The day we almost broke our legs

On Thurs Jose was so random, he asked if I have plan for Saturday since I am not going to retreat. I said no. here we go. We are heading to Three Sisters Falls near Julian, CA. The trip was confirmed on Friday night only. Met at 8am, their house. Yeah.
                                    

Paula packed the sandwich when I arrived. Alright we were set to go. I asked where the GPS is, he pointed to his brain. Ha. Then the next moment we got onto the wrong road. Haha. Hanging out with them is fun, a bit carefree and need not worry about the nonsense chat. We reached there around 10am. There were quite a number of cars along the roadside. All seem peaceful, cannot spot the falls.

Immediately I need to answer the nature call. First time ever k. so paiseh as I have to do it in front of your friends. Kekek. The trail gets a little windy and downhill. Yes, we need to hike down to the valley. No kidding. You can see the slope, one can easily slide down. If you’re not mindful, you may just fall and bye bye. I almost sprained my ankle soon after we got to rocky part. Phew. Cold sweat. The legs are so precious. I cannot imagine how do I thread back if I am injured. Thank God, nothing has happened.

We started to see the need of walking on our butt. Knowing how dirty the pant can be, we still do that. Aware of the existence of the poison oak, ah well, can’t care so much. Our goal is to reach the falls that seem so near, yet it is still a distance away. We joked along the way, trying to watch out for one another. Most hikers are young peeps, as in our age or younger. Very few older folks. Actually you need a stronger heart and courage to hike the trail. Both physical and mental wellness. The sun was not too bad. We scrambled through the boulders or rock if you want to call it, I actually prefer that to hiking the sandy slope. Paula said this is indeed a ‘rock climbing’ trip instead of a hike. Haha.

By noontime we arrived at the middle falls. There were a lot of people, resting, snacking and sun tanning. Then we saw a group of people and one of them was on bandage. Apparently there was blood on the floor. Looks like that person was injured though he did not look painful at all. I figured out that we shall only leave the place after the helicopter evacuation!! It was a long wait while we savor our sandwich and ‘hello panda’. Hehe…

The sound of the helicopter propellers were loud. It got close to the valley and it flew away. We do not get it. Why?! Then it came back again. The wind was strong. We saw a paramedic coming down. Helicopter then left us. Paramedic got the casualty securely tighten and did a ‘thumb up’ sign. And the helicopter came back again! We stood and posed to take pictures of it. Who knows the wind is way too strong since this time round the helicopter has to get nearer to ground level to drop the rope. Our stuffs got blown away and we were so panicky. Haha. That was very hilarious. We could not stand firm as it is strong enough to blow you off into the water. Haha. It was a sight, seriously. I have never been so up close to a helicopter evacuation. Never take safety for granted. Try not to do silly thing. It is not cheap to get an emergency evacuation, neither do you want that to happen. Worse part is you may not get mobile service at the rural mountain, therefore it is better to be safe than sorry.

We soaked our feet into the water. That was…so nice… :) cold water but very relaxing. Jose tempted us to jump into the water. Well, I did not bring any clothes to change. How? Anyway, Paula gave me some courage and both of us decided to jump! That was fun. Haha. In the end three of us got a taste of the clear cold water fall water. Hehe... I never thought I can be that ‘siao’. It was a wise choice. The sun dried the clothes pretty soon.

Oh, it is about time to leave the falls. Oh man, the uphill hike can be tiring. I always like to hike up as it tests your endurance and build up your stamina. Despite the hot weather, about 85F, we still dragged our feet to hike up. Paula wasn’t feeling too well and probably due to the dehydration. We stopped quite a few times to rest. I mean we go as a group, it is perfectly alright to be slow, as long as everyone feel comfortable. Also, there were only 3 of us, easier to manage. Hence we encouraged one another as we slowly made our way up. Truly, it was a long way. We thought we were almost there every time but it was just not there yet.

Most of the time we were breathless yet I enjoyed it. Jose was stressed as he saw his wife was having a hard time. He was very caring too. He offered to shoulder all the backpack and made the wife to stop and rest. I can see that he himself almost wanted to break down. But how to… we just had to keep moving till we see the trail head. He said he wanted to get to car as soon as possible for the air conditioning!! The only drink we want was COKE!! We need sugar, we need cold drink!

Finally It took us another 2 hrs to be back. Thank God for the protection, we are safe. Although we swear we would not go there again, who knows. Honestly I find the trail is a bit too dangerous. If you want some thrill, you can definitely go for it! Maybe do it slightly earlier in the day, cooler.

We had Korean food at zion. Yummy. Ate so much. Happy and satisfied. Good company for the whole day. We made it home by 7pm. I took a nap while doing facial mask to nurse my burnt face. The fengs are so ‘kua zhang’. They rested from 8.30pm to 10am the next day. Of course, our body are aching due to all those scrambling. Hehe… it was fun though.

