Milwaukee->Firework->SanDiego

OK, this is kind an out-of-date post, but since I have been so busy for two weeks after I returned from my one week vacation, and I had no time to write about my vacation. Finally find some spare time to fuel my hobby.

Weekend before July 4th, drove up to Milwaukee for the Summerfest with four of my pals at Indy. We stopped at Chicago for some authentic DimSum. It was so delicious and we were so full. I contacted a buddy at Milwaukee and he let all of us crash at his place, so didn't have to pay for hotel, which was great.

City of Milwaukee was new to all of us, so we explored the city together. The main event during the trip was to see the Summerfest. It is the largest musical festival in the world. We listen a concert by a band called Fray's. To alot ppl, they are very famous, but I've never heard of Fray's before that. Hehe. It was my first time go to a rock concert. It was pretty cool. On Sunday morning, we also went to the Milwaukee Arts Museum, it was a place I always wanted to visit, ever since i saw its picture in Architecture Review. I'm so amazed by the dramatic beauty of this building and its designers' genuine talent.

The night of Independence Day, my same crew at Indy: Charles, Emily, Robert, plus Muna watched a firework show at Carmel. After the show, we lite the firework we bought. We were like whole bunch little kids playing with fireworks. I was even bare-footed running on the lawn. LOL

The last highlight of my vacation is flew to San Diego for a quick trip. The bad thing is I forget to call my old friend who use to work with me at Lilly to meet me. She lives at LA, so will take 3 hrs to drive to San Diego, when i remembered to call her it's already too late, she wasn't prepared to drive there. That was bad planning on my part. Good thing was i still got to meet another really old friend, by number of years we know each other, not by age. Haha. So we went to Sea World, mission bay, Coronado Island, and Gaslamp district. It was a very short but nice trip.

Playing Billiards and Middle Eastern Festival

My friend Muna invited me to the 12th Indianapolis Middle Eastern Festival. I asked a few Chinese friends to go with me too. We saw some singing and dance performance, then we bought some Arabic food for dinner. I had the Kadaf, sort like a grounded lamb and beef hotdog in a pita roll.

After dusk, it's free dancing time. I learned to dance with middle eastern music and learned some new moves to :-) I think i'm really quick of picking up this kind stuff. Just basically dance with the rthym of the music. It was really fun. I like their style of dancing, alot movement in arms and hands. The rythm was good too. :-)

Afterward, Robert and Charles called me to meet them at the Fox and Hound to play some pool. Frankly speaking, I was so bad at billiards. Rober and Charles' skills were way advanced than mine. However, I think it was just my lucky day, I won 3 games in a row! LOL

That was another fun weekend :-)

Chinese Men's Idol Finale

Yesterday was the Chinese Men's Idol Finale, I watched at home at Indy. We have a Statalliets to receive Chinese TV program. I've followed the show since May and finally it was over last night. The candidate I was rooting for since th qualification selection week several month agao, finally won the Chinese Men's Idol title. I was so excited! :-) He was never the best looking, but definitely the best vocalist among all! I was so glad voter made the right choice.

There are some different in the rule or Chinese idol VS American idol. Except the finale last night, judge votes and audience votes all count 50%. I think that's more fair, because Judges can give their opinion from a move professional point of view.
However the finally is all audiance vote based. Honestly, any one of the two singer in the final are really really good. So whoever won the title, doesn't really matter any more, hence judge opinions were no longer important, it's all about who the audience prefer more. And the both will have a great career ahead of them. In the last year Chinese Women's Idol, all the top 3, became very popular singers, and all had their CD made.

When I talked about this with one of my girl friends, she said she didn't like to watch the show, because she thought all the candidates were sisy boys :-P. I think that is so not true, I totally disagree :-P The are very good looking, but no way they look like women. That comment just hysterical. hehe. Each of them has their own style and charater. The the guy who won the gold, isn't even not that good looking, his voice is way better how he looks. He got 3.3 million of vote at the end of show. That just the vote during the 3 hours of show, all previous votes were cleared after each week. So I think 3.3 million people have the same taste as I do. hehhe

Randomness

Ever since back from vacation two week ago, it has been pretty busy in the office, work 10-12 hours easily. We need build all these servers due to our client's decision to relocate their datacenter. It's a big and time-consuming project.

I saw on Facebook, couple friends of mine just went for fishing recently and they caught big fish. I was very envious, coz I've never gone for fishing. :-P I also had Japanese Hibachi twice last week. That's too much hibachi in a week. Hibachi is Japanese Steak House. They cook on a flat stove right in front of customer. You table is set around the grove. It was fun watching the cook make the food. Most of the cook tend to do some trick for show, such as make a fire, joggle knives and fork, make noise with the salt/pepper jar, etc... But food is kind taste all the same since they use the same method too cook everything. It is still better than Mongolian BBQ, since MBBQ never clean their grill plate, everything taste like char coal! After leave Hibachi restaurant, you would realize your clothes smell very greasy, even worse that the curry smell after Indian food. I probably don't want to have hibachi again for at least couple weeks. In general, I still prefer Sushi and raw fish :-)

Saw a few movies this week: Harry Potter, transformer, and Spiderman 3. I like watching Movies, but it is also easy choice. Maybe it's just me. I like to go to movie myself, good to watch with friends too, but doesn't bother me if just me, since you can't talk during movies anyway. I like go shopping alone too. It is fun to go shopping with friends, but when I go with friends, I usually won't get anything for myself, because it always take me too much time to make a decision on what I want, so I don't want to waste friends' time. When I shop for myself, for anything from cloth, to daily supply to food, I could stand at a rack for hours to think which Shampoo I want to try this time :-P I could easily kill 3 or 4 hours in the mall or just supermarket like Target or Walmart. Heheheh. Now you know why I always have no time to do anything else. :-P Well, at least I rarely go shopping, don't feel I need to buy anything, so didn't waste too much time.

