Chinatown

May 31, 2010 | By the International District Bus Terminal

Here's the fancy Chinatown gate. We've wandered past it today before I locked myself underground in the CS labs. Too bad weather wasn't as good as this before. I hope we both had fun. Sorry for the cranberry chicken... your noodles were very good, though!

It'll be June soon, and I'm excited to update my collage. Yay!

Narnia

May 30, 2010 I'm Captain of this...advertisement

Movie theaters are slowly becoming playgrounds. Interactively cardboard? Wowxorz. There was a GIANT yellow fire hydrant. It was towards the back on the hallway I went through, and I forgot to go visit it. Kind of defeats the purpose of advertising.

How to Train Your Dragon was surprisingly funnier than I expected. I loved it. Afterwards, my USC friends and I went for pizza at Pagliacci's. It was okay. I personally like veggie pizzas, but I know those aren't popular. We had spicy pepperoni.

Dim-sum

May 30, 2010 | Seafood restaurant, International District, Seattle

We had dim-sum today. Not at Jade Garden, that didn't work out (duh), but at another place. Food was good. And cheap, apparently. They came with carts and we ordered stuff.

Except the table was big, and everyone was talking. And there were two people ordering for everybody. I don't shout over people, and no one was listening to me, so I pretty much just ate what other people ordered. The only thing I got out (after a few tries) was to ask a person across the table to take a few pictures. We didn't have any dessert dishes - I asked for a bread roll, but it was rejected on the basis of not having meat. And I don't think we tipped enough. I guess it was my fault... I didn't really get to know them after 17 games of CTF.

I should have gone with you, I think.

Complete

May 29, 2010 The finished product

This picture comes as no surprise. I would have posted my pictures of Costco, but I don't think they are that interesting. I love human nature though. It's funny how samples can draw people into a line. I was in such line.

My mom is silly. She ate what I showed you yesterday. No raspberries even! The torcher is supposed to torch the creme brulee shortly before serving. I was studying and such, so I didn't know she went for it. *sigh* I got to torch the other three though. Sugar and fire are tasty.

Helicopter

May 29, 2010

Here's what else I got for my birthday. It's an indoor IRC (infrared-controlled) helicopter. Indoor's good - I have an RC airplane, and we don't fly it because you need a large field for that.

It took me about an hour to take this picture. It took two lamps, a tripod-mounted camera, a tripod-mounted back screen, and string, a piece of which you can see if you look carefully. It took some time to figure out how to make the helicopter hover at a right distance from the camera - I'm still not good with it. Did I tell you I don't fly helicopters?

Incomplete

May 28, 2010 Creme brulee in progress

I didn't get to finish! :( The plan now is to torch the tops (after coating with sugar of course), and then placing raspberries on top. I tried a new version of the recipe today. I hope it turns out okay. The middle was pretty liquidy, and it's supposed to be like a creamy custard.

Pictures

May 28, 2010

I printed new pictures for the collage. They will go up on June 1st.

This isn't very exciting, but today wasn't very exciting either.

Studying

May 27, 2010

I study downstairs in the room with the piano. My books are spread across the bed. The room is a mess. I am a tornado.

I was playing with my phone. It has black and white and sepia and other weird options.

Radios

May 27, 2010

Here's two-way RF communication. Two old walkie-talkies, a year-old VHF radio (left), and a new VHF radio (right). A year ago, three of us took the radio test and got a tech. license. Now that we have two radios we can finally use them.

The radios come with different accessories. The one on the left came with a belt clip and a string. The one on the right came with a belt clip and a charger stand. The charger stand is not compatible with the other radio. So... yeah.

Aquarium

May 26, 2010 Pets

One of my new hobbies is harassing my brother's fish. This one is one of three of his emerald catfish. They are funny-looking fish, and I think they're a little chubsters. They react quite rapidly to my hand motions. They like to stay low to the ground.

Garage

May 27, 2010 | My house

This is what my house looks like at 1:46 AM. Ok, this is not what my house looks like at 1:46 AM — the lights go out shortly after midnight when people go to sleep. But I turned lights on for the show.