We made it. Yeah.!

Mama Day

Surprisingly it turned out to be a very nice event for me. Never expect it to be that fruitful and meaningful especially when you are abroad, away from your immediate family.


Eric invited me to join them for the MD's breakfast. His intention was to prepare pancake for the whole family, so I have to help out lo. I brought nutella and bacon. Yeah. I was late. Too many things to do before leaving the house. Well, in the end when I arrive, I wonder how come the garage door was opened. Then I saw sharon. Haha. She was shocked to see me. Then i went in and greeted the whole family. ta-dah, it was a surprise still.


We patiently got everything ready. Pancake, bacon, egg, fruits, spread, beverages etc. Wow, nice MD breakfast. We chit chat like a family. That was nice. Then auntie invited me over for dinner since she planned to cook soy sauce pork that night!!


btw, i learn a new trick in cooking the bacon strip. Instead of frying or baking it over the stove, you can actually wrap it with a paper towel, microwave it for 1 minute. the oil will come out and it becomes crispy after a while! hehe... 


When Eric prayed at the dining table, he prayed for Mom, Grandma and mother-to-be. Very kind of him. I was a bit paiseh.


Church after the breakfast. They painted a banner to welcome and celebrate MD. Then during service we have the youth to present a skit and a video clip. As you would have expected, they thank their mom mostly for feeding them. FOOD@~! hehe... and each lady was given a small card, written and signed by the youth and a stalk of carnation. Better still, during lunch only ladies were being served salad, meal and dessert at the fellowship hall. that is a wonder privilege!


guess what. I was quite embarrassed as we (the singles) also received a card for MD. Then the auntie who sat behind me had very kind word too. She said Mother-to-be. Wow. Twice a day. eehe...


I then went shop for a cake since I want to bring it over to the Leong's. Thanks to ochie, I came to know this bakery shop and they serve nice sponge cake. I bought the yam with coconut strip as filling. Very nice. They love it. ehehehe.. 


the Dinner was great. And the fellowship with the family is even better. I truly thank God for this family. that is my first home in San Diego. They treat me as part of the family.


Overall, it was a nice MD!! Thank you Lord

游走DC II

Museum

The Smithsonian museum is pretty impressive. It has 16 museums under its realm. I visited American History Museum, National Art Gallery, Air & Space Museum, and the Holocaust Museum. It is always advisable to join the guided tour as it gives you more insight and info on what you’re seeing. On top of that, you have some ‘alley’ gossip. Haha.

          

American History Museum (AHM). It has this huge George Washington Sculpture at the ground floor. GW dressed in Greek attire, and the original of the design is to make him standing on the horse carriage. Well, money constraints. They lacked of fund and thus decided to make him sitting on the throne instead. due to the improper attire in the culture, they find that it is a disgrace for the first president to dress skimpily outside the white house, the authority donated it to Smithsonian Museum.

Another funny story on this. When the sculpture was first constructed, it was shipped from the pier. It sank the boat immediately as it was too heavy!! They then retrieved back from the sea and ship it again. So amusing. Haha.

        

AHM has another few interesting exhibition including the civil war, the presidency, first lady, bible etc. Thanks to the volunteer’s recommendation, I have decided to walk through the first lady exhibition. 

  

True enough, the preference on the dress (costume) and cutlery reveal the personality. Nancy Reagan has the most fancy one. Thanks to her background as Hollywood star. Hehe.  Her dress are quite dressy and elegant and probably stylish. The color of the cutlery she chose was bright red whilst I can see what Hilary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, they are more down to earth, relatively and conservative. It is also fascinating to see Chinese art on the cutlery. I wonder why do they bother to highlight the ‘Chinese’ art. Well…

Natural History Museum. It showcased the fossil, oh it reminds me of the days i had at Drumheller. hehe...

Holocaust Museum. I have a soft spot for that. I know it’s going to be emotional and heart-breaking whenever you visit holocaust related exhibition. This time round we joined a ‘Propaganda’ tour. It basically takes you through an exhibition on how Nazi uses propaganda to brainwash the whole nation. Adolf Hitler and his phd buddy, Joseph Goebbels, really had their own way. It’s amazing. Then the national unemployment rate is 33%. Although Hitler did not win the 2/3 of the parliamentary vote, his Nazi party was still considered the majority. 

He blamed Jewish for the bad economy, the war etc. he wavered a war against Jews, he persecuted them. How cruel. His final solution was to send them to the concentration camp! I once visited a concentration camp in Czech in 2009. It was scary and I always got lost inside the tunnel. That was history and in some ways are we repeating the history unknowingly?

Air & Space Museum. It turns out to be the favorite of all. We managed to catch it on our last day. That was a bad move, we should have spent a good one day there! Bummer. It is full of people. Long lines were formed way before the museum opens. Hehe. 

