Got a folding bicycle couple days ago for $140, brand new with 6 speeds. I was hesitate to buy as it was apparently 100% China designed and made but due to the rad price I went for it. I got all the screws tightened, got taillamp, headlamp, a bell at dollar store and a helmet from Costco. It was super nice today so I took on my first ride all the way down to Steveston. It was a little scary at first with the cars and other bicycles flew by but I got the hang of it in no time. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t have a bicycle for the past 10 years (I had one but parents brought it with them when they went back to Hong Kong), I was really missing out. Not only it’s a great exercise plus you get to see all kinds of things that you don’t normally see. The entire world seems to be running at a slower pace, and I got to see things like, people relaxing at their patio, single men and women who park their cars along Dyke road that seem to lookas if they’re having a hard time in their lives (or maybe they were out just to relax, who knows), huge cargo ships passing by, ducks and birds having fun in the glittering water, old couples holding hands walking down the road…etc. That is another side of the world that I don’t often get to see, but now I realize that I can see it everyday if I want to and it’s really easy. I brought my Olympus OM-1n SLR with me, stopped by the water a couple times to take some shots of the drift woods and the glittering water. My life isn’t progressing very smoothly but I know that it’s not the end of the world and all I have to do is to live life happily and enjoy it while I still have it.

On another note, my M-Audio Firewire 410’s delivered however the installation fucked up the settings in Logic 9. I spent 2 hours messing with it still couldn’t get it to send MIDI signals to my keyboard correctly. I’ve just uninstalled Logic 9 and see if it’s going to help. This really sucks.

I’ve been following the Ancient Aliens documentary from the History Channel. 10 episodes in total , fantastic series, very informative, very interesting and things they talked about actually make sense. With the increased sightings of aliens and UFOs this year I don’t doubt that the aliens do have a connection to the 2012 apocalypse theories. I believe there are aliens that are living underground/undersea on Earth itself, and there are other aliens that live in the outerspace. Will aliens reveal themselves end of next year and are we going to have an intercosmic war between different alien races (including humans)? I’m very excited to hopefully be able to witness that, but on the other hand, it’s terrifying when I realize that there’s a possibility that I only have a little more than a year to live my current life. That made me think about quite a few things. What matters the most to me in my current life? I think it is happiness, and that’s it. What makes me really happy? There are a couple top ones:

• Getting an extremely successful shot of an extremely beautiful landscape - this is really hard, it happened only a few times in my life
• Getting genuine compliment/admiration from someone about something that I’ve worked hard for - work, photographs, music, other projects…
• Being alone at a remote location with an out-of-this-world landscape under the best weather - I can be there for hours, probably just sitting still, breathing in the freshest air, checking out the natural formations that’s been there hundreds of thousands of years before human even existed, or the tiniest flower that emerges from the driest soil wondering how it could even be there. Ultimate satisfaction.
• Listening to my favorite classical music, paying attention to every single notes, and the relation between one note to another, or one bar to another. Songs from Mozart almost always make me feel great, as well as some songs from Beethoveen, Vivaldi, Tomaso Albinoni, some Bach… and anything from Baroque.
• Eating simple but awesome tasting food. When I like a certain taste I can eat them again and again forever. First thing that comes to mind is Hong Kong style milk tea. Next I guess has to be sugar cookies or peanut better cookies.
• Seeing a cute smile from my girlfriend, or being treated nicely in an unexpected way. Just a smile will melt my heart and make my day 10 times better.

That actually summarize it, not a lot of them, I guess I’m really simple. Before I die, I hope to be able to experience each of the above once again.

On another note, I’ve finished restoring my Apple IIe! The retr0bright gel really worked, magically. Love it so much, looks so new! I’ve even played Choplifter on it (game that I loved the most and remembered the most). I want to play LodeRunner on it soon, but I still have to buy the Super Serial Card so that I can load games onto it via PC. I couldn’t believe the joystick worked 100% as well. There are a few keys on the machine that are either half or complete dead. I can fix two of them but the open/closed apple keys seem to be completely malfunctioned. If I see a great deal I’ll buy a spare machine just so I can swap the parts around. This computer will gain a permanent place in my house, but as for location it has yet to be determined, lol.

