Randomly! Some travel photos of my recent travels... EXCITING!
First, a trip to Hawaii's Big Island with Mel at the end of April:
and a cool My Maps to go with it!
Next, a trip to China with my family at the end of May:
Pretty cool! But mostly, I wrote this blog post to test embedding Picasa web albums :-)
We took our parents to Sausalito and Muir Woods when they came up in October. Some highlights:
OMFG THE PIRATES ARE ATTACKING0RZ!!!!11
At Muir Woods, there's this awesome plank of wood that a lot of ladybugs are inexplicably attracted to...
Yum!
Rest of the album here:
Peter, Julie, Mel and I went to Yosemite two weekends ago... Here's the damage.
A rock with some fancy name I don't remember
Yosemite Falls
Humans covering up pretty scenary
More mortals obscuring the immortal
Went up to Vancouver over the weekend. Such a beautiful city! It seems that most areas by the ocean are beautiful, but those with water running through it -- San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver -- are best.
The biggest find: there's this boba place in Vancouver Chinatown that's just great. For some reason, these tapioca drinks up here are all sold in tall, big cups (equivalent to a "large" from Lollicup), and cost the same as the smaller brethrens in US. We went in, each bought a cup, and were so impressed that we all finished it on the spot so we can get another cup. And then, we went back the next day for more.
On Saturday night, I also went into a club. Actually, we had to stand outside for about an hour before they let us in. The bouncer probably figured out that we were all guys, despite my girlish pleading. At last, he could no longer stand us standing there withstanding, and let us in at 2am. The party animal that I am, I sped in there and started dancing like mad. And by "dancing", I mean bouncing. And by "like mad", I mean not at all.
Well of course I didn't know what to do, so I quietly observed these people rubbing on each other. But despite the copious friction generation, I hear it's relatively not very dirty, says someone used to clubbing in Mexico. I was in the wrong country.
Here are some pictures I took:
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Good times.
... is, by far, the coolest public building that I've been in. Follow this link for some amazing pictures.
It's shaped like a random mesh of glass cage from the outside, which is almost expected of these "modern", big-profile buildings. What is surprising is that the inside is every bit as quirky. The bookshelves are slightly scattered across the floor, and some are transparent. The floor tiles *do not* match, and seem randomly placed. And everywhere, the sunlight shines through the glass cage, creating dancing shadows across the floor.
The conference floor is the creepiest. It is completely red -- even the ceilings and the floors -- and dimly lit. Traversing through its hallways is walking down the memory lane of your mother's womb.
Then there's the computers floor, which is completely silver -- even the floor tiles are metalic. Perfect for mass electrocution.
Above that lie about 5 stories of what's called The Spiral, where all the books are. The floors are linked together like a parking structure -- you can actually get from the lowest to the highest floor without touching stairs or the elevator. This means that the floors are tilted. Completely bizarre.
The Reading Room is at the top level, where the beautiful sun casts playful shadows everywhere. It's really gorgeous.
Too bad the parking situation is ridiculous. We paid $5 parking fees for being in the library for an hour. But still. It's hard to find a more charming building of such large scale.