As you can see, we got a new garage door. It was installed last week — you saw it. Not at nighttime, though.

(For those wondering: this was taken at 18mm with F3.5, 4", ISO200.)

Basil

May 25, 2010 Basil plant

I was eye-ing this plant longingly when I went to Safeway. I didn't buy it initially because I have no immediate basil needs. But my brother decided to make grilled tomato-basil-mozzarella sandwiches (amazing), so I convinced him that we should get the plant and not the same package of basil. Yay! It drinks water rather quickly at night. What a cute plant. I'm going to make my dad buy me another one for my birthday like last year.

EEPers

May 24, 2010 | RC Courtyard

Observe, EEPers in their natural habitat. You met Kenneth at the dinner. Also: Kristian, Desmond, Michelle, David. They are attempting jump rope with a spirally thing. They actually got it to work, eventually. But this happened first.

I like this picture. Lots happening.

Doors

May 24, 2010 More doors

These doors go with this door. They've been here since March? Maybe winter. In any case, they migrated from an off campus location. Unfortunately, they don't supply chalk for this door.

Joyce doesn't think I'm sappy enough. Let me try this: after studying all day, I finally got to spend time with you. Even though I should be taking pictures, I always get distracted by you and just want to play.

Slice

May 24, 2010 | RC Kitchen

Jasmine, who didn't come to Karaoke on Saturday, left me a slice of cake. Yay, more cake!

There's a side story. People were having cake in the RC, and mostly finished it. Then someone decided to leave me a slice.

Today afternoon was fun. After we found each other in the HUB. We had dinner, and then concert, and then hung out waiting for your mom to pick us up. I wish I could just go to sleep. I really should have done more work over the weekend...

Wrapping

May 23, 2010 Making 韭菜盒子 (jiu cai he zi)

My cousins (well, cousin + wifey) came over today. My mom prepared stuff for pot stickers and these "dumplings". My cousins helped roll out the dough and stuff the filling. It's fun to watch. It seems like a lot of work though. I wanted to make dumplings last semester, though with already made dumpling skins, but I was intimidated by the time factor. Dumplings are pretty much my favorite things in the world. Especially mama's.

Happy Actual Birthday!

Cake

May 23, 2010

My parents came back yesterday, and today we had my mom's signature cake. Also, we had your madeleines - thanks! And some fruits.

The three candles are a binary thing: ☼○○☼☼ = 19. I'm in the process of blowing them out. Didn't time very well.

Also I got a cool present. I'll show you tomorrow, I think. Or, actually, the day after tomorrow. I have a picture planned for tomorrow.

Singing

May 22, 2010 At enKore

This is the biggest karaoke room I have ever been in! It is ridiculous!! This room was basically the penthouse of karaoke rooms. It has a nice view overlooking the street. The prices are ridiculous though, for the rooms and food. If they didn't charge so much for the room, people would actually order food, which itself is a little marked up.

[Dear Joyce] Today was Igor's birthday. I brought Igor a present. We then went to din-din with 6 others in a city called Bellevue. Later, in the scary rain, we drove to this karaoke place for some singing. Igor gets Asian points for singing in Chinese which is something not even I, a Taiwanese girl, can do.

Birthday

May 22, 2010 | Bamboo Garden, Bellevue
Photo by Kenneth Low

今天是我的生日!

And now I'm going to pretend that it's still Saturday, since this is Saturday's post. We celebrated my birthday today. It was amazing. Bamboo Garden food is amazing.

Left to right: Rebecca, Michelle, Joyce, Kevin, Andrew, Igor, Jessica. Behind you: Kenneth.

Yay, we're both 19 now! Yeah, for three weeks :)

Preserving

May 21, 2010 Flower in water

My dad is...trying to preserve flowers, I guess. Not sure. He had an orchid in here just yesterday. I think this one is an iris. I wonder if it will open up more. There are some bugs in there at the top. Haha. They're trapped. Also, I think the water went down a little. How biologically interesting.