We joined a guided tour again. The guy told us actually it was the mail service system which drove the development of aerospace. Eventually United Airlines, the commercial airlines invested in Boeing to have the planes commercialized and it then becomes a passenger carriages. In fact, this has raised the respect towards UA. Hehe… I like UA because of its mileage system, I did not know about its contribution until that guided tour. 

The guide then introduced to us the various milestones of the aerospace history. It includes the first moon walk, Apollo 13 etc. pretty impressive on how human tries to innovate and explore the outer space. 

Anyway, I find myself really dumb and ignorant about all those milestones. I am an engineer, studied science for so many years and I am working on the technology (though for printer). Yet I am so not-so-into the beauty of engineering. Haha. shame on me. That is also why I always say it is by God’s grace that I am who I am today and able to enjoy what He has blessed me abundantly.

 

The post office museum located right below mdm Lin’s office. We just peep and quickly tour around before picking up our baggage to catch the train to BWI airport. It features some clips on how USPS sort the mail, how the automation takes places and how do we decode the barcode and zip code for the postal service. It is not too new to me as I once visited the USPS line in Carmel Mountain. The advancement of technology and automation has replaced much of the human effort and thus increase the productivity. The down side is the unemployment rate is creeping upwards. Those things look so close to heart as it has some direct impact on the product that we are working on right now. Cool.

mdmYe

I thought she is quite a serious lady when I first met her the evening before the DC trip. She surprised me as we interact more. More importantly I feel her love to me, over the 4 days duration.

I get to know her more as she tells us more about herself, her dream, her decision through the years. I see her as a loving woman as she fears her Lord and thus she is willing to become submissive to God’s will. This in turn has made her to surrender what she has and gave full support to her husband who pursued his dreams over the course of their marriage. The reason is simple. Because she knows he is doing what God called him to do, so she will support him for doing that. How beautiful and edifying of this testimony!

What has mdmLin done that has touches me that much? Well, she prepared breakfast for us, towel and toiletries for use, stubbornly paid for our bus ride and even the train ride (oh my, that was sooooo embarrassing. She bought us tickets secretly. Duh.) She cooked dinner, a lavish dinner for us. I feel so pampered and loved. I told her, I do not grow up in a family that parents prepare breakfast for us in the morning. I am not complaining about my mom, coz I know it Is not just in my family. But what mdmLin did is so caring, macam my mom. Hehe.. she packed snacks for our daily adventures to DC for sightsee. We travel out the house together in the morning, coming back together and had late dinner and chat. That was nice.

She brought us to the Jewish pastor church. Mclean Church at Tyson corner. I like the service. Hehe… it was a 40min one-way drive from home. The church is huge and it is amazing that how God has blessed the congregation growth as well as the financial needed to build such a big campus in one of the most expensive area at Tyson corner, VA. Tyson corner is the CBD in Virginia.

As we had a tough day outside and crave for asian food, she drove us to a Taiwanese chain which is obviously not on our way home, just to satisfy the crave. That was so nice of her.

I wrote her a postcard to her while I was In DC. Hehe.. it truly surprised her. Hehe… mdmLin/mdmYe. Whichever. She is the same lady. Hehe… she has the panda postcard! and she told me she loves it!

                   

Open top

This is the first time I paid for this kind of service. It works! Hehe. I am glad chiuchiu proposed that. It helps with less walking since with this convenience, we already need to walk a lot. Hehe… nice to be a tourist. 

Hop on and off the coach. Also, the best part is they have some commentary whenever we come to a tourist attraction. Nice. A bit expensive though. But it was a good investment.

游走 DC I

Somehow DC has some unspoken charm. Maybe because there are too many iconic landmark over there which signifies this land belongs to United States of America. The legislation, the congress, the white house, the presidency, the independence and various important legacies which were left behind!

Washington, D.C. DC means District of Columbia. It is not a state either. Washington is just like San Diego, the county name. I was so confused. You see, there is Washington State in the west coast, why would this capitol name itself ‘Washington’ with a DC as well! They like to confuse the visitor, hoping to create more traveling opportunities? Hehe… 


Memorial

The National Mall is impressive. It stretches a few miles and what I like about this place is… you will find very few commercial shops here. Or I should say, none. All you can see are memorials and the Smithsonian Museum. One may wonder how do we get food and drink? Well, there are trucks selling food. Yes, hot dog and soda.

DC was first carved out to be the capitol of United States, just like Canberra in Australia. L’Enfant was commissioned to design the layout of the city. It was then during Great depression and having such a urban development plan helps to create more jobs. Smart move uh. The landscape is quite square-ish. Basically the alphabetical street run though from east to west and the number streets run from north to south. The diagonal street are named after the various states except California and forgot which one. DC is split into 4 quadrants, not the typical quadrant but NW, NE, SW, and SE. Every place is relative to the Centro of Capitol Building at the top of Capitol Hill.

