Nostalgia

I bet all of us have seen things that remind us of our past. I was at Walmart today buying ice cream and checking out LCD HDTV's because my girlfriend Ivy needs a new TV set. The toy section is next to the electronics, so I thought I'd check out what kids are playing with now besides video games.

I came across a Lego Technic excavator model that looked strikingly similar to the one I had owned back in 5th grade (1988-1989). Of course that Lego model has since been broken up and gone, even though I liked it so much. As a comparison, I found these photos:

The photo that says "8851" is the one I had as a kid (introduced in 1985) and the other is the 2008 reincarnation of the excavator.

I don't know if Lego is trying to bring back classic models using modern blocks, but either way the new one looks just as cool. It's one of the models that I wish I still had.

In other news, my aunt and uncle are currently visiting my family in LA. My bro Jack has photos up, but you'll need to get permission from him to view on his Picasaweb. Looks like my grandma is going to arrive from Taiwan on Tuesday with another aunt. I should be able to see my grandma when I go back to LA at the end of October.

By the way, the colors of fall are starting to show up here in Columbus. I started seeing trees turn golden yellow/brown starting last week. The leaves will be gone in a month and snow will be here in a couple of months.

I missed the storm while having fun at SF!

I have posted my photos to SF on my Picasaweb. It was an awesome trip. The Rheumatology board review lectures were much more superior to the ones in New York last year. I stayed at the very expensive ($250/night) Stanford Court at Nob Hill. It's next to the scenic cable car intersection on Powell and California and waking distance to Chinatown. The lectures were at the hotel ball room.

On Thursday night I went out to eat with my colleagues Heather and Snow at Chinatown. I found the food at Chinatown to be way overpriced - easily 2-3x the prices in LA. On Friday night I went out with Heather to eat at Marche at Ghirardelli square, which was quite expensive too, but worth it compared to Chinatown. The restrauant overlooked the bay and Alcatraz.

My girlfriend Ivy flew in late Friday night, so she came directly to the hotel. The next day, after my half day of lectures, we went out to tour San Francisco. The hotel gave me two complementry 3-day cable car tickets, so we rode the cable car! It was Ivy's first time. The cable car was bumpy and jerked hard. At one time we had to stand on the side of the car. It was quite an experience! Ivy and I toured Fisherman's Warf and had a plate of fresh cocktail prawns. We rode the Blue and Gold fleet to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Later we had clam chowder at Boudin's and then for dinner we had sushi at Chinatown.

We walked a whole lot on Saturday. I'm glad I have Ivy, who puts up with all that walking. I even got blisters afterwards, but her feet seemed totally fine.



The whole trip cost around $2000. I hope to get reimbursed for the full amount. My next trip is October 24-29!

While I was at SF I was freaked out about Hurricane Ike because my flight back to Columbus on Sunday would transfer at Dallas. Luckily Ike rolled through Dallas on Saturday, so my flight was not affected. However, Ike rolled through Columbus Sunday afternoon in the form of wind storm. So by the time I got back Sunday night, there was wide spread power outage. The wind was reported to have gusted >70 MPH and it blew down a lot of trees.

I had to throw away $30 worth of food from the fridge. Walmart and Target were totally out of flashlights, and the only things left were scented candles. Good thing I had flashlights already, but I still had to buy candles to save on batteries. Power slowly came back for the street signals and street lights, but I didn't get my power back in the apartment until 3 days later (Wednesday afternoon).

OSU vs. USC

In about 3 hours I will be on my way to San Francisco! Looks like I may meet up with a high school friend, Jessica, for dinner on Thursday. It seems like my lecture schedules are 7am-6pm on both Thursday and Friday, then 7am-1pm on Saturday.

Ivy will fly in on Friday night and we will probably meet up with some of her friends Saturday. But of course, I'm gonna try not to miss the OSU vs USC game!!!!!

Yes, the big game is this Saturday.....Don't miss it! It's not often these 2 major teams match up. The kickoff is 5pm PST at USC.

Also, remember to register to vote in the November elections! Deadline is sometime in October I think. McCain/Palin all the way!

Labor Day Weekend Trip

I uploaded photos from my trip with Ivy to visit her sister's family at Urbana, IL. They just moved to the US from Taiwan in August. Ivy's brother inlaw is studying at the University of Illinois until May 09.

Ivy flew in Saturday morning. The drive was 5 hours long from Columbus to Urbana on Saturday afternoon, but we utilized our time pretty well. It's a surprise that Urbana is not in the middle of nowhere. They have pretty nice Chinese and Taiwanese resturants there.

Ivy's older cousin, who's been in the Chicago area for about 4 years, also drove down to Urbana for a visit. We made our way back to Columbus Monday morning at 3 o'clock.

Here's a bit of a bummer news: While shooting photos at Urbana, my Canon 40D suddenly stopped working. It was having the "busy error." I didn't lose any photos, but the camera is apparently stuck in "busy" mode. I searched online and it seems like other people had similar problems before. I took out all the batteries for a whole day, but it still would not fix itself. My compact flash cards are working fine. I guess it's a trip to Canon for service. Good thing it's still under warranty, but it sucks to have something this expensive break after only 9 months of ownership.