I remember the good old days of flying international at least 3 times a year when I was a kid, when I had cute airplane meals and toys to keep me busy. Fast forward, 2009, in college and mostly flying domestic. Yup, you heard me right, flying mostly west bound to SF, which is usually a 6 hour flight (inclding transit). Not only has my norm flight-borne time multiplied by 4(I used to fly to CGK from SG so thats like 1.5hr), but I am not even getting any more meals.  *stomach growls*...


So what happen to all those beautiful airline meals that we use to get? Well some of them still exist if you fly international =)


Go to AirlineMeals.net to check out more of plane foods around the world, and I am guessing they have every airline in the industry!

... No wonder we are all drawn to Disney characters!

hmmmmm I knew ピカチュウ, aka Pikachūis one of the most adorable cartoon character, but never knew it was shaped after a real animal. My first chance over American Pikas are at Yosemite in the museum. I have never seen a live one, but they seem to be the most charming little ones, communicating with each other using sounds that sound like "eeeeps".

Apparently, they are becoming endangered due to climate changes, joining the ranks of polar bears who have been hit hard by the world's change. Their thick fur allows them to thrive very well in the cold but on the downside be responsible for their deaths when the weather stays at 80 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple of hours, as they overheat. ~(>.<)~



I don't blame the animals dying because of global warming and climate changes, because I am starting to feel the averse effect of the world's changes. Our winters are looking more like fall and our summers like spring. The heat is driving me and many others literary to the brink of madness. I wonder whats gonna happen to us in the next 20  years. Perhaps like the movie walle?

Bookroom Reviews has a free 6-month membership to Sensei and a $50 Whole Foods gift card for three winners. Sensei is a great program to help you lose weight; it's like having your own virtual weight loss coach and provides planning and tips even when you're dining out.- ends June

Win a $100 grocery giftcard and Wish-Bone prize pack - ends June 30th, 2009

Mom Start Calypso Shop Totes re-usable bags giveaway - Calypso S. H. O. P. Tote -ends June 22nd, 2009

Custom Blog Design Giveaway from Subjective Beauty - custom package from SubjectiveBeauty.com - ends June 15th, 2009

Book Dads Summer beach Bag Books Giveaway - 5 sets of 10 books to give away- U.S./Canada - ends June 30, 2009

Is the iPhone 3Gs that much different than the iPhone 3G? Depends on what you consider as important, the 3Gs definitely has better camera and functions that come with it but Battery life is pretty much the same. Speed is definitely an important factor. Here is a comparision brought up by Gizmodo(love these guys)...

Thanks to live-Gizmodo which supplied me live feed of the keynote~

Snow leopard is coming out in September this year bearing new functions such as Microsoft Exchange support, mutli-core which allows multi-threading and major OSX apps running in 64-bit. The best thing is that the upgrade cost only $29 for Leopard users and the family pack is available for $49. For those Apple enthusiast, the Developer Preview is out!


More from where that came from, Apple is including a push application which allow real time information to transfer. For example you can get your scoccer scores in real time to your phone and patients can send information with regards to their health almost instantly to their doctors, which allows doctors to easily monitor their patient's progress. And EKG can even be streamed live through 3G, makes doctors job easier. (pretty cool, I should think about working in health care~)

I thought I have seen it all in the computing world, but I guessed wrong. Saw this at Engadget, check it out.

I maybe a sucker for cute stuff but don't you agree that looking at cute animals would definitely lift anyone's spirit unless you are emotionless. Everyone ought to have some soft spot for be it animals or babies. Been pretty grumpy the past few days, I guess coz am bored to tears. But these guys, and much more from where they came from, has made me go *awwwwwww* So what does looking at cute stuff do to you, isn't it just plain old going *awww* for 5 seconds and nothing more to it. Apparently not!

