SF Carnaval

I went to SF Carnaval Parade with my photography friends yesterday.

SF Carnaval


The parade starts at 9:30 am. In order to get some staging pictures, Big Iron Hammer suggested that we should leave at 7:30 am so that we can get there about an hour before the parade starts. I got up at 6:30 am (I'm very proud of myself), put on my 10 pockets pants and 6 pockets vest (so that I can look like a professional :P) and went to Palo Alto to car pool with him.

We arrived at Harrison Street at around 8:50 am and parked the car on 15th street. It's a little chilly in the morning, but everyone is excited about the parade. We didn't really know where the parade starts. To make things even worse, a volunteer gave us wrong direction. So when we got to the staging area, parade already started. We stood behind the yellow line, starting to shoot pictures. Suddenly a familiar figure passed by inside the parade -- it's Howard! -- The chairman from my photography club. He got the media pass, that lucky guy! He can go inside the yellow line and take pictures as close as he wants. I was so jealous of him, I shall definitely get a media pass too next time.

The parade is fantastic. Pretty girls, handsome guys, great music and dance moves. If my throat is ok, I would go dancing in the crowds for sure since I love dancing. The dresses those girls wear are shiny and very beautiful, but I thought that I would see more skins in the parade. :P I went to the staging area, killed many flash card memories. It's like the real model photographing. In the staging area, you can ask those girls to pose for you, and you will see a dozen of photographers carrying their long or short "guns" to shoot the girls. The prettiest girl is always swamped with all the photographers around her. Well, I'm a no exception, I like to shoot pretty girl too. But I also like to shoot handsome guy. I got quite a few pictures which I consider as good ones. My favorite one is a half naked guy. :)

狂舞

Shopping Day

I have a friend coming from Shanghai for Memorial Day long weekend. He is my best friend's husband. So I'm the tour guide and driver for the weekend.

The first thing he wanted is to shop in the factory outlet stores. So we went to Gilroy today for shopping. I was planning to take him to Monterey, but he said he's been there before, so we just shopped for the whole day.

My throat still hurts and my cough gets worse. I'm kinda tired now. But we had a big complishment. Both of us bought a lot of stuff. He bought many clothes for his customers, I bought many stuff for myself. :D

End of the world -- Sand Tufa of Mono Lake

Kiss the rain -- By Yiruma

Just figured out how to post Flash movie by myself. :D I have to post my favorite flash movie here, which I have mentioned before.

Finally I don't have fever any more, but my throat still hurts badly. I went to see doctor today. But doctor can only say that I need to drink more water and rest. She said it's affected because I was too tired and got a cold. And it will take about a week for my throat to fully recover. I've been drinking water the whole day, and keep going to bathroom. But it really hurts as long as I stop drinking water. :(

3颗猫饼干 (Three Cat Cookies)

*****三颗猫饼干*****


制 作 人 ： 何真真
制 作 群 －作曲/编曲：何真真 钢琴：何真真 竖笛：朱玫玲 其它：吉他 董运昌 手风琴 王雁盟
发行日期 ： 2004－04－26

一只猫和三颗许愿的猫饼干，化解了悲伤，不再孤单、不再寂寞，重新的拥有了爱和关怀。在这个真实空间里，爱让梦想还存在！ 一份最温暖的心灵礼物，一个触动人心的音乐童话 每个大人的内心都住着一个小孩，每副坚强的外表下都藏着一颗脆弱受伤的心。三颗带着希望的猫饼干，一段单纯唯美的奇遇，让你在37℃的橘色温度里，停止眼泪，不再背负伤感 。

一个十岁的小女孩，和爸爸妈妈及唯一的哥哥住在一个拥有一大片橘树的山上，那里有她十岁以前的幸福。一场意外，带走了她的哥哥、带走了她的幸福与和乐，也同时将她带离了那个只剩孤单的家。小女孩的流浪旅程里出现了一只猫，这只猫让她的孤单得到了出口，她不再寂寞。而一位老婆婆的出现，不但让她得到实现愿望的满足，也同时让她找回了爱和关怀。带着悲伤离家的小女孩回家了，带着在旅途中感受到的爱和关怀，以及学会的分享回到了家中，重新的拥有了幸福。随着音乐徜徉在一个童话世界里，我们看见自己的影子在画面的流动中，进行一场关于爱的探索。

在四季不同光景的迭替下，我们体认到生命与情感之轮回是结束也是开始，更深刻了解──爱需要活着时珍惜才有份量。随着流动的音符穿越整个故事情节，何真真透过春、夏、秋、冬四季的变换，在光阴与自然时序的交替中，描绘出人的心情起伏变化，也记录下不同的季节氛围里带给我们的信息。

