I got tons of birthday gifts from Wendy, including a home-made chocolate mousse cake and a devil face iphone sleeve, and a really fun picture she made out of 24 pictures of herself! Thx WenWen. We had tasty dinner at the Century restaurant (with mom as well). The place was converted from a historic building, I think it was a bank. Inside it had all the original decorative mouldings and chandeilier, with super high ceiling - perfect place for any romatic dinner. I was really impressed with the grilled rib eye, so juicy and the grease came out of it was so yum! I’d definitely go back just to have the steak again. Dessert was had at home, which include Wendy’s chocolate cake and a blueberry cheesecake that Miss Chiu (ballet teacher) gave me for thanking me taking pictures for her ballet students. Yummy~

I’ve never cared about my age, but being 30 year-old now really triggered something. I still don’t care too much, but it seems to me that it’s really a new chapter in life, and it’s time for me to make a change. Any change is good, I guess. I just don’t feel like doing the same thing again and again. So what’s it going to be?

By the way, the picture I posted yesterday received 9 favs out of 10 comments! I want more comments but so far, looks like it’s the most successful picture I’ve posted on flickr. So happy. I love Death Valley, I’ll definitely be back, no doubt.

I bidded on a Apple IIe computer today on eBay and I won! Bid started at $49 and I got it for $73, not bad I guess, even though it’s close to 30 years old technology. It comes with bunch of floppy discs and also the disk drive! I miss that machine.. it wasn’t really “owned” by me as I was maybe 5 years old or something like that when I played on it - it was my dad’s computer. Actually the one I had was the Apple II, not the IIe I *think*. My memory is blurry, but either way it’s one of them for sure. Still remember a lot about it, like how I spent days playing games like “Lode Runner” and “Choplifter“. Still remember the low-tech green phosphor monitors with 1 color only..also the ghetto joystick which is pretty much a small plastic box with a metal rod sticking out (I have yet to be able to find it online, really want to get it). Can’t wait for it to ship!

While I’m typing this up I actually looked up Choplifter and found that there’s a remake of the game, lol. It’s called Chopper and I have just downloaded the free version via iTunes and played 2 levels on it. Pretty cool game! I found pirated version of it on 91 Suite and am now downloading it…lol. iPhone is realy great gaming machine I have to admit.

Jeremy (my cousin) came to my place today. He’s never been to my place and actually I don’t really recall ever hung out with him. Pretty cool to see him all grown up and mature. We had some fun times doing a couple hours of Halo Wars, Street Fighter 4, and Modern Warfare 2, and then chatted up a bit on things. I think I’ll be hanging out with him more often now that I know he’s all cool and stuff.

The fly for my Hubba Hubba tent arrived today! Took only 2 days to courier from Calgary. It’s expensive…something around $270 after tax… I really shouldn’t have thrown my torn fly away when I was back in Utah - could have gotten it fixed for a much cheaper price. Oh well. I’m looking forward to go camping with Wendy in two weeks, going to be fun~

Super busy on everything, mostly work. Insane amount of work poured in since a couple days ago. I’ll be super busy for the next few weeks, if not months. New projects, existing projects, new team members, training, so much work. I have very minimal amount of time editing photos from the trip, really sad.. Well at least I got a real nice iPhone holder for my car, so now I can finally listen to some music in a proper way.

Yesterday I went to the Chinese Night Market with Wendy. It was just as crowded and the food was still as good as before. I think we had pretty much the exact same thing we had last year, but they were still very tasty. I liked the grilled lamb skew the most, and also my favorite Vietnamese coconut drink. The goods sold there were more or less the same, with tons of pirated bags, CDs, plush dolls…etc. Wendy was excited to see the huge store that sells cute socks. I was looking for iPhone holder but wasn’t able to find a nice one there.

I’m going to watch another episode of “I shouldn’t be alive” while finishing my cake and red bean milk, and I’ll head to bed.

It’s been a week since I’m back from the trip. It was an extremely satisfying and fun trip, comparable to my Utah trip last August. Even though the weather wasn’t cooperating at all, I managed to go to most of the places in the original plan (even though the scheduling was all messed up). I had been doing a diary/journal everyday, and ended up with a 11-page document

Needless to say, I’m back to work and there’s TONS of work..! I got an iPhone from work though, pretty awesome! Been playing with the phone for a while, loaded a bunch of cool apps onto it. So far I’m liking the phone. The screen is awesome, the OS is really responsive, and it’s really easy to setup apps on it. The 3MP camera isn’t the best but it’s adequate.

I’ve taken over 5000 pictures this time and it’s overwhelming to go through them.. Very satisfied with the pictures though, much better then ones I took in Utah. Probably going to take a month or so processing all of them, but it’ll be well worth.

I got a papercraft of the Stonehenge from Wendy. It’s a scale model in printed paper all I have to do is to cut it and glue. It’s just 1 huge page of cutting, doesn’t seem too hard. I want to start building it soon, but it’s time to work on my tax return..