A study at University of Virgin suggest that viewing or interacting with something adorable/ cute could improve your physical performance at work or on certain tasks.(PDF) They believe that “cuteness not only compels us to care for cute things but also prepares us to do so via its effects on behavioral carefulness.” (skepchick.org)

So here are some cute pictures/clips that had made my day in the past week~

Was on a withdrawal after mom went back yesterday. The truth finally hits me, no more home cooked food and pack lunches and I have to become the grown up me again with plenty of "i-just-mixed-everything" dishes and tons of going out to eat and takeaways scenarios.

Headed to sushi bar to drown my sorrows after finally drawing out and setting up Hoot and Meow (our new online venture). Ikura and Soba has been my a great part of my 2009 comfort food. After stuffing ourselves, someone suggested stopping at The Chocolate Moose at S. Walnut.

While the stock market is plucking investors from the air, and the office buzzes, I have been sniffing out interesting websites! Take a look at this, I was searching for my virtual footprints and landed myself in "Is this your name?"I know its kinda dingy but my curiosity got the better of me, I went on to typed in my name and tada~ got myself some interesting facts:

1. 44% of the letters are vowels. Of one million first and last names we looked at, 15.8% have a higher vowel make-up. This means you are very well envoweled.
2. In ASCII binary it is... 01010000 01100001 01101101 01100101 01101100 01100001 00100000 01010011 01110101 01110010 01101010 01100001 01100100 01101010 01100001 01101010 01100001
3. In Pig Latin, it is Amelapay Urjadjajasay.
4. People with this first name are probably: Female. So, you are constantly overcharged for beauty products.
   

Name Origin and Meaning:
Origin: Greek
Meaning: Honey (ummmmm...........)

3 Things You Didn't Know

1. Your personal power animal is the Bull Shark(above)(you gotta be kidding right?!)
2. Your 'Numerology' number is 8. If it wasn't bulls**t, it would mean that you are motivated by material success and have an aptitude for business, managerial and financial matters. This comes through your uncommon discipline and persistence.
3. According to the US Census Bureau°, 0.416% of US residents have the first name 'Pamela' and fewer than 0.001% have the surname 'Suxxxxxxxx. The US has around 300 million residents, so we guesstimate there is only 1 American who goes by your name.

How cool is that,  you guys should try it out!

On another note, lets get real and talk about pure science. Now who's more real and had countless of opportunity to get electrocuted than Adam Savage from MythBusters? His answer on electrocution is pretty mind boggling. So, how much electricity do you exactly need to kill a human? Well,  if this doesn't freak you out, all you need is  seven milliamps, for 3 seconds. That's all it takes to kill you. Electricity kills you by interrupting  your heart rhythm, and if your heart continously for 3 seconds, your heart goes wacky and arrhythmic, and everything else in your body starts shutting down. So... Fact of the day~ you could easily kill someone with a 9-volt or AAA battery directly to the heart! Freaky or Not!



Oh Oh *psst* Theres a firey hot deal at  dell.com!  Dell Vo stro 220s Desktop PC with Core 2 Duo E7400 & 23" LCD Monitor Deals & Sales for $383.10

Been doing tons of online shipping in the past one week. Mac has a new skin, my ears has an awesome new pro280 sennheiser headphones; love those babies, they don't leak sound and it has great noise reduction capabilities, that'll help me go through those baby-filled airplane rides!

Finally got my gorillapod, after contemplating for more than half a year. I should really pick up my camera again real soon. Been a crazy semester for me, every other week I have a test or exam, but what the heck, undergrad life is almost over! One more paper and am done with this!

Mom is flying in tomorrow evening, means house cleaning tonight and tomorrow before picking her up. I miss the long chats I have with her when I was still living at home. I guess what people say is true, nothing beats the feeling of home (^.^) gotta pick up my graduation gown and all tomorrow! Doesn't time pass really fast...

A snapshot of my favs atm-

Sorry for the flare, was using the phone's cam~

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Life is a journey with many crossroads and everyone requires a choice. We are always searching for the truth and the meaning of life, standing by milestones, like the one I am standing by right now. Milestones are meant to keep you on track with your life, making sure that true success is achieved.