The lady of freedom on top of the capitol building is under construction. No building in DC shall be higher than 12 storey. Reason being freedom shall reign in any case. White house. I only get to see white house from far. Due to the Easter reception, tents were built. Heard one need to apply for the permit 6months prior to the visit. Duh. For what? Big deal uh. Hehe… the one unique building which is the treasury building is one of those you would want to recognize. Because it appears on the 10 dollar bill. Then right across the treasury building is the Willard Hotel. Rev Martin Luther King Jr first had spoken there. Fancy and expensive hotel. You can see tai-tai dressing up and there were chauffeurs. Ah well… being atas 

Washington Monument has its interesting history as well. The 50 flags indicates the 50 states in the nation. Then you can see there are 2 shades of stone being used to construct the monuments. It was halted halfway due to the lacking of material and money. Egyptian obelix shape, 551ft tall, 55” as the based. I saw people flying kites over there. 

2012 is also the year the city celebrates 120^th anniversary of cherry tree gift from Japan. Usually end mar through early Apr is the cherry blossom festival. Aw, it was a warm spring thus by the time we got there, the sakura is gone. I do saw a few left. It would be real nice if I get to see the actual blossom. Guess what, in 2011, DC government has issued 70,000 traffic tickets during the cherry blossom season alone. You can imagine how much tourism it brings in every year.

The thousands of cherry blossom trees were located around tidal basic. It provides a great backdrop for Thomas Jefferson memorial photography. Despite the fact not having blooming sakura, it is still scenic. Still is the word I would use to describe.  Jefferson is the 3^rd president of United States of America. He drafted the declaration of Independence, State of Virginia  and he is the father of the university of Virginia.

                         

Lincoln Memorial remember the 16^th president of U.S. You always link slavery to his name. He sits at the center of the memorial and he believes in ‘All man are created equal’. That is the reason why he pursued the dream of having to abolish the slavery doctrines in the country, The picture of Lincoln Memorial is commonly found on a penny coin. Hehe.  

Rev Martin Luther King Jr delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech at this memorial too.          

                        

There at the vicinity you get to see a lot of war memorial. Vietnam War, Korean War, World War II. It is also quite amazing that how the nation remembers those who fought for the country. In a way it is good. Many names of the walls signifies the price of the freedom. There is no free freedom.  

Korean War Memorial.I like the idea of having the images of the 19 soldiers being reflected on the wall to create an illusion that there were actually 38 of them. Good thought. 



Also, the Vietnamese war memorial is quite debatable too. I only read this piece of information after I got back. Apparently the long wall had all the soldiers name inscribed and when another sculptor placed another piece “the three soldiers’ in the memorial, the wall designer was angry as she feels that it jeopardize the whole design. Ah well. So they tried to put the new sculptures at a reasonable distance so that it minimize the tension.

World war II memorial.  Quite big. It has Pacific and Atlantic on both sides and each pillar represent a state in the nation. Also, the still water and the fountain creates some sort of the contrast. There is a ‘star’ wall, each star represents 1000 soldier. Many had died due to warfare. Sigh.

Across the Potomac river, there are Arlington National Cemetery, Pentagon and Mt Vermont (the residence of the first US president, George Washington). The reason why I visited Arlington National Cemetery is because I want to see the Iwo Jima statue. Apparently you need to walk 1mile to see those. 


The iconic Iwo Jima statues was inspired based on the ‘Raising the flag on Iwo Jima’ photo. I once watched a movie on ‘Letter from Iwo Jima’. That is why I was determined to visit the memorial. Also, I saw Netherland Carillon. It was a gift from Netherland, thanking United States for rendering their help during the war. Sweet. You can see tulips there too.

I took the blue line bus again to peep at Pentagon. Ah, pentagon is 3 storey high. Nothing special. It is the military office. No wonder it was the target back in 2003. Also, photography is prohibited in the compound. Don’t play play. Hehe… there is this pentagon city with some fancy malls. 

The yellow line bus brought us to the national cathedral, embassy street and a upper class hipster neighborhood called Georgetown. The buildings are quite old-fashioned. Gothic? Not too sure.  Oh yes, we passed by the place where the Vice president reside. Hehe.. and one interesting remark that we heard was that… Iraq embassy was the only embassy which as its glasses shielded with the metal strip. Kekek. Mayflower hotel is where Bill Clinton had his famous affair, and Ford theatre was where Lincoln was assassinated. 

   What does Downtown DC offer? I don’t really know. What I know is that DC is basically comprised of museum and federal government bodies. Nothing else. This is not a place for food and shopping paradise. 

I need to continue writing else I would really be forgetting what I have seen.