try making this feature in flash, but what google did here is way much much better than I expected.

I think I can spend whole day exploring the google map/satellite. no, maybe whole week. hmm actually, oh I love it i am gonna dreaming about exploring google map/satellite. Sweet dream!!

Hail, very cute

Travel Channel :: Samantha Brown

Travel Channel :: Samantha Brown

Honestly, she's hosting some of my favorite shows from travel channel, such as "Great Hotels" and "Passport to Europe". So, naturally, she is my favorite show host. I actually feel kinda jealous of her, coz I really want a job like hers!!

New Photos

Just added new photos to my photo album, I haven't updated it for one year. Mostly photo of daily life, not artistic ones.

Seattle and Mt. Rainier

I-90, one of the floating bridge

Quality of city life

City Mayors: Quality of city life

This makes me want to travel to Europe, as I always wanted to. I was surprised that Seattle actually ranked lower than some of the USA cities, and started to doubt if it's reliable because of the high ranking of Vancouver. Vancouver is beautiful, but part of the city is really nasty, I would not walk there even during the day.
Maybe if they would rate Seattle higher if they rated the whole great Seattle area. Maybe?

There are some other interesting rankings available on their website. Oh, and I want to visit Hawaii too...

OOPS, pictures....

I just found out this week that some of the flowers I took are actually plum blossoms. OOPS!
Another thing is, I've been thinking about printing out some photos for home decoration. However, I never feel satisfied with any of them. I have around 3.8GB of photos and I think 99% of them are junk. This might be a good thing in terms of improving my skills and training my eyes, but also a bad thing coz I will not be able to print them out and hang them on the wall.

I don't love this one, but this is the only white sakura I can find.

Kan-Sakura in cloudy days made me feel the coldness of spring.

Sakura in a cloudy day.

Sakura in WA

I didn't realize there were so many of them, and one word, charming!
I will keep on collecting them with the dummy digital camera, sorry for those of you who ask for higher quality than this, I will find a chance to modify them in photoshop.

It's time to picnic under the sakura, enoy the white and pink of the spring.

Kan-Sakura, Cold Cherry, blossom in early spring

Sakura full blossom

Sakura (Double Cherry?)

Sakura

A beautiful sunny Monday afternoon

Facing the uncertainties

Which is something that I don't really enjoy doing.

However, due to my laziness and layback attitude, I've always need to deal with uncertainties. Why can't I just have a clear and bright future waiting in front of me?

We are moving to Issaquah

We are moving from Redmond ( the north end of Lake Sammamish) to Issaquah (the south end of Lake Sammamish).
For me, Redmond is like my 2nd home in the US (the first one is of course East Lansing, MI), and since Eddie has been living here for 2 years, it feels like I've been living here for years too. Plus we had some friends here (difficult to make good friends in the US), and we will be far away from our friends, and I don't know if they are willing to drive all the way to Issaquah to visit us in our little townhouse. BUT, if anyone of you visiting us, WE HAVE A GUEST BATHROOM FOR YOU!
and the guest bedroom, honestly, you might have to share it with our two PCs.

And 2005 begins...

My 2005 begins with Sims2, have been playing that for like 18hrs a day. Very addicted you can tell.
Eddie had this jetlag after he got back from Beijing and chatted with friends online every night, and the coming of Xmas and New Year only made it worse, since we have not much to do in the cold/rainy weather. Therefore we slept most of the days and were energetic during the night. I didn't have jetlag (since i stayed in TX, not the other side of the globe), but Eddie gradually changed my lifestyle by talking/walking/playing computer during my sleep.
So it ended up a day like today, I woke up at around noon and had a little breakfast, while he's still sleeping. I am not sure how long will he sleep, therefore, I will just start to Sims2.

Sims2 is definitely one of the best games I've tried. I got the chance to build houses, build people, do decoration and so on. this doesn't sound passionate, but it is the very true reason why i am so into this game.

Another thing I learned from Sims2 is, it's very difficult to carry on your career and taking care of kids at the same time, for example I have this girl marrying a guy and had a baby, she had a very successful career, but ever after she gave birth to the baby, her energy level has been "red alert" and I barely found time to let her have enough sleep or to study. Gosh what a waste for woman who has a successful career!

I know some people in reality are so willing to devote their life/time to children, and maybe one day I will have same idea as they are. But not for now.