A week of finals and I would be done with my college life. Looking back I have my regrets and my joy, I have grown tremendously throughout my three years here, getting to know people and traveling a great deal. Making lifelong friends and meeting influential people that had made a huge different in life. Mentors that never fail to stretch their hand out to lift me up when I trip over rocks and fall off cliffs.

One of the most important lesson I bring out of college is that the world is never meant for conformity. Look around our tiny earth, anything meant that has been conformed always breaks out in chaos. I learnt this the hard way, following the path of future success that many believe to be true, but does not apply to myself.

My regrets is that although I was never restricted, I had become what society deemed as having a bright future, but not being someone that is truly me. But its never too late, the world goes round and my dream expands, its time for me to be who I am meant to be. One step at a time.

It doesn't get more amusing than this. President Bush made his farewell visit to Baghdad and this is what happen...


I don't know if he happens to be the first President to have a shoe thrown at in public, but it definitely humored me and my roommate for the day.

This year Thanksgiving, dreams truly came true for some of us. We were headed to a city where everything seems possible, Los Angeles: City of Dreams. I managed to get a couple of friends and myself to help out at the 2008 American Music Awards at the Nokia Theater.

It wasn't that easy for me to leave early for this year's thanksgiving break due to assignments due dates and work commitments, but thanks to people around me who were pretty supportive of me going to LA, especially my SPEA teacher.

Left B-town 2 Fridays ago, finally away from any signs of my books. Although as enticing that reason may be, the real reason was because we were due to help out with Production on Saturday and Sunday, which was the day of the broadcast. We were all geared up and pumped, after all we do need a little break out of familiarity, the reason why I love traveling.

I saw a dozen familiar faces from summer, and we had our "awws" and "ohhhs" , I was introduced to a couple of great people, made new friends and had the time of my life touring the venue(Nokia Theater) which had a huge basement, where production was. We had a glimpse of the stage, production rooms, editing trailers, red carpet and even the after party venue. Saw the infamous Jimmy Kimmel, who was the host of the night, his escort was a real nice friendly guy. Bumped into several musicians, which often times I could not recognize. Saw Jones Brothers walking past us probably more often than I would expected. Nearly crashed head first into Corbin Bleu as I was rushing up the stairs. I am pretty sure, Von and the other had close brushes with many people, including Queen Latifah, Chris Martin and much more.

One conclusion we had was that, we never fail to recognize that someone is famous, just by the entourage that trails them, but we just don't know WHO it is. We never did get star struck. The only time my jaw literary fell was our first glimpse of the show. We entered the hall without knowing what to expect, and it came fast at us, Alicia Keys and Queen Latifah was rehearsing for the finale song. To me, seeing THE Queen Latifah and Alicia Keys and being in such close proximity to them brought me to cloud 9. They are the two women that I have high respects for in the Music Industry, moreover Queen Latifah was such a darling, taking pictures and chatting with everyone.

Since we were granted full access to the majority of the rehearsals and sets, it was a huge learning experience for all of us, especially with regards to dealing with one of the biggest award shows in the industry. Througout the rest of the day and even on Sunday, various artist had their full rehearsals. I know Von and the others watched Miley Cyrus' rehearsal till they could memorize it. I was pretty impressed by Kayne West's set.

Sunday was more hectic, we made a trip down to the Melrose Trading post at 8am , which was a flea market, grab some deals and food before heading down to the Nokia Theater. It was a slow beginning, but everything soon picked up. We managed to get some tickets for the AMA and watched most of the performances.








Those music videos are a couple of the best that I enjoyed, there are other performances by Pussycat Dolls, Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Leona Lewis, Natasha Bedingfield and Christina Aguilera.

And as they say the best is saved for the last! Alicia Keys, Queen Latifah and Kathleen Battle, performed "Superwomen" and impressive was definitely an understatement!



It was an eventful night! I am pretty amazed of the scale of the event, the number of people behind the scenes, the number of cameras, the number of stage crews that works tirelessly changing the sets between songs. The number of people in production, talent, escorts, production assistants, producers, writers, coordinators. And it all runs down to DCP.  I am sincerely thankful to all the people who made it possible for me and my friends to go down and be a part of the show!

