once again, it's postcard season.

yup.


just like the topic said.


Sending out postcards again these days.


I'm using 27cent postcard stamps. Tropical fruit edition for sure.



Get ready to check your mail box these days. (oh I mean next week.)

it's all collette's idea

so we were chatting ramdom tonight


Collette, the one with the beautiful mind, came up with this

she said:

ting
i thought of a naughty thing you can say to your wife one day
your name is ting
so you can say
honey, are you ready to tingle?
he he he



I was laughing on my belly already before she said anything .....

stinky car

today when I was driving around the neighbor


Somehow I went over some dog poop on with the right wheel. (Where the heck did that poo came from? )


it splashed poop all over the outside of the poor Scion XD



Smelled pretty nasty, but still nothing compared with the dead turtle stink.


Wherever I drive to, people all give me a nasty look.

Oh poor Scion XD.

I tried to clean a bit, but still smells like a fresh pile of dog poop.


time for a car wash?

I think so

the mac ER

it's just dang bad timing

I felt like restarting my Macbook Pro tonight after 3 weeks not closing it.
Just right after it shut down... the screen got stuck on the startup screen


Then I had a really bad feeling about this.



After ten minutes....the wheel is still spinning...

No response

Just like patient that went into coma, and about to die.


I was thinking, "oh boy, not again.. not another harddrive failure"


It's not going to be the end of the world, cause I have a backup in my time machine drive.
But that copy is older than 15 days... still gonna be heck of lot files to lose (mostly songs and movies I brought on iTunes.)[Not to mention that I just dwnloaded the HD version of Quantum of Solace.]

Just the process of trying to retrieve those files, transfering them back on to a newly installed partition and blah takes the whole day away. Like a organ transplant surgery, it's complicated, difficult(not really difficult), and time consuming.

I'm pretty lucky to say that I'm not unfamiliar with this kind of things after all those years of torture dealing with PC's.
I don't have to go to the nearest Apple store and cry to the Genius Bar service people to save my mac.
Although the Mac system didn't totally solved the whole issue of Hard drive crashes since it's still a "Personal computer", but it definitely lowered the occurring numbers to a degree, and with a lot safety figures, that I really started to feel safe not worrying about losing information.

But sometimes things still happens, and you just have to deal with it.

And the worst case scenario, the drive is totally busted. I will not be able to save any data and have to replace the drive with a new drive which will cost me some extra money. I will have to start from the back up I had 15 days ago.

Lets hope it won't be that worse.


So I started the whole emergency procedure:

I turned it the power off
restarted it, loading the install disk pressing C while booting to use the Disk Utility on the install disk to try to fix the drive's error.

but it's not working
It turns out that the system info is messed up that the partition can't even be detected.
Shoot! This is something new.


Time for Plan B!

So I turned off the Macbook pro again. restarted it, unloaded the install CD. Pressed T to switch into "disk mode."

Plugged the firewire and connected it to my mac mini I have in home.

Use the Disk Utility on the Mac mini system to initiate permissions verify and repair on the Macbook pro.
First try didn't work, it got stuck in the middle.
I still had hope.
So I gave it a second try, this time I gave it a bit longer time to do it.
It eventually went through.

So I ejected the mac drive from the Mac mini, rebooted it to see if it will turn on like it supposed to be.

It went into the same situation in the very first place when it crashed.

This time I gave it extra time.

I waited, and waited, 15 minutes went through.

Still no response other than the wheel turning.

So I told myself, "there is no hope anymore." Then everything happened when I my finger was about to press down the power button to shut it down and sentience it to death...

The screen suddenly jumped into the log in screen.

OMG!!!!

It's alive!

It's a miracle!


I felt like a doctor in the ER that just had saved a severely injured patient from dying.

It felt so good.

What a big relief.

No data lost, no money has to be spent, no tears, no broken hearts.


What a good way to end a day.

Don't you think so?

friends

So I was going over the old photos in my aperture library.

It reminds me all those good times we had before.