Billiards

May 21, 2010 | HUB Games Area

After class (chem), Kevin and I got together with our shadows and went to Yunnie's where they had bubble tea, and we played Uno - he he. We then took a bus home, but got off on the next stop to join Andrew Chan and a few other people to play billiards.

I got some interesting pictures. Here: Diana, Kevin.

Kitty

May 20, 2010 Hello Kitty Domination

Hello Kitty's real name is Kitty White. She has a twin Mimmy White. She's over 30 years old. She has no mouth because she speaks from her heart (Sanrio.com, FAQ, no joke). Her boyfriend (slash husband- I have wedding plushies) is Dear Daniel.

Why do I bring up Hello Kitty today? Because I found two necklaces from my dad in my parents' room which I was looking for these past few days. (Really, how did they get there?) Have I ever told you how ridiculously obsessed I was with Hello Kitty? In retrospect, I don't really know why. I'm staring at my pink Hello Kitty curtains trying to figure it out. My mom and I were looking for something today, and I came across two watches from relative and family friend, both Hello Kitty.

At this point, I'd starting listing off every Hello Kitty item I have. That would take forever; I've tried before. To give you an idea, let me tell you: I used to have a Hello Kitty inflatable chair. For my Hello Kitty Shrine of Plushies. I also have a HK hair dryer, HK TV, and HK clock. I still kind of want one of those HK water coolers...

Shi

May 20, 2010 | HUB Upper Husky Den

I'm not going to say much about this in public, but here is Andrew Shi in a deciding moment of his life. Or maybe he's already decided.

I'm a little concerned about the birthday dinner turnout. Right now it's 3:4:4 (+5). You, Kevin, and I (the quaternion group) are the only ones who confirmed. Sad...

Of course, there's a good light. I don't know what my life would be like right now, if it weren't for Kevin.

Multitasker

May 19, 2010 My new phone

I am excited to use my phone as a palm pilot. I don't know if you know what those things are because they are ancient. Anyway, schedule at hand 24/7? Yes, please. I will grow to be overdependent on this phone. I might not add facebook just because it's so damn distracting. Instead, I plan to be hooked on YouTube. Ever so slowly, I will become overly involved with my phone. Perhaps, more involved than I am with you. Everything I know will be stored on my phone such that if I were to lose my phone, I would lose all of my life as well. I will be constantly keeping my hands busy, as if texting while walking wasn't bad enough. I will step it up a notch and bike while watching videos. OMG, I will constantly refresh on our blog page as if it were going to change even though we only post two things a day and half of them are mine.

Maybe my phone will be too complicated though, and I won't bother with some of the apps. (Google Maps with me always? yes!) I just want to be able to play whatever song as my ringtone. Don't know if that is possible.

The phone isn't activated until May 28. :(

Vista

May 19, 2010 | Rainier Vista from Red Square

Rainier Mount was today the sharpest I have ever seen it at UW. I took this picture before math class.

An hour later, the sky was clouded over, and in started to rain. Looks like it will rain through Friday. I hope Saturday will be nice.

I edited this picture a good bit: the sky (and fountain) was selectively color-adjusted. I recently found that the select-by-color tool in GIMP is very useful for selecting complex regions that are relatively uniform in color compared to the rest of the image.

Hawthorn

May 18, 2010 Hawthorn branch

My dad brought back this branch yesterday, as I told you yesterday. I had fun trying to identify it. There was this dichotomous key type thing online, but it didn't help. So, I ended up doing a Google search by description, and it surprisingly worked. Yay me.

Padelford

May 18, 2010 | Math Research Library

After lunch and bubble tea (there were four of us, and only you had bubble tea, he he) today we went to the CS building, and then the math library. You're hiding behind a Russian math textbook. The title is Elements of Differential Geometry and Topology. I find it interesting that the math library has titles in Russian.

Of course... it's all math. With a little bit of physics.

Orchid

May 17, 2010 Dorito-something

Have I told you about my dad's obsession with orchids? Well, my dad is obsessed with orchids. This one is Doritaenopsis I believe. It's pretty popular. I think I've seen it used a lot in flower shops, especially as corsages.