I will update on the rest of the trip once I upload my pictures.

Since coming to the states I have adopted the habit of shopping online. Online retailers are the only way I can access things that I need or want and is not available in town.

As widely known, I am not the only one indulging in this. Online shopping has been increasingly popular choice for shoppers around the world, people shop online for virtually everything, from clothing to even groceries. How lazy have human become due to the advancement of technology where whatever you need is available at the click of a mouse.

But have you ever wondered if you are actually digging up the best deals? Over the past few months, I have been spending on big ticketed items, such as cameras, electronics and even craft stuff. A couple of days ago, I was settled on getting the p&s camera that I was having my eye on. Unfortunately, it is out of stock in usual retailers and had to resort to other dealers who are charging a whole lot more.

I was pretty determined that I am able to break a good deal with the endless resources the internet could bring. So while I was on the quest of finding deals I stumbled upon 2 sites which managed to get me to save over $190 bucks on my final price. Now.... who doesn't want such a deal!

I combined the discount from bigcrumbs.com and the coupons I managed to find online to total up 35% off my purchase price! Now am just waiting for my item to arrive!

In addition to cute stuff, I am a sucker for tech gadgets. I recently sold off my mac book, satisfyingly for a price that covers my depreciation. I sold it for 100 bucks above what I bought it for. That would fund me for the new mac book that I desire to buy, as my previous post mentions.

I have been having great fun with my 450D companion and its 50mm f/1.8 lens. Its currently my walk around lens.The only downside is that because its 50mm I have no other options. Oh well what more can you ask for for a $60 bucks lens! Don't get me wrong, if you Google it anywhere its one of the best lenses around, and dead cheap too!

2 days ago, Pre-Halloween day, downtown Bloomington held a Zombie parade! It was freaky. We were sitting at Buffalo Lowe's eating and we saw a couple of people dressing up as zombies walking out. I ran with my camera ready in hand (but had the wrong lens on =(  ) and did not managed to get pictures of the zombies. They did look like a scene from resident evil marching down kirkwood! We tracked them down but unfortunately by the time we found any remenants of them. The police has caused the crowd to dispearsed. I wish I had caught the action =|

I had thoughts earlier if I should retire my z750 which has faithfully served me for the past 3 years and get a LX3. Although bumped and half hit, with no wideangle, it is one of the cameras which I would'nt want to part with. It works pretty fine till now and produces the best pictures and some... the most memoriable pictures that I had ever seen. so.... is the LX3 worth considering? IMO yes, but when maybe... in a couple of months =) For now, I am loving my 450D and will make do with my Z750 =p

Struck by WSJ and the snippet of " Apple unveiled upgrade versions of its laptop computers..." and got me interested and I went on the apple website and found the keynote of the new macbook.


Watching the Keynote of the new aluminum Macbook, I felt the sudden urge of buying the new macbook. As many of my close friends know, I was never a fan of Apple macbook due to compatibility reasons and the fact that I like to custom build my own computer.

Recently though I have been impressed by Mac's graphics, and since it has moved to intel and moving up to leopard operating system( which I have to agree is so much better than vista), I have been pretty much convinced . I was Wowed by ilife and iwork and comparably more advance than what PC can offer ( think I will get clobbered by PC loyalist).

Tim cooked addressed in the recent 14th October Apple keynote that most people looked at the mac in the pass, one concern that people have in converting to Mac is compatibility. Now the upgraded mac have bootcamp on every single macintosh that they ship. On top of that 3rd parties software such as fusion and parallel which allows you to run windows and mac OS at the same time, which is also my preference. Tim mentioned that most converts are coming from people who are disappointed by Vista, and I happen to be one of them.

I recently got the black macbook and Jon helped me upgrade my ram to 4gb, am loving every minute of it . The stubborn me have been converted. Not only is Mac lighter than my IBM laptop- don't get me wrong, I love my IBM it has been with me for 4 years and still working perfectly, Mac's charger is so much more convenient and portable.

