12:25

I come home usually once every two weeks, taking BART to the Dublin/Pleasanton station, then wait to be picked up. It would be much more convenient if BART went all the way to Tracy, but from what I've recently read, that will probably not happen, though they might extend it to Livermore. This is my second time visiting home. I had to wait a bit longer at the station. I spent some of the time reading, but a good amount of it just wandering around thanks to a bug. I was sitting and reading when my finger felt something rough. I tried flicking it off and saw that there was an earwig on my finger. At the same time, I felt a sharp sting and realized that the damn earwig pinched me. I was more surprised than in pain, and flung it off. Bug incident aside, it was nice being home. It was a bit tricky gauging what to wear because it is a lot colder in San Francisco than here in the central valley. I brought a sweatshirt along, but only wore it until I got in to Pleasanton. It has been ni...

Today after work, I stopped by San Francisco's Chinatown. I haven't been here, or any other chinatowns for that matter, for quite a long time. I started walking over along Montgomery from downtown. San Francisco's financial district never ceases to intrigue me. It is really something walking among the skyscrapers and fancy architecture. Passing the office buildings of a couple of banks, I reached California Street. A few blocks further and uphill, I started to see the distinctive Chinese-stylized buildings and the crowded street-level stores. Chinatown has certainly changed from what I remember. I remember the last time I was here, the area seemed to be a lot grittier. It still has the characteristic grittiness, but it seems like many more gift and souvenir shops with exotic looking sculptures and jewelry and nicer restaurants have cropped up. I was trying to find grocery stores. There was a reason why I came here for a grocery store rather than just go to one that ...

Late nights and early mornings are things that I am quite familiar with. My sleep schedule for the past two years has generally made me a comfortable acquaintance with the early hours of the morning, whether the cause of my insomnia is unfinished work or unfinished thoughts. Sometimes the stillness of these early hours are a time of reflection for me, especially as I spend these times alone. Of all the emotions that surround me at this time, the one that finds me the most is a sense of longing, especially as quiet comfort of reminiscences play in my head. It is during the late nights and early mornings that I miss those closest to me the most. On such nights, I just let my mind smile and replay until sleep finally finds me.

It takes about forty-five minutes to walk home from SFSU. I took the M-line bus a few times, which takes much less time, but recently walked more often to save money. The walk isn't really that bad. I've gotten more or less used to walking a few miles, as long as it does not take too much time. It is a good work out after all. Entering the Ingleside Terraces. From campus, I go through the Ingleside Terraces, a relatively affluent neighborhood. The houses here are pretty nice, and are not all packed right next to each other like those in the area around here. It is pretty quiet today. The fog tends to make everything more still than usual. The fog makes everything quiet and still. The sidewalk underneath the trees (and sometimes power lines) are always wet. This is because the trees and power lines are raining. Yes, the trees and power lines are raining. The fog condenses on the leaves and wires until enough droplets collect to drip down. The trees are raining. I ...

For this semester, I am taking two classes at San Francisco State University, Databases and Bioinformatics, as I am doing my internship. It is slightly interesting to see how a different campus operates, such as student web services for one. SFSU has a online system called iLearn for courses to post material and for students to submit assignments similar to the Classes v2 system, which we use. The campus is small and quite nice, tough the architecture isn't too interesting. There is a lot of grassy field, which we don't have as much. The bookstore is somewhat bigger than ours, and was better stocked in art supplies and stationery. What is also interesting is that there is this terrace on top of the Cesar Chavez Student Center that you could go up and see a view of the whole campus. Today, as it commonly happens in San Francisco, we had a dense fog sitting around. From the top of the terrace. One thing the bookstore here has that we don't have is an electronics secti...

This semester is a bit different from the others. I have taken a semester off and am doing a software development internship at an online advertising start-up in San Francisco. I spent a few weeks towards the end of summer and right before the beginning of my internship looking for a place to live. I scoured Craigslist, visited a few places that were either too expensive or unsatisfactory. During my last tour, I stopped at a Starbucks near Daly City, about to settle for a windowless room carved out of part of a garage, and went through the listings one last time, and found a promising room for rent near Ingleside. Interestingly, the landlords only spoke Chinese, which was not a problem. I visited the place, and was glad to find that the house was clean and neat, and the room was brightly list and priced reasonably. I moved in a few days later. I've been to San Francisco many times throughout my life, but never really thought about living here. Normally accustomed to driving, ...

On Fourth of July, I followed the yearly tradition of going to watch the fireworks show. This year in New Haven, fireworks will be set off from East Rock Park. Last year, I went over to Long Wharf, but this year, I read online that there were a number of parks where it would be possible to get a good view of the show. The best view would be from the top of East Rock, but that comes with a $15 entrance fee. As a result, we headed over to Blake Field by Willow Street. We arrived there around 8:45, about half an hour before the show started. It was quite a walk. We basically walked to Science Hill, then around it and went through a slightly sketchy part of town before reaching the field. The field was next to a magnet school and what appeared to be an abandoned or unused ice skating rink. Nonetheless, there was a good amount of field and view of the night sky. By the time we got there, there were already a number of people waiting for the show to begin. As the seconds before showtim...