All the time we spent in Hawaii.


I'm not sure how people think about this friendship,
but for me it's like the most important thing in my life
I would do anything to preserve this friendship, I have my word.


I miss all the people in hawaii,
the old dead tree, April, Anita, Leana, Jesus, Alex, James, Rachael, Chelsea, Holly, Katie, Kanasa, Sasha
the Ke Alakai peeps, Erynn, Ryan, Sara,
Alyssa, Erika, Collette, Brett, Bremen,
Matt, and everyone else.
(Sorry if I forgot your name)

It was the old days.


The good old days.


Friend come and go, but real friendships doesn't.



People always says friends forever, not really.

How long it will last would depend on how much effort you devote in it.





I wish I'm above average. :P


naive huh?


it sounds awfully gay huh?! haha
I would be homosexual if I really had to be to remain these friendships.(Wish that day never comes......)

the Price for Peace

Peace?

Thats can be an option only if the people we're dealing with are rational and understanding.
(Which most of the time, they are not: the Japanese Empire in WW2, Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Liden?)

If you want peace, there's always a price.

People who think world peace is achievable, who believe that diplomatic can solve all issues? they are naive.

NAIVE.

Those people never know who was the ones that sacrificed their blood and soul to defend our country.

They think the military is bull crap. Cause they themselves did not pay the price to enjoy the peace we have now.

The fathers and sons of our country paid the price for us.
We should never forgotten that.

If there were nobody that wants to attack us in the first place, why should we have a military?



You cannot talk peace with a bully.



We're lucky we don't have to put our own lives in risk to live normally.
the G.I.'s devoted their lives for us.
But we should be grateful, never slacken to watch our backs, and not to forget what is the price.

Especially the countries who potentially will be a threat to us.

We should never be too aggressive ourselves, but a loosen attitude will only give the other a chance to attack us.





So never talk peace if you don't know what the price is.

big idea here

so how do I think about life?

I'm asking myself.


"I think life is great." I answered to myself.


How about you?

the hardester pancake afternoon

so today afternoon I went to hang out with my old roommate, ryan.

he just got back from Provo.

and we went to pick up Chantal to hang out.









we didn't know what to do

so Ry-ry(thats how ryan's mom and chantal call him) thought of doing the contest for a family recipe food photo contest just to kill the time
and thank god I did bought my camera.

we spent the afternoon doing all the pancake making and photo taking process


the syrup was the whole deal


we accidently over cooked the butter we used for the syrup
made the syrup brown.(it was supposed to be white)

still tasted good though.


did a bunch of different experiments to see how to make all the things work in the photo.

we dipped the syrup on the pancake and wiped it off like ten times

the butter kept slipping, like it has feet of itself kept walking away



on the dinner table.

around the garden with flowers and greens

by the pool

or in the pool

sure was fun.




it was my first food photography try out.

sure was fun.


we will be the winner
indeed.


but
will that photo make me tons of $?


I don't think so

ghost town I'm going to visit

A Ghost Town in Bodie, CA.

It's located east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, about 75 miles (120 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe. About one and a half hour drive from Yosemite National Park.

That makes it about 6 hours for me to get there.

It's a california state historic state park.

Planning on going there sometime soon.

http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/06/ghost-town-of-bodie-california-usa.html


(photos not by me)

the stink. and mighty Mom.

so it started a fewdays ago

Every time when I went to the storage in the back yard, I always smell the weird stink coming from no where.

It wasn't strong enough, so I just thought it was just random.


but today when I went to grab my tools to fix my sister's bike

That smell was heaven strong....
Dang it almost made me puke


It definitely didn't smell like the skunk had a nasty dump
But like something melting with the heat and the germs.....
So I peeked around the place with my nose trying to find the source of that smell.


Turns out to be coming out from the space between the fence and the storage.

I didn't even try to check what was it. (I admit I'm a chicken when facing dirty things)




So it was time for the dirty job representative in my family to deal with it: Mom.