I want a venus fly trap. The idea is so cool.

Spheres

July 27, 2007 - Generated using POV-Ray

Three years ago, in a SIMUW class, we were playing with ray-tracers, and I generated this image. After SIMUW, I put these files in a folder and forgot about them.

Until two weeks ago, when the ray-tracer project was assigned in Graphics class. Our ray tracer, that we turned in last Thursday did not support texture maps. It can't render an image like this.

And this is the sad part about graphics class. There's a lot out there for us to explore, but we don't have time to explore them. The people who do find time get amazing results. It's really a class where the time put into it pays off. I just don't have the time.

So I'm posting an image rendered three years ago using POV-Ray. The one I made two hours ago using our ray-tracer isn't worth anything.

Tabletop

May 16, 2010 It's a status thing

My dad bought this thingy from my uncle's tea shop. He has a reason for buying it which I won't list here. I asked him why anyone would buy this (I guess it's pretty cool, except we rarely drink tea). It's a status thing.

Look, it has a little drain!

I wish I understood why it has different levels.

Math

May 16, 2010 | Savery 260

My sister and I went to this math talk today. Next one is in three weeks. The weather was good. Too bad nothing exciting happened after. I'm still being moody over physics.

I meet 9.0's tomorrow evening! My shadow already agreed with me on the time and place to meet, and things to see. I host him on Friday. Good to plan ahead, yeah?

And... I can post this, right?

Lemons

May 15, 2010 Picking lemons

When I was at my aunt's house, my dad and I took some lemons. They need to ripen. I'm pretty excited because lemons mean madeleines and tea with lemon and lemonade and other lemon-y things.

Dear world, Igor and Jessica were reunited briefly today. Yay! But we didn't really do anything. :/ Those were some cute Maltese we saw. Soooo cuuuute. And fluffy.

Steven

May 15, 2010 | HUB Auditorium

So you come back from Catalina, and the first thing you do (after dinner) is come see us at the Taiwanese night market, and then go with us to the Korean presentation. But it's good that you came. I had fun. And CTF was fun afterwards.

Remember them making faces and saying I should post the pictures? Well, I'm posting this one, so there. Left to right: Steven, Kevin, Andrew.

Rest

May 14, 2010 O'Brien Rest Area

The scenery suddenly changed in northern California. The flat farms and land of cows went away, and trees were introduced. And lakes were added. It was so pretty. I think I must have been asleep during the transition when I came down last fall. Actually, maybe it was already night time at that point.

I took my dad's camera. Aren't I brilliant?

Walls

May 14, 2010 | North of former Chemistry Library

They are building a new building here. I was walking past today, and I thought it was really funny how they stacked huge wall frames on the existing building. In the back is Johnson.

There is a picture missing in the last post. Hopefully your camera arrives soon. And you come home too!

Loquat

May 13, 2010 Picture Missing...

Okay, imagine styrofoam cups with little plants growing out of them. Next to them are these small orange fruits called "Loquat". They are slightly fuzzy. My dad and I were at my granduncle's house. He has a really nice garden. He's growing all sorts of fruits and veggies. It's pretty exciting. Quite a few of the Asian variety.

We traveled to NorCal where we had dinner and slept over at my uncle's house. He owns a really cool tea shop...hmmm, maybe that should be my picture.

So, the picture is missing because I left my camera at my cousin's house, and I didn't have time to pick it up. They will mail it to me.

Raspberries

May 13, 2010 | NRH Woodlands Park

I walked through the park today again, because the weather was good. The raspberries are slowly ripening. They will soon be ready to pick and eat.

You should be on your way now. I'll wait.

Leaving

May 12, 2010 Looking back

The dock is twice as long as it used to be, if you were wondering. The hills are brown now which actually makes the trees and bushes stand out more. Haha.

Zergling

May 11, 2010 | RC Lounge

I can't really draw, but several EEPers are quite good at anime drawing. This sketch of a zergling was on the board for a few days, and disappeared today. The picture is yesterday's. I took it in time.