I’ve never really thought that I’d be making music again. Last time I made a serious piece of music was before I came to Canada, around 1994-1996 (The ones I made for my band didn’t count as they weren’t my compositions) I wasn’t even sure what stopped me from writing songs but it just happened. Lately I had a chance to pickup a copy of Logic Studio 9 (by pick up I mean, via torrent, lol) and got it set up on my Macbook. Last week I made a decision to bring my Roland XP-50 synthesizer down to my home office, and that actually got me started messing with Logic and actually got the synth and the Mac connected. I was shocked when Logic recognized my synth as soon as I connected it to the Mac via the USB MIDI adapter! It was such a dream come true since I’ve always thought that my synth is just too old and any new app would never be compatible with it, and it proved that I was wrong. And good thing’s that Logic is REALLY easy to use (not surprising since it’s designed for a Mac), very intuitive and I had no problem getting started (0 learning curve). I actually got part of the song done the first day I got it set up! I’ve also figured out a way to “dump” all the system settings on my synth into Logic so that the settings and patches can all be stored within the Logic project. Super cool. Now I need an audio interface that will allow me to have better control on the audio input/output (I’m getting static noise with the internal sound card, really gay), plus cleaner audio. Probably going for the M-Audio Firewire 410, which sells for ~$150-200 on eBay.

Also got a couple really cool software synthesizers recommended by Andrew. So far I’ve got Alchemy, Vanguard, and FM8. They sound super cool, and each of them has its own appegiator or pattern generator which basically plays a certain series of notes automatically when you hold a key on the keyboard. Just tons of cool stuff that I’ve never seen before!

I made this pasta sauce from scratch for lunch today. It’s really easy: milk, 2 tbsp of flour, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, minced garlic, 2 tbsp heavy cream. And then I added pan fried grounded turkey meat, and chopped spinach (food processor) into the sauce. That’s it, so tasty too. Sadly I stained my carpet with the sauce, now it’s all green and messy. Trying to remove the stain with hydrogen peroxide, hope it works.

My skin problem continues… the peeling is almost all healed but now some nasty crusty skin is forming up near my chin, not even a clue why it happened. Why this has to happen to me. Going to keep putting coconut oil and baking soda on it, see what happens tomorrow.

I baked my first cake ever 2 days ago. It was a flourless chocolate cream cake with this recipe. Since I’ve never baked before I know nothing about baking. I thought I’d bake a bear-shaped cake for Wendy’s gift so I went ahead and bought a bear-shaped pan from Home Sense. Actually I did worry about that it’d be hard to take the cake out since there’s no tension clip like the ones on regular circular shaped baking pans. So I followed the recipe exactly, and the cake turned out to be really undercooked, or perhaps I made a mistake, or it could have been the oven, I still don’t know. I tried baking in the bear pan 3 times in total, tried removing the “water bath”, lowering the pan down 1 level in the oven, put less amount of liquid…etc. and none helped. Since I’m having allergy on my face and I have to cut down in sugar, I couldn’t eat the cakes that failed… =( At last, after few dozen of eggs, 5+ packs of belgian chocolate, lots of wasted effort, and a burned palm, I ended up baking the cake once again in a regular baking pan, with the sides nicely greased and wax paper properly lined. It turned out okay, still a bit soggy, not sure if it was supposed to be like that, but at least it’s holding its shape. I guess Wendy will be able to tell me tonight whether it worked or not during our 10th anniversary dinner!

On another note, my seborrheic dermatitis flared up like crazy the past weeks, and reached its top yesterday. I was super frustrated as I had no clue what I could do to fix up my skin. I tried to eat turtle jelly (which helped when I was in Hong Kong), drink lots of water, take vitamin B50 complex, have hot steam bath on my face, rubbing my face with Neutrogena T/Gel tar shampoo…nothing worked and it just got more severe. It wasn’t until this morning that I came across this website that’s fully dedicated to this skin condition with tons and tons of users talking about their past experience with it and what ultimately worked for them. It turns out that what works for most people is something called baking soda! Pure baking soda mixed with a bit of water, rub it on the affected area, rinse it and then moisturize the skin with virgin coconut oil. Some say that raw honey also works, so I’ve got all three of the above today. Tried putting coconut oil just now it seems to be quite soothing and I don’t feel itchy anymore, and at least it didn’t worsen the condition. I’m going to try baking soda tomorrow if it doesn’t heal up. Also I have to cut down in sugar, dairy product, and wheat which may stiumulate the growth of the malassezia virus, a kind of yeast which is the cause of the inflammation of the skin.