Las Vegas!

Las Vegas is a 5 hour drive away from San Diego. It's a boring drive through dry scrubby wasteland, dotted with joshua trees and abandoned mining towns. Once you get to the city, there's plenty of non-traditional Las Vegas activities.

They've got a minor league hockey team in the Orleans casino.


Toured the various hotels. This time the Bellagio's all decked out for Chinese New Year!


Visited the fremont street experience, which is another less frequently visited collection of casinos, away from the strip.


And there's always hiking at Red Rock where I saw a wild burro, driving through the seedy strip club infested streets, and walking in and out of the "hip" bars. But remember, bars are really only fun if you're single. With someone watching you, you can't really be yourself, or interact with others.

I have some water leaks in my condo. I've uploaded some pix for the landlord and appropriate authorities to examine. We've been keeping notes and evidence, the leaks are getting worse and worse... More on this later.

Cat Thanksgiving

Haven't posted in a long time =( Originally I meant to do this every other day, then it became every week, and now it's been what almost two weeks? I wish I had the motivation and energy to keep it up, a running diary, like a xanga I suppose but minus the viruses. I'll work on it over break. Claiming my spot in cyberspace. Another of a huge long list of things I mean to accomplish.

My time away from here was not in vain though! We had a Thanksgiving with no brothers, but plenty of foreign relatives! I'd vote for the kimchee turkey or hotpot, but no...we had to have a traditional meal. I contributed mash potatoes smothered in sour cream and green onions (versus butter) and burnt brussel sprouts (burnt on purpose). They were pretty good. And we actually had good wine. Not good as in pricey, but good as in easy to drink. As we're immigrants, we can't tell good wine from bad, and as we're Chinese, we're incredibly stingy. So we ended up with a huge bottle of "white merlot." You know how they make white merlot? They take some white wine and dump it into the leftover merlot. Or maybe it's pear juice. Either way it comes out a delicate pink, and tastes like punch.

And after that, we went shopping! Now, 3/3 guests didn't have money and couldn't afford to buy anything. And everyone else has questionable taste in fashion. I'm the only one willing to spend hundreds on clothing that I'll never wear. I'm particularly susceptible to clothing fashioned from two+ types of animal fur, extra points if its shiny as well. But none of it fits!

To end this post I've included some Tiger pix. I remember when I was looking for cameras, some guy took this incredibly close up picture of the eye of his siamese cat. I wanted to replicate that image. So I got the same camera. I haven't done so yet, but as you can tell from the second shot, we're getting a lot closer. It's difficult to photograph a black and white cat though, the focus is never perfect, and as I've learned, photographing in ISO 1600 produces grainy images. The goal is to perfect this over winter break.

Good Times

Neither of these items exist any more.

Wild Animal Park

The Yellow Cat's having an awesome weekend. Went up to Anaheim last night to catch the Sharks destroying the Ducks in a 1-0 game. Stopped by downtown disney on the way, which is as great as the downtown disney in Orlando, with the same huge Rainforest Cafe, the large fanciful restaurants, and that Lego store where they have the giant Lego sculptures.

Today we got season passes to the Wild Animal Park, so we'll need to go many many more times. It was kind of empty today, but maybe as a result, the animals were really active. Here's a preview of what's to come: Remember...I get to go many many many more times!

Lion profile! He blinked during my first shot.

Flamingos - they actually have black feathers too. Also saw fuzzy shedding GREY flamingos, but no good pix of them.

It's a rhino w/a rhino baby. Hard to believe it's a baby since it's so huge. The park has too many rhinos.

So two things about this deer. 1) His mouth is open! Open the picture and see. And 2) it's like that forest god in Princess Mononoke, the same deer.

And lastly, lionesses ontop of a car. Part of the lion exhibit. I'm not sure if they're always this friendly, or if we were just lucky today.


Rest assured, there will be many many many more animal photos, as a result of the many more times I'll be visiting. Birds, different deer, okapi, super big pelicans...they'll all be here.

So I was lame this weekend...

I'm saddened by my extreme lameness this week. So I'm putting up pictures of the airshow I attended last weekend, when I was not lame. You can't be lame when it takes you an hour to get into the air base, and an hour to get out. That's what happens when they make the show free, with free parking. But don't worry, the military recruiters were out in full force, so I'm sure they got their money's worth. But it was still an awesome event.

We saw tons of military aircraft, like this helicopter...


And we saw planes refueling...


Ooh, and of course there were snipers...I don't think they were part of the show of course, but were added suppport.


And we saw tanks!


And they did military stuff like blow up the ground, and fly loud fast planes around, and everyone brought their fancy cameras with their huge lenses to take pictures, but really the pictures don't work out, it's much better to see it in person. And if you bring your big fancy camera and end up sitting next to me, I'll greatly hinder your efforts to capture images, by refusing to move, and shoving my elbow into your lens.

Yellow Cat + Mouse

Yellow cat got a mouse. It's male. Cost $1.99. Named him Vladimir.

The mouse sat on the Yellow Cat.



Yellow Cat had no reaction to the mouse.


Vlady now has a small green, purple and blue cage, and he lives next to the litterbox. When Vlady dies, Vlady II will take his place, and so on.

I was really busy last week...all schoolwork. It's terrible when you open the book and realize you know nothing about the subject. There's layers, the first where you think you understand it all, then the next where the issues blur and you get confused, then the last level where you become enlightened. Well, I'm not at enlightenment, but at least I made it to the point of utter confusion. At the end everyone knows the same material, it's just who's more capable of analyzing and rationalizing the issues and solutions. Anyhow, my point is I was so busy I didn't get to do much besides study. I don't think I even went out during the week.

I did go to a school party. I was motivated by a chance to win $1000. They drew 100 names, and also gave out money for costumes. It's the advantage of a private school, you give them so much money they can't help but throw elaborate parties. We had tons of free food, pretzels, churros, funnel cake, kettle corn, ice cream. They also brought in a sound stage with huge projection screens, and set up decorations. You can see the stage in the picture. Downside was no alcohol, everyone was locked into a really small space with no in or out privileges. Oh, and the fact that I knew almost no one there. I really do need more/new friends.

Yellow Cat on a Leash

Have cat, got leash, let's walk!

Fleet Week Adventure

Fleet week in San Diego! Every few minutes one of the Navy's ships would sail by. I couldn't tell you which ship was which, but I can say most were grey, and the sailors stood on the deck at attention as each passed. Here's a shot of the USS Midway (the museum) on the left, with one of the many grey passing ships on the right.


The highlight was a free tour of the USS Comstock, docked in San Diego. It was commissioned in 1990, and serves as a transport vessel. The line was about 30min long, but the tour was well worth it. Every year you get a different ship.


While on deck we saw the hovercraft fly by. It's incredibly loud and big, and moves very slowly, but from an angle can appear invisible.


The marines on board get their own dentist and medical officer, but by far the best thing we saw was the war room. It's got screens showing where all the ships in the world are stationed, as well as navigation charts, radars, and all types of old computers that no one uses any more. The whole room's lit with creepy blue light, I guess to calm people down in case something goes wrong. It makes photography difficult of course.


And of course they showed us the guns. This ship isn't made for combat, so the weapons aren't impressive. This is the largest gun on ship, and is operated electronically. The guy did shoot it, too bad it was unloaded. It would have hit the Midway.