*Click links to view actual instead of desaturated colors, please 
Also, I was too lazy to make my stamp smaller.
We stayed in Yellowstone for 4 days, three nights. Our flight left in the early morning, at around 6-something, so I woke up at 3:30 like a crazy person to take a shower before leaving.
We transferred in Denver, arrived in Yellowstone in the morning. Proceeded to drive through Grand Teton National Park, taking a pee break at the edge of Jackson lake.
We ate a late lunch at Signal Mountain Lodge and then got to our hotel in time for dinner. After dinner, we crashed for some serious crashing time. Next day: We went to the Mud Volcano in the morning and saw a bison just chillin’.
And Dragon’s Hole. Or Breath, or Lair, or something.
Then dropped by to see this crazy petrified tree. It had a gated fence around it, to prevent people from chipping themselves some fancy petrified tree souvenirs. But why did the fence need a gate? Dunno.
We got back on the car and it started raining! Nice timing. So then we drove to the Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces. Yellowstone had a lot of driving and looking and not much exciting hiking. :/
The terraces were totally crazy. The ground had weirdass texture and was probably super hot. And everything was steaming. And weird colors due to bacterial growth.
Then Emerald Spring. It’s different colors because of the different temperatures of water housing different bacterias.
There was also a cute geyser that kept going off sporadically. But don’t get it confused with the Sporadic Geyser, which is not this one.
And then we went to Old Faithful!
Kapew! I thought that he was super faithful, but actually he erupts every 90 min plus or minus 50 minutes. That’s kind of a big difference. But usually it’s plus or minus 10 minutes. But that’s still not tht faithful. :/ How disappointing.
And then the weather got crazy bad so we decided to go home. Check out the trippy clouds! (I’m too used to CA weather, I suppose.)
Next day, as we were driving to our next destination, we saw an entire herd of bison just hanging out.
There were lots of cute baby bison too
We got to Lower Falls and took picturesss
And then we went to Upper Falls and took more picturesss (clearly I’m getting tired of blogging right about now sorry) Check out these crazy mountains!
There was a rainbow at the bottom of Uncle Tom’s Trail. (Not Cabin.) I heard everyone take a deep breath and say “Wow, that’s beautiful” when they saw it as I was taking pictures. I wonder if there was a leprechaun and expressed my wonder out loud and my mom thought I was crazy.
My sister and I only took one normal expressioned picture together the entire trip, and here it is. With Lower Falls in the background. Taken at Artist’s Point.
View from Artist’s Point. When the sun came out, the sides of the mountains were sooo yellow! Finally, I understood the name of the national park.
Then we went back to see Old Faithful again, except he hella spazzed out and tripped out twice before actually erupting a lame eruption like 10 minutes (relatively) late. And then we went to see the geysers/springs around Old Faithful, like Morning Glory Pool. My sister made me walk two miles in the rain. I suffered while she laughed histerically for no apparent reason. But Morning Glory Pool was pretty so I guess it was worth it. I guesssss. 
And then we went home to sleep. And then the last day on our way out of Yellowstone and Grand Teton, we stopped by Jenny Lake! My lake. Jenn Lake. They spelled it wrong.
And that is all. I have four mosquito bites on my shoulder, all from the last day (WTF?), one on my pinky finger (also WTF) and one of my foot. And one on my tummy. Did these mosquitos eat me through my clothes??? Here are some animal sightings.
We also went to many more places but I chose the most blogworthy photos to put up and describe only. For example, when we went to see the Natural Bridge, the kids walking with their parents in front of us were singing Billionaire. And I sang the next line and they were amused. But see, I couldn’t have caught that in a photograph right? ALSO I petted the top of a baby tree and it was soft. But then every other tree I petted was spiky. 
Until we went to my lake. Basically, my lake wins.
Last night Layla and I went to Mio Babbo’s for dinner, because we had no more food in the apartment. And then on the way back, we dropped by Whole Foods to get some Vitamin E oil (good for your skin for evening out pigments!). And they well selling daffodils for 2$/10 so of course I had to get some! And also some dehydrated organic mangoes which I haven’t tried yet. Beautiful It totally made my night, even though I knew I had some impending doom (read: EE lab) ahead of me. I named them Affodil, Baffodil, Caffodil, etc. all the way to Jaffodil, because I’m not creative enough to think of ten names at once. Especially since they will expire in like a week and a half.
After we got home, I decided that I wanted to go back tomorrow (today) and buy as many as I had containers for, because 10 daffodils is not enough, especially for so cheap! So this morning Layla and I went out to get groceries and sun mian get more daffodils. We went to Trader Joe’s first, to get veggies and stuff, and then LO AND BEHOLD. More daffodils! For 1.29$/10!!! So call me crazy, but I bought a few more
Meet the newest members of my apartment, daffodils 1-100 and A-J. That’s right, I have 110 daffodils in my apartment.
