Jiu Zhai Gou

The saying goes:"once you've been to Jiuzhaigou, you are done seeing scenic waters". Jiuzhaigou is renowned for its colorful waters and multi-level falls, one of the World Heritage Sites. What's been captured by camera is just a tip of an iceberg. It's gorgeousness is beyond the scope of imagination, you have to see it with your eyes to appreciate the real beauty of it. The best season to visit Jiuzhaigou is October when the water level is high and sky is clear. I was there in raining May, but my joyfulness when actually seeing all the colors in the water was never less. You just couldn't help but be amazed by how much innovations our mother nature has put in creating this beauty.

Huang Shan

The other saying goes:"once you've been to Huangshan, you are done seeing scenic mountains". With that said, I‘m done seeing waters and mountains one thing for all in May! Being another World Heritage Site, Huangshan is known for its sunrise, as displayed on the upper-left corner of the picture, its pine trees, the lower-left corner, and of course, the view of clouds from above when you are standing on the peak and you feel like you are standing right on top of the clouds, which makes you think you are the Creator! However, none of these would happen if the sun doesn't pay a patronization. I happened to see the sunrise and pine trees, but not the clouds, which is perfectly fortunate already in a raining season like this.

Hong Cun

Well, another World Heritage Site, to the southwest of Huang Shan, Hong Cun is a small village town open to visitors. It's the location for one of the fighting scenes in "Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon", which attracted even more tourists after the movie was named the Best Foreign Film on Oscar.

Guangzhou

The Forbidden City

As the name idicates, it's the "Forbidden" city, though it's open to tourists, armed policemen are everywhere ready to suppress unrest of any kind and arrest whoever dares a bold attempt to make a protest. To get anywhere close to it, you need to go through a security checkpoint and the stares of the security crew. Police lights are always on around that area as if making a warning, "DON'T be stupid", which gives one the shudder. So this is the capital of China, the very place where Chinese emperors have ruled this country for hundreds of years.

Butterfly Effect

wikileaks -> turmoil in middle east -> twitter -> more turmoil -> soar in gas price?

Busch Gardens

Having heard about the world renowned roller coasters at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay for a long time, but I never had the gut to take a ride. Then on this cloudy Sunday, just because friends insisted, I finally took all of the four major roller coasters in the park, Gwazi, Kumba, Montu and Sheikra.

Sheikra, the first dive machine roller coaster in US, is at the core of all the rides in the park. It starts by climbing at a 45 degree hill, make a U turn, then hold for 2 seconds at the very edge of the dropping point. So basically the riders in the first two rows of the train would face the ground from about 200 foot above for 2 seconds, knowing that they'll be dropped vertically any moment at a very high speed. I was in the third row, so didn't feel a thing. It is at this point, people would start to scream and cry. Then it makes its first 90-degree dive, make a loop and proceeds with its second near-vertical dive, 81-degree, into a small cave, and down to splashdown area. The whole ride lasts about 2 minutes, the first row is always in high demand, definitely recommended.

Post from iPhone

This is a test post from iPhone, my magazine subscriptions.

2011 UF ISOM Workshop

The ISOM Workshop this year will be held on Feb. 11th and 12th at Hilton, topics would be on Healthcare and IS. Great opportunity to socialize with faculty from other schools and meet with new ideas, and of course, the free food is always attractive!

Link to 2011 ISOM Workshop

2011 FACSS Chinese New Year Show

Make Mac run faster

Had this Macbook Pro for a year and half, it's running damn slow as applications are installed and uninstalled. Usually it so happens because either too many applications are been installed and it messes up with the disk permission, or there're some disk errors that require repair. To make the system run faster, the following few steps would help:

1. Remove unused applications;

2. Close unnecessary notifications;

3. Repair disk permission

--a. open applications->utilities->disk utility

--b. select Mac OS disk

--c. verify disk permissions

--d. repair disk permissions

4. Repair Disk

--a. insert Mac OS CD

--b. restart the system

--c. open utilities->disk utility

--d. verify disk

--e. repair disk

these few steps have worked for me, it feels light and new again.

Dancing to I gotta Feeling on Kinect

Dancing to Poker Face on Kinect

Dancing to Crank That on Kinect

San Diego

Last day in California was quite of a rush, we needed to drive from LA to SD in the morning, take some time off there and drive back to LA in the afternoon just not to miss the flights home from LAX, though some of us did miss after all.

Traffic in LA is terrible, if not worse than NYC. Every hour is virtually rush hour, and since it's so big a city, no matter where you go, you might want to consider a 10 to 30 mins' delay depending on where your destination is. We were clever enough to pull traffic layer out on Google Maps so as to avoid those sections marked yellow and red. Once you are out of LA, road is all yours!

First time to set my feet on a real air carrier in San Diego. The carrier is so huge, we spent 2 hours in the lower decks and when we finally made it to the top deck, only to find a long long line waiting to board the carrier bridge. So had to quit and rush to airport.

Also the first time to get involved in a rear-end collision, not by my fault. Miraculously, though the sound when the collision happened makes me think it's gonna leave a huge dent and scratches on the bump, the rental car survived without even a scratch! Gelievable!