春天，粉彩缤纷的花瓣散落一地，同时让人计画着该以什么姿态跃入新的开始？

夏天，海天一色的大海，把所有心事都消融在纯真无暇的湛蓝里，一个需要轻盈的脚步才能尝到清新空气的季节！

秋天的温度，则让人忆起孩提时光，微凉的空气里弥漫着大地将要荒无的气息，却也让我们学习面对万物之自然消长。

冬天，树木裹在透明的冰晶下，提醒我们要永远保有心灵的澄澈干净，才听得清楚、看得远。

于是在四季迭替，日、月、风、雨的恩泽下，让我们体认生命与情感之轮回是结束也是开始；尤其在自然面前的卑微和渺小，更让我们深刻了解──爱需要活着时珍惜才有份量。 当我们长大了，「复杂」的思维成为一种必然，很多简单的事物开始变得沉重──后来一天，才发现要回到过去的单纯并不容易很多孩子长大了，必须挺起胸来面对成人世界的林林种种，于是我们原始纯真的面貌逐渐模糊，很多简单的事物开始变得复杂而沉重。

三颗猫饼干 —— 夏天的风吹在蓝色的海上，白色的云随着风自在的飘逸，我躺在绵绵的白云上，听着鲸鱼的呼吸，看着海鸥飞过，这一幕让我想起童年的笑声。其实每个大人心里都住着一个小孩，只要静静的听就会找到那最自在，纯真，平静的自己，Soul is free 自由的心才有真实的爱。爱是一种探险，等待对方付出，不如自己先去实践；爱是一种自由，可以在任何时间进入心门，没有阻碍；爱是一种满足，在一起的时候，不说话也很自在；爱是一种欢迎，当非同类出现的时，大方的邀请他加入；爱是一种魔法，在真实的空间里，还有梦存在的地方。

第1颗猫饼干：

让我们在悲伤的时候，找到心灵的依伴！

第2颗猫饼干：

让我们在春、夏、秋、冬四季的迭替中，发现时间是疗愈伤痛最好的药方。

第3颗猫饼干：

让我们在人生的经历中，学会面对，才能继续拥抱生活。


Opening 心植桂冠

Spring in pink 粉红色的旋舞（春）

Summer`s blue 贝壳里的心事（夏）

Silent love 微笑的弧度

Autumn breeze 起风前的相遇（秋）

A wish 礼物

Crystal winter 透明的灵魂（冬）

If You were by my side 桔色温度

Frozen tears 晶冻的眼泪（冬）

Loving is a splendid thing 爱是绚烂的事

Soul is free 永不停止的愿望

生病了(Being sick)

我很久没有生病了，昨天晚上喉咙开始痛，量了体温，有些低烧，以为睡一觉就会好的，谁知早上醒来温度更高了，于是请了假在家休息。BB来看过我两次，一次给我买了粥和下粥的小菜，其中有我最爱吃的肉松。还有一次给我带来了药，因为我很久没生病，药都过期了。感觉被人关心和疼爱，很幸福。原来生病也是美好的！谢谢BB!

生病的时候，才知道有那么多的人关心我，同事，朋友都有打电话或发信来慰问，问我需要什么东西或帮忙与否。真是在家靠父母，出外靠朋友啊！其实在现在的年纪，朋友比父母在我生活中的位置可能更为重要，因为离家这么远，有很多事情是不可能与父母交流的，即使聊了，他们也未必能了解。像公司昨日裁员的事，也并没有告知父母，怕他们又会担心。心情不好，也只能与朋友诉说。好在有可以说话的朋友，能够平抚一下我昨日的坏心情。虽然生病混身不舒服，可是想到有人关心我，让我对生活和在我生活中的人还是充满感激。

晚上吃了药，发了汗，烧好像褪下去一些。又在网上看我喜欢的Flash，3颗猫饼干， 喜欢其中的一段话：

每个大人心里都住着一个小孩，只要静静的听，就会找到，那最自在，纯真，平静的自己
Soul is free 自由的心 才有真实的爱
爱是一种探险 等待对方付出，不如自己先去实践
爱是一种自由 可以在任何时间进出心门，没有阻碍
爱是一种满足 在一起的时候，不说话也很自在
爱是一种魔法 在真实的空间里，还有梦存在的地方

I'm sick

I haven't been sick for a long time. I guess I had too many things going on recently. My body is stressed out. My throat started to hurt badly last night by the time I went to bed. And this morning I had a fever about a little over 100F. Not too high, but enough to give me a headache. So I told my boss and decided to stay at home for the day. I slept the whole morning, had some medicine, hopefully I'll get better by tonight.