Not much else is going on, just work and play. Everyday flies by very quickly. I think I'm pretty happy and satisfied about the status quo, but in my subconscious I always feel something is missing. I don't know what, but just feels life is not as perfect as it appears. And I went to a discussion group on Tuesday and it just hit me. What is the purpose of my life? I am trying to live everyday of my life to the fullest. What all these are for? Just so I can wake up the next morning and have food and go sleep again? Is that all my life mean to be? Just to live healthy and happy? Is there supposed be anything else? Human nature is greedy. I'm blessed with lot things that many unfortunate people don't have and I should feel content. I don't know why I just feel life is so mundane, not sure what I really want. Obviously, my life hasn't completed yet. So will I have to figure out what is that missing, how I want to my life to be, and what the purpose of my life. For now, I just need to go through each and everyday.

Go camping!

I went to Breathe with my friend today. It is a summer event held by the church I've been gone to a few time. I'm not X-ian, but a good coworker/friend had invited me to go her church a few time. And since I met alot nice people there, I decided just go if i get time, but not really involved or associated.

Anyway, I thought it is going to be a music festival kind thing based on the way she described to me, but there actually alot people from the vineyard church are camping on a open field. The church's band is there to play worship music for participate, then the minister give a sermon, pretty much like the regular Sunday service I've been too, just out door.

OK, readers, maybe you are wondering where I'm going with this...
Well, we got there about 7:30pm, and the fun started after the sermon was complete at 9pm. People walk back to their camp ground, which is only couple hundreds feet away. People from our small group started the camp fire. We all sit around the fire, then they took out food. We made S'more, roasted hotdogs, ate watermelon, chips, crasin.

Not sure if s'more and hotdogs really are better to be heated in big open campfire, or i was just extreme hungry, they tastes so much better than I remembered :-P. And i especially like to make s'more. There is alot arts in making a good s'more. The marshmallow must be heated evenly, balanced, slightly brown crispy outside, melt inside. It takes alot patient to do that. At the begin, I had the marshmallow too close to the fire, it gets burn really quickly and became tar. Then i realize, I had to learn to be patient, and let the marshmallow get heated slow. :-) It really takes time to make a good s'more, but it's all worth it. Things that you made yourself always taste especially delicious.

How can some people be so secretive about their ages?

There are couple of my friends who always keep their age confidential. I've know them for a few months, and they still won't want to tell me their ages :-P

Why is that?

For some girls, I can understand why. All women want to be young. If they are not as young as they want to be, they don't want ppl know about their true age. Another theory is even if a gal is still belong to the young category, someday she won't be, so if no one knows about her age, you can really guess her age even after years ago. Her age will forever be a mystery. If I had known her for 20 years, then her age would just be X+20 to me. hehhhheh.

For the guys, I really don't get it. How can men be self-cautious about their ages as women! This buddy of mine refuses to tell us his age. Every time we asked him, his answer is "why you need to know? It's just a number" Why do I have to have a reason to know? If it is just a number, why don't you tell use then?

I mean it is no big deal if he doesn't want to tell ppl his age. I just don't get the reason. Is he afraid that if he is older than us, we are not going to hung out with him anymore?...Even if he never told us his exact age, we pretty much are able to guess...and we are hunging out with him pretty well, so it doesn't make any sense that we would just stop being friends with him if we find out about his exact age.

Based on the number of years work experience he has after school that he told us, he might be couple years older than the rest of us, but he really looks, talks and behaves just like one of us. Nobody really care if he is really older than us. But the fact that he doesnt want to share with us more information about himself kind bugs me. If he really see us as his friends, why wouldn't he want to tell us?

As of us, we rather hung out with someone behave like us but older than someone who acts much older but actually our age. He should understand that if he really doesn't want people to judge him by his age, and want younger people to treat him like one of them, should first be able to accept his own age first. Hiding it shows fear and denial.

As a woman, I do want to be forever young too indeed. However, everybody knows that is impossible in reality. Luckily, thanks for my parent's genes, I do look as least 5 years younger than my true age. That doesn't mean I don't face problems everyone else would face. One day, I will become old, but I'm certain I'm not going to be ashamed of telling people my age. I want be pround of my age. One day, when someone asks me my age, I will say I'm 80! Then s/he would respond with "oh wow, you look like you are only 60!" LOL. At least that's what I hope for :-P

Even if I won't look that much younger than my age, I can still feel that young. It may not be possible to look young forever, but it's definitely possible to have a young heart for the rest of my life. :-)