My sister called me crazy but you know what? 15 dollars can buy my happiness. So easy! I would have bought more but I don’t have any vases and I knew I didn’t have that many tall cups either. When they all bloom it’s going to be epic. And so freaking fantastic.
So I distributed them around my room for maximum exposure. When I wake up in the morning and put on my contacts, BAM! Good morning, beautiful!
And then when I’m deciding what to wear… more! I will then have to sadly leave my pretties to go to class.
But it’s okay because when I come back home I will be greeted not by homework but by more daffodils! Yay!!!
Okay. I just thought I should share my compulsiveness. I think I’m addicted to daffodils. When do they become out of season and no longer easily accessible and inexpensive? When the time comes I will just have to SAVE UP FOR NEXT SEASON. There’s no stopping me!
I took a midterm today in my MAE102 Dynamics class and I totally failed it but that’s okay because now I have time to blog about last weekend!
Wesley, Stanley, and I went to Arcadia! Friday night, I finally got meet Carol’s boyfriend. We went to get boba and then Carol stayed over at Stanley’s house with me It was like a sleepover! We talked, and it was great, except I’m not going to elaborate because there are no pictures to go with this part. Saturday morning, we all woke up and got ready and ate lunch and then went to FORMULA D!!!! That’s right, I attended my first ever drifting competition. Round Seven of the Formula Drift Championship took place in Irwindale, CA on October 17th, 2009! We got there and roamed the stalls and got free swag and all that good stuff. I brought my camera, but didn’t take many pictures. (There weren’t many interesting this to take pictures of…)
This guy right here is funny! He bearded his braid! And when the sun caught his beard/bald head it looked cool so I snapped a photo. He is Ross Petty. (I looked it up on the FormulaD website.)
Anyway I guess I didn’t really have much to say about Formula D, except that I had fun, and I really liked watching them. I was going to explain about the rules and competition, but I’m kind of feeling lazy right now. But it’s really cool! Okay I’ll try to explain in like a sentence.
So basically the cars are graded on a couple things. The speed of their entrance, how closely they reach the clipping points, the angle of their car, and how well they chase when they’re not leading. The clipping points were like, the first wall, two cones, another wall, and another cone. So they basically have to make their car as sideways as they can to get closest to those points. So like, when a car drifts, it’s making the car go at a different angle as it’s wheels, pretty much. But there’s a constant angular motion in one direction, so they’re making like a turn. But if their turn isn’t at the right angle, they might crash into the wall or other car or not get close enough to the clipping point. The best drivers were the ones that didn’t need to correct their angle. And went really fast at the same time.
ZOOM!!!!
Last weekend was my… BERKELEY ADVENTURE!
Maggie and I woke up (relatively) early on Sunday morning and took the BART to Berkeley. We arrived a little before 11 and headed to Sophie’s apartment to drop of our stuff before going to lunch.
The view from the roof of Sophie’s apartment was AWESOME. You can see the bay in this picture! The UC Berkeley campus was on the opposite side of where this photo was taken, but it wasn’t exciting.
But this was exciting! There was a cool building with a shiny reflective facade, so I took a picture of the fence and flower in front of it instead.
We walked through campus to get to the little restaurant that I don’t remember the name of. We met up with Peter, Heather and Daniel there. The food was tasty, portions large, and I got this cute little arancia soda.
It was not as carbonated as Orangina, so I liked it better. And it had a strange foil covering on the top. Maybe to keep the dust out? I don’t know, but it was anticlimactic when we took it off…
Coincidentally enough, I ran into my ex-boyfriend Montague mid-meal. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, so it was nice to have a short chat. Is it weird to blatantly call someone your ex on a public blog? Because I don’t mean it offensively. Just factually.
After lunch, Daniel, Heather, Maggie, Sophie, and I went to see Heather’s dorm/apartment. Pretty chill, we just hung out and watched youtube videos (Gee :D) until Peter finished church so we could all head over to a random mall in Richmond. Heather dressed up cutely hehe. But that was pretty much it. After the mall, I purchased something from Walmart for the first time ever. My reasoning was that I was really really thirsty, so I just bought some juice. And gummy bears, to satisfy a sudden craving. Nomnom.
On the way back from the mall, we dropped by this awesome concrete slide! It kind of reminded me of Taiwan, but better, since kids were smart enough to use cardboard to slide more comfortably/faster.
