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!

Malibu State Beach

We've made a very wise decision to drive to Santa Barbara via US1 road, it's built along the coastline so as you are driving, you get to appreciate the beauty of the ocean, the Pacific. Malibu State Beach is just one of the places one must stop by along the way.

Lots of rich people live there, so on one side is the great ocean, on the other side on the hill, it's luxurious houses and villas. This is exactly when one would wish to work very hard and make a fortune!

Santa Barbara

Photos by 360 Panorama on iPhone from Superior Court

Zion National Park

Breathtaking scenery with water falls, mountains, ice, fog and bushes in Zion National Park. It's about three hours drive from Las Vegas crossing Arizona and into Utah. Though it's a short drive inside the border of Arizona, it's not an easy drive. There's this 10 miles' zigzag shaped highway that gives me goose bumps even now I'm thinking about it. It's completely in the mountain, so a lot of frequent sharp turns while on high speed, especially dangerous in the night.

As it gets closer to Zion, you'll start to appreciate the grandeur of nature, be thrilled by the scene and completely forget about all the adventures along the highway.

Las Vegas

Having heard so much about the city on desert, about its gambling business, strip clubs, and how every new couple gets married there, it has never occurred to me that my first visit to this city is primarily for a concert of a super Hong Kong star, Eason Chan.

Typically, anyone who visits Las Vegas would choose to stay in one of these luxurious hotels along Las Vegas Boulevard, spend hours in line waiting for a spot in one of these fancy restaurants for lunch buffet, and then play slot machine in one of splendid casinos, having a foot massage or a spa possibly along the way, and enjoy in one of these gorgeous show arenas one or several strip shows in the night. None of these happened to me in Las Vegas.

So I stayed in a Holiday Inn far off the strip, went to one state park and one national park during the day, and had every meal in Chinatown, spent the night wandering around the strip, watched a Chinese concert in a seat where even the screen looks blurry, took a bold step to the top of Stratosphere tower for three insane rides, which scared the hell out of me and some other kids going with me!

Being special feels so extraordinary!

Valley of Fire

Valley of fire is Nevada's oldest state park just one and a half hours drive to the north of Las Vegas. It gets its name from red sandstone formations. So you are driving and driving, bored by those normal treeless grey hills along I15, but all of a sudden, the the stones and rocks turn red, it's just going from one world to another, except that the other world makes you so exciting.

The other thing about Valley of Fire is petroglyphs just as the one in the photo. It's said that some sort of ancient people used to farm here, and they communicate by these kind of symbols. Well, of course now it's considered rock art open to all tourists.

Pumpkin Night

Thanks to HYZ's whole set of carving tools so that we are able to accomplish such a grand project. Basically you need to first stick a pattern on to the face of a pumpkin, pierce a whole bunch of holes into the pumpkin along the pattern line, saw through the holes to get a prototype of the pattern, polish the edges to make is smooth, light it up and Ta-Dah, you'll get one of these beauties!

I did the witch, the hard part is her hair and face, since they can easily get snapped off. But it turned out to be an art!

It wouldn't last very long, it gets all creased and shrunk and smelly after just a few days

Move in day

Finally moved in to new apartment, it's a nice place, fully furnished with utility ready to use. Moving is always a hassle, especially the packing part, there're things that you know you would never use, but dumping them would make you regret so much; there're also things that you know you'll have to use it so frequently, but you'd rather get a new one in the new apartment; there're things that you've kept for so long a while just because it's memorable to some event, but in the end you wouldn't give a second thought to getting rid of them just because they're such a burden to carry. So it took me days to pack things up and just 1 hour to unpack them.

Watch out, moving house on highway!

On my way to Orlando, this moving house came into my sight. This makes moving so easy, just lift the house up, load it on a truck, and hit the road. Driver feels tired? Well, just pull over, unload it somewhere in the grass, get into the cozy house, there you go!

Not for kids

For a first timer, firing a gun could be so overwhelming and sweating. Each step is proceeded with extreme caution, people could die in there for god sakes! Can't believe it only takes an ID to play with real guns in USA, never dream about such things in China, though we played quite a lot toy guns with these BB plastic bullets when we were young, it never comes to my mind that one day I would be holding and firing a real thing. So this has added to our excitement when we were actually aiming at the target and pulling the trigger. I could even imagine how wide open my Chinese friends' mouth would be when I show them these pictures. It was fun and very special experience!

FACSS 2010

FACSS Site Tour

Spent hours doing this just so it's fluent without long pauses, correction of bad wording, mismatch of video and audio, external noise, whatever that makes it flawed. It turned out pretty much to my satisfaction.

Yep, it's still drivable

picture explains itself.

Alaska license plate in FL

It must has gone through a hell lot driven from Alaska, the very northwest, to Gainesville Florida, the very southeast. It doesn't seem like a rental car, in which case it might have served a couple of drivers around the US and finally reaches FL and never finds its way back to Alaska ever again, that means there's possibility it's going home at some point. Now, I would be really so astonished to see a Hawaiian car.