I'm testing out Posterous.com and seeing if the service can simultaneously post on my xanga and posterous blogs. That would make things much easier.

Sorry it's been a while since I last posted. Since the last time I wrote, I had some relatives visit our local neck of the woods. It was nice, but I must say that whenever you find yourself having to entertain visitors, you never know what to do with them. Where do you go? Of course I'm not much of a Los Angeles fan to begin with, so I'm not the right one to ask. If it were me, I'd end up taking them to museums and random stuff I find offline.

We managed to go to Griffith Observatory on Sunday. It was my first time going, and it was somewhat interesting. I'm not too much into the science of it, but was there more for the experience and visuals. I managed to take this cool photo of the moon. Looks real, right? (except for the seamline where it was put together) It was fun. I'd go again. There's this pretty neat projection show, where they project stars and film onto an exclosed dome. But a word of caution for those of you with motionsickness (aka me), as certain parts may make you want to blow chunks.

I'm not any fun to be around. I didn't want to go to Disneyland. I'm not much for rollercoasters and long lines, but more importantly, I didn't want to spend so much money when I have to prep for my life-savings funded trip to China later this year (which looks to be postponed later into early November).

Only 3 weeks left until my job is over. Woohoo!!! An indeterminate amount of vacation time!!! I will miss the money though... but we'll figure that all out once I come back from China. What if I do something completely spontaneous and just decided to stay there...?

Some recent "projects" that I've been working on:

1. Family tree. After listening to a podcast by Leo Laporte where he recommended a site called GENi.com, I decided to sign up. Imagine a Facebook social activity, but amongst your family members. Maybe because we have a lot of tech savvy people in the family, or the fact that my family is enormous... I just built it a week ago, but it's already been a hit. We share photos and just chat on it. Eventually I'd like to put up my ancestry beyond the grandparents...

2. So I'm trying to get myself into "China mode". I have to immerse myself in head knowledge and culture. I expect that most of the time I'm there, I'll be alone. I learned that you apparently have to register yourself to the police of wherever you stay (though hotels will often do that service for you). Once my job is over, I'm going to occasionally head over to Alhambra and Chinatown and see if I can do things like order off a menu and converse on my own. I'm also trying to listen to more Asian music lately. Pretty much the only Asian music in my library thus far are Japanese anime soundtracks... and one Jackie Chan song (thus showing my lack of Asian music talent out there). This past weekend I just randomly went through video websites like YouTube to find some artists I could get into. My Chinese stinks, so pretty much I'm just listening for catchy beats and maybe picking up a phrase I know here and there. So I found some Asian artists like Jewelry (Korean), BoA (Korean), Dew (Japanese)... the only Chinese artist that was somewhat interesting was Rainie Yang, who is probably better known as an actress. So any recommendations? Besides Jay Chou... I'm going to just surf through iTunes...

3. A plan that I hope to complete after I quit but before I head into my reunion is to at least make business cards and somewhat of a presentable website. I need people to at least know I'm a photographer, and perhaps this will be a good networking opp.

Okay, I got to get to bed now. (12:39am)

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Star Spangled Banner
By Francis Scott Key 1814

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

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My Xanga blog - I'm not sure if I should call this my old blog, as I'm still posting on it. But the service that Posterous provides, which allows a rather seamless blogging-via-email service, may prove to be useful when I travel internationally (e.g. China with their firewall to limit access to foreign sites). And it updates my posts on Twitter, which is a somewhat useful function (I don't twitter much, but you can find me as "definepatism"). Supposedly it can also post onto my Xanga too, but I haven't figured out how to do so yet. So we'll see how all this works out.

Yesterday I went with my friend Emil to watch the Star Wars CG-animated movie "The Clone Wars", which is somewhat of a continuation to the animated TV cartoon series of the same name. For the uninformed, the storyline fills in the gaps between episodes 2 and 3 of the Star Wars prequel movies. The character design of it is similar to the cartoon series, but lacks some of the artistic appeal when converted to 3D. I will say that it is somewhat of a filler, and for the hardcore fans, it doesn't really add much to the sci-fi saga. BUUUTTT... old Lucas has plans to continue the Star Wars universe through further cartoons and live-action TV programming, so perhaps this is a start to greater things to come...

Ate at the local all-you-can-eat Mongolian BBQ place, Asian Garden. It was my first time eating there for dinner, as the price is about a dollar fifty more than their lunch prices. So when Emil and I entered there, it looked like they had added a few small touches to their menu (Chinese style ribs, fried rice, etc...) along with a dollar charge for leaving leftovers. Now I haven't gone in a few months, so I'm not sure if it was because we were eating dinner instead of lunch, or if it was because they had changed. I guess we'll find out next time I go...

I'm thinking about getting an American Express flight rewards credit card. I think I just need an excuse to travel more, and perhaps this will help me to do so...

I think I've pretty much made up my mind about getting my modbook. Yeah, I pretty much will get be broke. But what's the point in being single and having money? So that's that. Some people go on fancy vacations. Other people go to concerts. I'm a techie.

So I'm going to keep this entry short (yes, this is what I consider a SHORT entry). I have high hopes for Posterous, and we'll see how things work out.

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