I made some friends (ages 6 and 7), Vincent and Pierre. HOW COOL IS THE NAME PIERRE, BY THE WAY. Cute little white boys awwwwww I love kids. I want some. Someday. After the park, we ditched Peter (jk, he had people to see, places to go) and went to dinner at La Mediteranne. Or something, I might be missing an n or e. To me, greek/mediterranean food is always a hit or miss, so Heather and I shared a sampler and had some hits and misses. The most delicious thing by far was that thing (it started with a C, Heather help me out!) and it was garnished with CINNAMON and POWDERED SUGAR. The cinnamon added the most delicious twist in the world. Seriously. Anyway, after dinner we got desert at a gourmet ice cream place called Ici. I bought some chocolate chip meringues, too, nomnom.
After getting sugar high from cookies and candy and ice cream, Daniel, Heather, Sophie, Maggie and I played a game of Fish Bowl! It was the first time I had ever played the game (TBH, I was intimidated by the intense expectations when I first heard of it) and it was stupendous!
Maggie
Daniel LOL. Was this “irk”?
This was Daniel making sound effects for Heather. Haha I liked watching them, such a funny couple.
Happy Sophie!
Sorry Heather, I had to. This picture is proof that Daniel is not very good at games, albiet very competitive. Heather was trying to get him to say beaver, with no luck. Seriously, man… Heather slept over at Sophie’s apartment with Maggie and me so we had a bit of girl talk before knocking out at around 3AM.
The next day, I didn’t get a chance to bust out my camera. This was taken in the morning when Maggie asked me for a piggy-back ride but then got too scared to actually…do it right, hahah. We got up early to attempt to get cupcakes and lunch before catching a 1:00 showing of Adam, but the cupcakes were a no-go (Labor Day…). We met up with Daniel at a burger restaurant called Barney’s. I got yam fries, a bacon cheeseburger (I haven’t had bacon in a long time) and a mocha-coffee shake. The fries were delicious, the burger pretty good, but the shake was too sweet imo. I ate half my burger and then made a bento with the other half and the rest of my fries…and ate it the next day for lunch back in San Jose, haha.
After lunch, Heather, Maggie, and I went to watch Adam! I’m really glad I was able to catch the movie playing in a theater not totally out of the way. I liked it, although the ending really confused me. For anyone interested, I won’t spoil, but the trailer is here. After finishing the movie, Maggie and I picked up our stuff from Heather’s place and then caught the next BART back to Fremont. We got back to San Jose around 5:40, exhausted. IT WAS AN AWESOME WEEKEND. I decided that Berkeley has a much better restaurant/food selection than Westwood…I’m jealous. But oh well, I’ll bask in my southern california sun, happily. (Actually, the weather this Labor Day weekend in Berkeley was fantastic.)
In other news, please please check out my newly designed portfolio website! I haven’t checked it with all browsers/operating systems yet, but hopefully there aren’t any horrible ugly gross things that show up with IE. Who still uses IE, anyway? It’s all about Chrome.
I’m heading back to LA early tomorrow morning! Looking forward to home
(Addendum: CHECK THIS OUT! ♥)
This morning I went to “hang out” with my mom at the local farmer’s market. On the way over there, I got the genius idea to take notes on how to pick and choose the BEST fruit. My mom is a super foodie, so I always ask her if a fruit is okay to buy or whatever. But it’s a bit inconvenient to bust out my phone and describe different fruit to her while I’m at Ralph’s, so I’m getting special advice and archiving it here so I can be awesome at picking the sweetest fruit like her, too
Plums! Notice the ripeness at the stem end, if it’s too light, then it won’t be sweet enough. The natural white powdery stuff on the fruit means that not a lot of people have been touching them Slightly less ripe plums can sit at home for 2-3 days and ripen themselves.
Cauliflower! Less smudgy brown spots is better. Like broccoli, it’ll be less bitter if the buds are tighter and not yet bloomed.
Peaches & Nectarines! White peaches/nectarines tend to be sweeter than yellow ones. The all-around redder color tends to be better. It should be less green by the stem, maybe white/pinkish.
Mushrooms! These are button mushrooms. They should be firm, and not opened at all. You shouldn’t see any black from the inside of the mushroom. If they’re fresh, just cut off a bit of the stem (the brown part) before cooking.
Zucchini & Squash! Soft and squishy is bad. Too white is bad, because it means it’s overgrown and old. They’re a bit naturally shiny.