I really gotta say she's has the most guts in our family dealing with nasty things.

REAL GUTS!


So she went in, it turned to silence for a few second.

And she walked out, saying that she found a turtle shell.

A turtle shell bigger than a mans hand.


Thats the reason why it really smelled funky....


I wonder how that poor little thing got stuck in there?

He must been there for a while, and while the weather was getting hot these days, it finally turned nasty for us to notice the smell.

But how did he went my yard in the first place????


The fence is like 6 foot tall and I never heard that turtles fly or climb trees.
This incident will end up being a mystery never be solved. a cold case as how the law enforcements call it.


So Mom went in again with a few small plastic bags, got that poor little thing out.

It was unfortunate it was too nasty and plus we didn't have a place to bury him, so the only place he can go was the garbage.



thanks for the mighty Mom, our day was saved.



Wish that poor little thing rest in peace.

no need for "Bed Rull"

a tip from mom(She used to be a nurse)


no need to spend all those $$$ on energy drinks.

too much caffeine.

they only do bad for the body.



All you need is a few pills of Vitamin B-Complex

that will do the job well for keeping your mind clear and awake when you doing a all-nighter



avoiding caffeine and saving the bucks!

homework

after 4 months without any school or anything related

I slacked quite a few.

And as I slacked, the first homework of spring came up to my FACE.

Oh dear.

"it's just one small homework" that what I thought in the first place.



but it came out to be heaven lot of reading



something I haven't encountered for a long while.

(thats the reason why the military needs to consistently doing drills all around the place)



it kicked me hard in the nuts. took me a while even try to sit still.




homework. I donno do I miss you or not.



the good part is that it keeps your brain in shape.

the bad part is that sometimes it tends to overload all your small brain cells.



so the conclusion? I need to be in school consistently.


peace.

small world after all

this is funny.
wow dude.






"just pure coincidence".

(I know I know.)


there's nobody to blame
and I should be really happy for them.




but still

thats intense.


anybody has a bottle of advil and a class of wine? LOL





"it's 1 small world after all"






ha

We passed treasure island while crossing bay bridge.

"Geary Street"




So here's the thing.


How do I make up a 3 to 5 page paper after checking out a painter's and influenced photographers exhibition? which I do like the photos a lot, but I really have nothing to say though.

You all know I'm not the kind of person that BS about things I don't know.


That paper is for my exploring visual expression art class(a.k.a. Friday Morning 4 hour photography class) mid term.




that was the deal.






So the story, I drove my bro and sis to a friends house in Pleasanton, CA. Dropped them off, set them "free".
And I went to San Francisco with Mom taking the interstate 580.

I was the one driving this time.

We crossed the bay bridge.

landed on San Francisco.

it was a immediate impression.

nice place to live, crazy traffic(nobody is letting me switch lanes), cool people, cool place.


hardly to find a place to park.



Went to 3rd St./Geary St.

An Art gallery called Frankel Gallery

Edward Hopper and Company Exhibition.


Photos I appreciate a lot.


Seriously.


But I cannot form a ideal how I feel in my mind and write it into a 3 page minimum paper.


Bummer.




while walking on Market St.
I saw the Collette's doppleganger.

Dressed stylish, Metro, cute for sure.

around the old navy, with two other girls.

just too bad the other two weren't as alike to alyssa and erika(if it did happen, I would not even believe my eyes.)


Sat in Starbucks drinking coffee with Mom. We chat, observing people on the streets.

"A mommy/son moment"?

Lovely.

then later I saw a brett doppleganger in starbucks too.

WTH?




On the way back, got lost in the crazy one way streets in SF, somehow accidently getting back on the bay bridge.

Big relief.

Driving way above the speed limit(people were way faster than me), somehow not getting caught by the overwhelming cops during the time when sun is setting and getting back home safe and sound.

amazing huh?


but the worst was finding out the Yankees been defeated by the Indians with 22-4 overwhelming score. WTF
14 runs in the second?! GOD!
that screwed up the wonderfulness of the whole day.



tomorrow is family golf day.