Picture taken at June lake, during the mono lake trip

It really sucks!

Just found out that the PM I like and my favorite DOC person are gone too. It sucks! Seems that the nicer you are, the sooner you get laid off! It reminded me of the No. 1 rule from Bill Gates -- Life is not fair - get used to it!

Here are all 11 rules from Bill Gates when he gave a speech to some high school students:

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about yourself-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right outof high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, andlistening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real lifepeople actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll endup working for one.

Lay-off

We had a lay-off today. One of my closest friends in the company is gone. I just walked her out of the office. We have 4 girls very close to each other -- me, VG, VZ and JC. They all joined earlier than I did. We've been through all the layoffs in those very depressed economy down time. Now when everyone thinks that economy is getting better, VZ is gone. I felt very very sad to see her leaving. I won't say it's a bad thing for her to leave, we all think she got a pretty decent package and she definitely can get a better job. It's just an emotion thing. I never felt this bad about any previous layoffs, I felt so close to this time and I am affected more deeply. I feel kind of trapped here. I'm waiting for my green card so that I cannot move. I feel like that I'm just waiting at here to be laid off in the next round or the one after. It's a horrible feeling. I remembered that I had a dream the night before. I was chased by a bunch of bad guys. I ran into someone's house, and they let me hide under the bed. The bed is very low, I have to squeeze myself in and lie on my stomach. The space is so small that I feel suffocating and trapped under the bed. Then the bad guy came in and looked around. I was praying and praying, but still, he found me easily. Then I woke up from my dream with that suffocating, trapped feeling. Now I have the same feel again -- trapped here, waiting to be caught.

Trapped

KFog KaBoom!

My friends and I went to "KFOG KaBoom!" on Saturday afternoon.

KFog KaBoom! -- A favorite annual tradition in the Bay Area, this free event, featuring a concert with major recording artists is topped off with one of the best fireworks displays in the country. The gigantic fireworks show over the Bay will explode in harmony with a KFOG World Class Rock soundtrack broadcast on KFOG at 104.5FM and 97.7FM.

I was pretty excited about the event, not because of the concert, but because of the fireworks. I really wanted to take some fireworks pictures. I have never tried that before, and I didn't know how to take fireworks pictures at all. So I did some research before I left for the event, learned some basic rules, and squeezed my jacket, tripod and my camera in my backpack, then I was on my way to the concert.

It is estimated that about 350,000 people would come to the event. So I and my friends decided to go there earlier to get a better location for the concert and the fireworks. The concert is on pier 30-32. We drove to Daly City and took the Bart to the city. We got there around 3:30, and found out that there're already many people inside. We were so un-prepared for the event. All the locals brought blankets or beach chairs to sit on. We brought nothing. B is pretty smart; he went to steal some garbage bags. Luckily we found a good spot, so all 6 of us can sit comfortably on the garbage bags.

The event is great, although I didn't really know those bands and artists. I had a great time. I walked around, taking pictures, getting free stuffs, drinking beer and dancing in the crowds. I was patiently waiting for the fireworks.

Finally it was announced that the fireworks was going to start soon. I immediately got up and set up my tripod. At the same time I went through all the rules in my mind about how to take firework pictures, and adjusted the camera setting according to the rules. I took out my remote control, and change the camera mood to the remote control mood, opened the lens cover, pointing the lens toward the sky. I was so ready to take the pictures. Then the fireworks started with the music in the background. It was splendid and romantic. B was standing by D holding her back; they made a very romantic couple at the moment. I was busy taking pictures, but I was kind of jealous of them, wishing that I would have someone standing by me too at that moment. The fireworks were really amazingly beautiful; you just hear people's Ahhhs and Woooos the whole time. I could only pray that I have them all in my memory card vividly. But no luck, after I got home, I checked all my firework pictures. Only one or two came out ok, the rests are failures. :( Defintely need more practice, for now, I can only have all the beautiful fireworks in my memories!


Fireworks

Technically Funny

We went to a comedy show Friday night at San Jose Improv. The comedian is called Don Mcmillan. He was a chip design engineer before, and he uses PowerPoint to present all his jokes. He is really hilarious. My favorite jokes are driving on HW Binary 5, and VOIP (Voice on I Pee). He uses PowerPoint to make graphics and jokes on how people in the co-op to use PowerPoint. I laughed so hard that I cannot even laugh any more toward the end of the show because my mouth and my stomach feel so sore. :)

After the show, we went clubbing. Got back home around 2 am, tired, but it was fun!