We also bought strawberries (Fresher, green leaves/stems, smell) and mangoes (kidney shaped ones, wrinkly means they’re ready to eat/ripe, sometimes sugar comes out at the stem). I wonder if I should find a Chinese supermarket for Asian vegetables, or if I’ll just rely on salads for my greens…
I’ve been taking a million pictures a day of the stuff in my room while I’ve been unpacking and packing. I’m cleaning up my room so I can take (almost) all my furniture down to Los Angeles. I’m really excited to be moving into my own place!
PS. I decided that taking pictures of stuff against a granite countertop is NOT aesthetically pleasing.
Last weekend, I headed down to San Diego with my family to attend my cousin Gina’s (very) small wedding ceremony/reception. There were only 24 attendees, the majority of whom were my own family members. As the youngest in my generation on my mom’s side of the family, I’m used to being babied, but this time might have been the first time I really felt as if I was taken seriously by my aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was good seeing everyone together again, as the last time we were all in the same place was probably the summer before I started college (almost two years ago), when my other cousin Sara got married.
Even though I don’t have any experience with event photography, I was enlisted (rather than hired, haha) as a photographer for my cousin’s wedding. It was good practice, and a good excuse to bust out the ol’ D40, but seeing how the majority of my photos turned out was a bit disappointing. I’m proud of only a few of them, so I figured I might as well share. The wedding took place at Trattoria Acqua in San Diego. It was set to begin at 5 o’clock, but was delayed due to a few important family members being stuck in traffic. While we waited for them to arrive, my dad (as wine connoisseur) perused the restaurant’s wine collection to choose which white and red wines would be served during the reception.
I wandered around shooting portraits and candids. Here’s my uncle (the father-in-law) and my dad. Both of them legitimately tied their own bowties. Note: I hate the internet for tinting my photos cold.
Of glass-clinking there was a-plenty, and hence so too were photo opportunities. This was my favorite shot of the many. Congratulations, G&G!
And onto other things in my life… I was looking at my Wordpress dashboard today, and realized that a third of the blogs that I post on Thyme are private. I blog much more rarely now than I used to, but whether that’s because of how busy I am or lack of things to say, I’m not sure. I guess things have fallen to such a pattern that don’t feel the dire need to share my experiences, or maybe, I just don’t deem them important enough to be archived. But there are a few thoughts I’d like to write down and save for a less rainy day.
I’m not one to really think about my future, when it comes to career, education, or family. The only permanent goal that has stuck with me throughout the years has been to find happiness, and of course, I’m constantly taking steps towards it, or towards finding out how to reach such a dreamy goal. At each moment in my life, what I’m doing is who I am, and the future? Well, it’ll get here inevitably and eventually, so I don’t trip.
School and academics are, of course, at the front of my mind day-in and day-out. Classes at UCLA have consistently kicked my butt, and I often end up questioning my major. Today, I talked to my friend Anna, a third year Electrical Engineer major. Curious, I asked her why she chose to study EE. She answered exactly how I’ve heard myself respond to others, with a “Why not?” We talked about it for a few minutes, and well, I realized that even if it’s difficult, and even if the best I can do is a C in each of my classes, it’s worth it because I’m doing it. Anticlimactic reason, maybe, but well, it’s true. I’m getting through it, barely, but I am. The Mechanical Engineering department hasn’t scared me off yet with failure, just a handful of “average” grades. And in all honesty, I should try to do better to keep in mind how well “average” is, when one is studying a really, really difficult subject at a really, really good university.
The second major thing that comes to mind when I look at my life right now is what I do for BruinLife yearbook. Because of the Pledge Referendum that recently passed, a helpful sum of money is going to be added to our (ASUCLA Student Media’s) monies. I’ve been meeting with the Communications Board alongside the Editor-in-Chiefs of the Daily Bruin, other newsmags and General Manager of UCLA Radio to discuss our strategies to most effectively utilize this new income, and well, I’m surprised to learn about how the other publications run. The few meetings we’ve had so far have taught me to really appreciate the organization and structure that BruinLife retains as a serious publication of UCLA. I’m proud to be the head honcho of BruinLife again for next year, and I’m excited for the challenges I know I’ll get through. No doubt I’m afraid of how much it’ll hurt me, but by now, it’s become so big a part of me that my responsibility to see things through is nothing short of the moral thing to do. But I think this is a topic for another blog, for some other time.
For now, it’s time for a nap. After that, EE100 homework and my last Physics4AL lab. Rejuvenation, here I come!
Finally, a blog with pictures! But something is really tripping me out, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been editing my raw photos on Photoshop, or if it’s my laptop. Things seem much grey-er and washed out after I upload them, but when I open them with PS or Preview, they look totally fine. On my desktop monitor, they also look fine. Does this mean I need to calibrate the browsers I use? I’m so confused! Maybe it has to do with the web settings of the pictures when I edit them… (Also, things look totally fine on my desktop where I use Chrome…?)