In the keynote, they addressed the arrival of the new macbook, which I regrettable have fallen in love with by just watching the ad. The new Nvidia 9600M GT, GDDR3 on the new macbook pro is simply amazing, thats ultimate graphics on battery life of 4 hours, you can choose to run on the 9400M for 5 hours( both on the same housing), glass track pad, solid state drive, easily accessible drive and batt. The macbook 13" will be running Nvidia 9400M, goodness isn't that just great. It is also a most environmentally built, Arsenic-free glass, BFR-free, Mercury-Free, PVC- Free system. Am loving all this, and they have won the EPEAT gold for 2008. 

As excited as I might be, I won't be investing in it anytime soon, since I have this "baby" for now unless I send this baby off and get the new macbook. Mac has definitely surpassed my expectations. What I might invest in would be the 24" cinematic display!

Watch the new macbook ad : http://www.apple.com/macbook/#designvideo
A true revolution.

 We spent our last weekend at Le Deux  one of the hottest spot in LA. It was kind of a farewell party before our last week around and it is kinda hectiic especially when some of the guys are leaving earlier than the rest of us as school starts out earlier for them, some leaving to as far as China, London, Australia... Am gonna miss those guys real bad! Some of us are going back to LA in the November and December period and am sure we will get together again!

It was a great night, we had drinks a free flow of food and crazy dancing. This is the other side of life in LA, and let loose and enjoy!

Here are some pictures from that night! And as you can see my tan line from the first half of summer is still very much of existence. One lesson to learn from that, I dun fade my tan too well and I get weird sunburns -.-"

 King King is a great place to experience the underground culture of LA, the two times I have been there was a total different atmosphere and vibe to it. The first time I had gone there to learn contra-tiempo, and I could not find the front door, turns out that the front entrance can only be accessed from the car park, which is at the back of the building.

Last monday was the second time I ventured into King King. Dan had invited me to go watch his friend, DJ CTown to DJ at a club, never did I know it would be King King. Going there was a last minute decision as I had a crazy day, it was a good decision though! Loved the place love the crowd and love the music. What more can you ask for! They had Cheezeburger plus special guess mezzaine , the Mulisms, spider problems and photos by shadowcaster.  one word could sum up this event; Awesome!

.A colleague of mine whose past-time involves shoot models and building up a fashion photography portfolio asked me a couple of days ago to help her out in a photo-shoot that she has today. I obviously jumped at the opportunity and said yes, I had learnt so much from how to use a light meter, creation of softlight and shadow to even creating different effects. I had also picked up certain make up techniques from the make up artist that was involved in the shoot!

I have always had a full time professional job, it might be inbuilt or just the lack of direction, but I am definitely a full time pro in getting lost. The past weekend was filled with trying to find my way to places and getting back. It was also the weekend that I spent 60% of my time on the public transport or walking. Although by the end of each day I felt like my limbs are going to give way, I had travelled down miracle mile and walked a crazy load of miles trying to navigate myself around Sunset Boulevard, Fairfax Avenue, Melrose Avenue and even Hollywood.

Here is the list of places i went:

Peterson Automotive Museum
LACMA: The Philip-LorCa diCorcia photograph special exhibition was amazing and inspirational, his polaroid photographs makes me wanna indulge in getting a polaroid camera myself! There was also a featured exhibition of Japanese Art, their usage of screens and symbolic characters was a unique way of presenting art in the modern world.
Crossroads Trading : This is one of the fab places I had ventured in, although its more of a vintage store, it has so much more in store. Love this place so much that I spent a good 2 hours in it.
Flea Market(Fairfax High School): Flea market, thats enough to drive me crazy!
Farmers market

I spent a good 5 hours at LACMA and only finished 1 building, LACMA consist of 4 buildings, so its known to be huge! And me someone who gets immersed deeply when going to art galleries or even when going to flea markets, spent a good deal of time at these places. I am starting to truly fall in love with LA and its culture, although a huge mess of culture, I love the diversity and the people! Can't get enough of them.

Matt messaged me on facebook that they had gotten back to LA! Can't wait to watch the stuff tthat they taped!