Clouds

Taken during Mono Lake trip last weekend.

Mono Lake Trip

I took a three day trip to Mono Lake over the weekend with 3 friends. It is a cool, fun and adventurous trip. We visited the Ghost Town, Mono Lake, June Lake, Hot Creek and Reno. We did some crazy things -- jumping into hot spring in the middle of the night, sexy dancing in the club, having hot pot in the motel room... I took some nice pictures. It is a great trip!

Mono Lake

Ice Skating

N organized an ice skating event for tonight. I don't know how to ice skate at all, I don't even know how to roller blade. I was thinking that I need to prepare for tomorrow's trip, such as buying snacks, drinks, etc. Since we did that yesterday, there is not much left for me to prepare today, so I decided to go.

N posted the address of the ice skating place online, I printed out Yahoo map. But the map is wrong, it took me 20 minutes driving on that street back and forth to look for the place. And N's cell phone is not working. I have no idea where it is. Then I saw J and B, who seemed clueless as I were. But 3 brains are always better than one, we finally managed to find the place.

I'm not good at balancing, and I'm really scared of falling down. So during the whole time, either I have some people beside me to drag me on the ice, or I just grab the wall and move very carefully. So I didn't fall even once, of course I still don't know how to skate. :P

B is very good at skating, he can do all kinds of stuff on ice. There is one move, we call it "crab move". Because he has his legs wide open, with his knees bending, he glides while keeping his legs and knees in the same surface. He does look like a crab from certain point of view. :P And he really likes doing that, keeping doing it over and over. I think it's very hard to control the weight center and speed in that posture, I saw him falling down on his butt twice. :P

We had dinner at TGIFriday afterwards, and some people still wanted to go clubbing or play poker. I need to get up at 7am for my trip. Geee, it's 2am now, I'd better sleep. :)

Last weekend from Shoreline park

Prepare for the Mono lake trip

Since I like photographing, I'm always browsing online to see other people's pictures. Many of them have nice pictures of Mono Lake. The pictures are mostly taken at the sunset time. In those pictures, everything is wearing a golden red color. The clouds are red, the lake is red. The tall white tufas stand in the lake, with the red reflection from the water, mysterious yet beautiful. It just excites you to see those pictures and makes you wanna go there. So when eagleeye asks me to go to Mono Lake for photographing, I accepted right away with not a little hesitation. Finally I can see the real thing, instead of just browsing other people's pictures now. :)

I asked two of my gangs to go with me, B and J. Since the weather has been weird this year (it still has rains at this season), HW 120 is still closed. We have to drive through Tahoe and get there by HW 395. The driving will take about 6-7 hours. So we decided to take Monday off so that we can have three days, enough time to visit all the places we want to go.

We had dinner together tonight, made a good plan for the trip -- picking the places where we want to visit and proposing where we are going to have lunches/dinners on the way. Since both eagleeye and I are from the photographing club, we really want to take some good sunset pictures of Mono Lake. He suggested that we'll stay in the motel by the lake. But it's a very small town there, so all the restaurants there will be closed after the sunset. B came up with this great idea that we'll bring our own stuff and have hot pot in the motel. Therefore after dinner, B, J and I went to buy food/snacks. We bought a full load of snacks and hot pot food. It should be enough for three days. :)

Last weekend from Shoreline Park

So many things, so little time

I haven't written for a while, there are so many things going on recently. Lots of events, ballroom dancing, learning golf, playing Ping-Pong... Just feel like so little time to do all the stuff I like.

Writing is just like photographing, you need to have certain mood to do it; otherwise the content will be dull. I like to take picture alone by myself, if there are some people with me, it's hard for me to think and capture what I want to express. I'm not a good photographer. I think I have some sort of artistic eye to have a good composition of the picture, but I'm not good at expressing my feeling and mood through the lens. Not talented in this area.

There will be a photo exhibition soon for the club members from my photography club. Every member has a chance to hand in some pictures which may get into the exhibition. I'd better take more pictures. Hopefully I can get some really nice ones so that I can show off my work too. :)

Santa Cruz

J organized a BBQ at Santa Cruz National Bridge park. It is a little bit cold today, but the BBQ is great. I'm so stuffed. I took some pictures since I always have my models with me. Good to be a photograher with lots of pretty girl friends. :P

Kayak