I like the sketch because it's a theme that I'm exploring. That's a cute zergling.

Lasts

May 11, 2010 Last Catalina sunset...for now

I went around taking a few last pictures. I am still in incredible disbelief that the semester is over. I wonder if you felt like this after your Budapest semester. How will I wake up when I am home? Will I dream of Catalina a lot and the people? I guess maybe at first. It feels like things will be a lot different in the fall when I go back to main campus, but maybe it'll be like I never left. I'm glad that I can say that I don't regret choosing Catalina over a study abroad in another country. It has been a great adventure.

Teammates

May 11, 2010 | IMA Fields

To parallel with your post, today was the last day of our official intramural ultimate games. It was a playoff game, we put up a good fight, and lost hard. Frisbee was a lot of fun this quarter.

And I'm still swamped with homework. Nothing compared to what you had to do, though.

Classmates

May 10, 2010 Full crew

Today was the last day we would have the whole group. Lena left. And tomorrow, Joyce and Carolyn (and plus?) will leave. Most of our professors came back for our symposium. And 2/3 of the TA. It was a decent day. Also, Joyce's birthday! Yay! We had delicious chocolate cake.

Vegetables

May 10, 2010

This is late dinner/supper. A hard-boiled egg in a Chochloma egg stand, and some vegetables. I don't know what to say. I'll be quite busy this week.

Faucets

May 9, 2010 The fountain is on

The fountain looks less awkward when it is actually running. And we have umbrellas out, too! It's because there are super special VIPs here. Looks like the perfect place for tea or coffee if the weather weren't so crappy.

Harry's

May 9, 2010 | Off Dirty Harry's Balcony

Today is Victory Day in Russia, celebrating victory in World War II. Germany signed the surrender papers late on May 8th, but in Moscow it was already May 9th, hence the confusion.

Coincidentally, today was also Sunday, so we went on a hike. It was short, to start the season... actually it didn't start the season, but we haven't gone on a hike since then and weren't in the mood for a longer hike. Besides, this Winter's snow fell early May, so one can argue that the earlier hike was actually last season, and this one in fact started the season... whatever. We went to Dirty Harry's Balcony and were treated to a view of the I-90 corridor.

Divers

May 8, 2010 Scuba divers coming up

Here we have Carolyn and Chase. After my boating trip today, I saw bubbles exploding from beneath the surface. It was exciting. They were slowly making their ascension. They were traveling along, and bubbles were coming to the surface. Then, about 5 minutes later, they popped out of the water.

Cloud

May 8, 2010 | View out of my window

Clouds are beautiful today. This one was outside my window earlier today.

Silhouette

May 7, 2010 Start of the last weekend

I liked the purple clouds and yellow clouds and the blue skies. I will miss the stars and the sky the most, I think...other than the professors, the TAs, and Joyce (hehe). I'm going to miss the bison and the seclusion. At least the island isn't going to explode or something. I will try to come out a few weekends in my next two years. Or next six if I end up at Keck.

Physics

May 7, 2010

Several things here. First, the physics book that we are using. I had to buy this textbook, and it's a good thing that we'll be using it for the whole year-long sequence. The bad thing is that it's not a good textbook. At least the print quality is good.

I had my midterm today. We were allowed to use this textbook (for formulas), but no notes. Weird.

Also, see that catalogue at the bottom? We got two of those in the mail yesterday. B&H is where I bought both my camera lenses, as well as the filter for my smaller lens. A peculiar, but completely logical thing about B&H is that the online store doesn't accept orders on Saturdays and some holidays ;) They also send out thick catalogues full of interesting gadgets and 4-digit numbers.

Themes

May 6, 2010 And the certificates continue...

Haha. I will stop posting these things. It's just been a week full of certificates. I'll get one on Monday, too, for completing Catalina/research.

I'm officially certified to play in the lab which I wasn't before...I learned a little about the different types of disposals and how to read MSDS information. Oh, and I heard interesting horror stories of people and chemical spills. Scary.