It was about a month ago that I came back to New Haven to take Organic Chemistry and lab over ten weeks for this summer. I was here last summer as well working in a bioinformatics lab, so I was well aware of the whacky summer weather of the East Coast. What I liked was that the days were a lot longer. It would still be somewhat bright outside at 8 PM, as opposed to during the winter when it would be dark by 4:30. But on the other hand, the East Coast can get notoriously hot and humid, and there were the sporadic thunderstorms and intense showers. When it rains during the summers, it really pours. I was walking to the bookstore from Pierson when it started raining. At first it was alright, but by the time I walked past American Apparel, it was seriously pouring. By that time, I had already almost reached the bookstore. But it was pouring so bad (and I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and flip flops) that I decided to take cover under this little overhead canopy that was in front of...

Found these at the bookstore today. They're pretty cute. I wanted to get one, though it's been quite a while since I played golf.

One thing that made Summer Session a bit more interesting is living in a different residential college. During the regular year, I live in Saybrook, one of the original residential colleges, styled in the gothic collegiate architecture. For the summer, I am living in Pierson, which is newer and in the Georgian style with the red brick buildings that look similar to the ones at Harvard. Another thing about summer is the rain. It is usually very humid, but the rainstorms are very frequent. I am usually a fan of rain when I lived back in California. This was probably due to the fact that for most of the year it is sunny and dry, and the rain we get in the winter is different and new. The rain here on the East Coast, however, is sometimes a nuisance, especially since I walk far to get to my classes, but does a good job of freshening up and cooling down. The view from the common room window is quite beautiful. Normally, the summers are hot and muggy. The rain cools down the breeze c...

I helped make dinner today. I cooked two dishes: tomatoes and eggs, and sweet and sour fish. I don't cook very often but it is always fun when I do.

I have finalized my entries for the San Joaquin County Fair for this year. I used to submit entries consistently each year, but since graduating from high school and moving to Connecticut, I have stopped. This year, I'm submitting four photographs, and for the first time, will be entering them into the adult division rather than youth division. Valley View I took this one last summer during our Lake Tahoe trip. It was the second time we went to Lake Tahoe. We stopped at one vista point that overlooked the valley and gave you a view of the lake far in the distance. The sun was just about to set and the sky was glowing with a soft pastel haze. Pelican at Sea This was from this past winter. On the way back from Tucson, Arizona, we stopped at Venice City near Santa Monica and walked on this pier. A pelican flew down and stood on the wooden railing for a while, and people started crowding around. I tried petting it, and it tried to peck me. Fortunately, I got out of the way in tim...

There's this old tree stump in the backyard. Today, I finally got around to digging it up. It took a while, but wasn't as hard as other stumps I've dug up before.

The Maker Faire is a convention for do-it-yourself enthusiasts held in San Mateo this year. This is the first time I've been to one of these conventions, and it was indeed quite interesting. It presented people with an opportunity to showcase their creations. Aside from the various booths, there were some quite unusual displays such as fire-breathing sculptures. The huge gift shop, the Maker Shed, had various books and kits on sale. It in a way brought me back to my childhood days when I would browse book sale catalogs we received from school for science books and craft kits. Today, there was one book that caught my eye in particular. Someone very special to me used to send me notes with Food Play stickers. In the afternoon, EepyBird, the people behind the elaborate coke and Mentos geysers, performed a pretty impressive show. They gave out the Coke Zero bottles after the show. I managed to get a hold of one of them. There was still about liter of coke left, and the Mentos were...

Today, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Pacman, Google replaced their logo with a real playable Pacman game. They removed it later, but it is still playable here .

It’s that time of the year again. At long last, another school year, and half of college, came to a close. Yesterday was a long day of cleaning out the room, and packing all my belongings into six boxes and three suitcases, and somewhere along during the craziness of packing, I had the wild idea of relating the process of packing our stuff to prophase chromosome condensation (I took cell biology this semester). I decided not to sleep because my flight is scheduled to leave New Haven at 7:40 in the morning, which meant I would have to leave campus at around 5:30. Around 4:30, I got hungry and went I went to A-One first, but found that it was closed. Instead, I got a Reuben sandwich from Gourmet Heaven, the grocery store across the street, and resumed my House catch-up while I ate. As promised, I will start on Glee once I finish House, which I will do the next few weeks. I called Metro Taxi, booked a ride for 5:30, and got to Tweed Airport before the security checkpoint opened. I...