Stanley took a picture of me while I was working on my impromptu art project in my dorm room. This is my little corner - I never realized how colorful it was, covered in pictures and doodads and memorabilia. My space is so comfortable looking
Danny gave me these cloth paints after we graduated from college, and I only used them once, on one of my throw pillows. I’m glad I finally dug them out, though. Due to lack of table space, I resorted to working on the ground. Which resulted in me spilling paint (see first photo) but whatever. (Photo also taken by Stanley.)
End result, modeled by Layla! My own design on an New Silver Fine Jersey Tank from American Apparel.
Original designs. I think the aces are the only ones I’m totally sure about. I have some tweaks to make with the rest of my deck, not to mention the creation of the backs. I’ve gotten a bit of inspiration, but nothing concrete yet… The order I chose (yes, I considered it) was the order of the suits in the card game of Bridge. I recognize that many people use the order of diamonds, clubs, hearts, spades for alternating colors, but colors don’t really apply to my design, anyway. Plus, Bridge is awesome. So clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades wins. It’s also alphabetically ordered. Ftw.
My stamp on the back - I used fabric markers for this instead of paint. Haha I forgot to do it until the last minute, hence it’s messiness.
What else have I been up to? Eating lots of chocolate. My friend Sean sent me this chocolate ages ago, but I never got around to eating it. So I finally did. 70% is like, almost the perfect percentage of dark deliciousness. I decided to melt it down and make chocolate covered strawberries so I wouldn’t feel so guilty about downing pure chocolate. Note to self: Must use wax paper next time.
Deliciousness! Im really good at it. I guess my slight bit of perfectionism kicks in when I do things like this - so simple and pretty! I bought strawberries from Ralph’s, and happily picked the box with the smallest, cutest strawberries. I think that small fruit is often tastier than it’s ginormous counterpart.
I’ve been using my wide angle almost exclusively since the quarter started, and it makes me feel a bit guilty. I love the distortion at 10mm and intense depth of field it brings even at 24mm. But alas, I know I’ve got to step back into reality with my 24-120mm eventually.
I didn’t have wax paper, so I placed them directly on my (awesome square) plate. Cons: Chocolate got stuck on the plate. Messier. End result was uglier :(. Pros: I got to eat the chocolate that fell off the strawberries :).
This is from mid-March. I just wanted to show off my skills at writing backwards.
I’ve got a few blog ideas stored in my “drafts” folder, ready to be dug up and shared. But first, I’m going to study for my EE midterm, and my MAE 103 midterm (I studied this morning, and somehow, things just started to fit together…), eat a mango, and deal with school. I’m sad that I havne’t had time blog lately, but at least this is a competent update.
North campus classes are so life-y. In my Japanese class, I wrote/gave a speech about the time I moved to China. It allowed me to reminisce a bit, and tell part of the story of my life. I also wrote an essay about how although I’m an engineering major, I’m much more interested in art. I expanded on the fact that although I have less time to dabble in practicing art, I still retain my interest through simple projects, research, and photography. I guess I’m mentioning this because this blog in particular touches upon that part of my life, right? Art is so important to me, and although I’m nearly drowning in physics, I still let myself take time to stop and eat strawberries. Nomnomnom.
I should be studying for my two midterms next week, but instead I just uploaded 20-odd pictures to my portfolio site, Mint. I also decided that the photography subsection of Mint was getting too large, so I moved all the photos to a separate page. I hope that isn’t too confusing, but I hope I have time to design a different page solely for my portfolio of digital photography.
Why is the alt attribute for img required? I took this at shutter 1/160 f/5.6. No crazy settings or anything, but it turned out awesome. Obviously cropped for digital zoom. The moon was still up for the majority of the time Stanley and I were on the road to Irvine, and we got to see the sunrise, too.
One of my favorite pictures from the day. I loved the gradient of the sky, orange to blue.
There were a lot of new and old cars at Cars & Coffee in Irvine. I really liked checking out the old cars, like this Ford. So intense and awesome! (Stupid guy interrupting my shot, though.)
Super duper shiny car, I’m a fan. I took this shot lomo-style without looking through my viewfinder, but it still turned out the way I thought it would. Natural composition, luckily caught the guy’s expression the way I did.
Also taken like a lomography shot. He matched the car! I took a few candid shots before he left, but this is definitely the best. This kid is going to own like six cars when he grows up, I bet.
Playing with the dogs at Cars & Coffee made me miss Monty.
Metalwork and found type was so awesome, I just wish I had brought my sketchbook or something. Next time I definitely will, so I can practice sketches of motion and such.