I going to practice using the driver. for real.

knocked the tears out of my eyeballs.

so I managed to finish reading Tuesday with Morrie on this beautiful friday afternoon.

just like For One More Day and the Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Temporary disabling my eyes with tears for the whole day.



how books can change our lives? you'll know after reading them.



whats next?

first day without facebook

the first day without facebook for me, just passed.

I did went on a for a bit just to add a few friends that are new to fb.

but thats all.


Instead of facebook all day, I was being quite productive I say, better than I excepted.

Filled out like 5 job applications(still got 5 to go),
read some tuesday with Morrie,


a few pages of "No One Belongs Here More Than You" , cleaned the living room, sent my package back to Taiwan, did some research on a friends birthday present which is coming up in a month (you know who!), sorted out somethings to ship, did some Mandarin Homework for school, scanned some sides, and watched Johnny Depp's Sweeney Todd (a bit too much tomato juice in the scene for me. just a bit too much......)

Quite a few things I say.




Tomorrow's going to be the second day. Let's see how it will go comparing with the today.


(BTW, I will be updating my status through Twitter)

snap!

take a photo
with a mechanical device called "camera"
it stoles part of the beauty from the world
from the constant flow of time
just like poking your finger into a cake and put it to your mouth
you taste the wonderfulness of the moment
rather than a flash in time, but to an eternity


take a photo
with a few piece of glass and a sheet of crazy chemicals
you tell a story
an untold story that people never seen
just like daddy telling a new fairy-tale to her beautiful little daughter
you always feel the fascination
rather than the voice of daddy, but with a picture


take a photo
with her imagination
an artist makes a statement
a statement that how she sees the world
just like mommy's special recipe
so unique that nothing of a kind is ever seen
rather than mommy's cooking, but with the artist's soul


Snap! Snap! Snap! You just found out that you forgot to put film in your camera.

disappointed fan I am.

just as crappy as it can get.

Chen Ming Wang's pitching today against the Rays was a catastrophe.

I was just so disappointed.

60 pitches just in the first two innings...

5 runs scored...


his sinkers were not sinking at all.
and my feelings of the days just sank to the bottom of the sea.

it was too hard to even keep on watching.

So I turned oof the TV.



so terrible.


Just as Leana texted me: this is one of the bad things being a ports fan. when the team go up, you up. They go down, you go down, too.

colors

mother nature is the best artist, makes the best colors on the best canvas know as the sky.







somewhere on the road from Salvador back to Guatemala.

Project proposal.

So I been thinking about this for a long while.

A photography project. Indeed.

Topic? hmm.

People? Yes. People.

Who? hmm. You. Yes. You.

Location? Where you are at.(In the tub, on the toilet, at your grandma's party, it all works.)

Materials? hmm one 35mm film camera.

Film? yes. Film. (screw you digital.)

What film? Fujichrome RVP100 color reversal film.

Color reversal? Slide film. exactly.

How many photos do we need? 2+.(this depends how your face likes the camera.)



what kind of project is it exactly?!

"it's taking photos about you"


hmm. When will we start? a few days later. As soon as I see you. with my bare eyes.


How long is it gonna take? A while. As long as there's someone I didn't take a photo of, it's still gonna keep on going.




Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Raise your hand if you got any questions. Good. Class dismiss.

this i what she said

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”


-Audrey Hepburn



I wish she was born in our age. Such a goddess and a great individual.

fun

Which is worse on friday night?

Hitting 400 golf balls soaked with fluorescent liquid into the mountains in the dark night at 12am?

Or watching a jerk talking trash messing up with 9 people of us in the Jack In The Box drive through, and he almost got himself beat up by a 17 minor from Tonga that plays rugby?
You guys think?

btw, it all happened in the same friday night.

this place is getting more fun than I thought.

somewhere I remember.

the street I used to live on back in Taiwan

I forgot how much I miss that place...

poor thing

the days sure are bad now.