I am excited to say that UC Berkeley and ETH Zurich are leading the effort on the Opencast Matterhorn Project. I am also happy to say that I am in the video (that was very well produced by our Video Production team) that announce the kickoff of the project.
Don’t blink, you might miss me.
Blah, no updates for 8 months? Sounds like par for the course. Well, here are a bunch of photos for your enjoyment.
Enjoy!
Since I have been a boy, it was always PC for me. But now I have an iPhone…and Windows has Vista.
In any case, as Shareena is plotting how to break, destroy, incinerate my iPhone, I have encased it in protective gear:
New MacBook Pro.
Why?
Post could also be labeled as “Lazy, Lazy, Lazy”.
So, there is quite a haul of pictures.
Last Sunday, a bunch of us went to the recently reopened California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Although we did not go to the planetarium (long lines and Shareena apparently got motion sick in the old one…and the new one looks even more motion sick-able), we did enjoy everything else. They got Penguins, a Rainforest dome (where we witnessed a butterfly getting attacked by the fish after it somehow got stuck on the surface of the water) and an albino alligator.
Shareena and I also managed to stop by Seattle earlier this month and avoided the rain (for the most part). We stayed at the wonderful Greenlake Guest House (which was right across the street from the lake/park) and managed to hike in the Cascade mountains (and spotted a woodpecker along the way – see if you can spot it…it was pretty dark in the forest).
Here are some more pictures:
Seeing the date of the last set of photos, I really do feel lazy.
Well, as usual, I have not updated in a while and even when there is something worthwhile to blog about (and really there have been many things that have been worthwhile to blog about), I am just too lazy, no matter how much easier it is to blog using WordPress than ever before.
Aside from my laziness, I must point out the current special exhibit at the de Young Museum – the Dale Chihuly exhibition. Shareena, of course, very astutely figured out that the same artist was responsible for the ceiling flower garden at the Bellagio. I am certainly not much of an art appreciator, certainly not someone who is wow-ed by art anyways, but the scale of these pieces of work is quite amazing.
Of course, so is the price tag on some of the pieces (very small ones in comparison) that they are selling!
Anyways, if you get a chance to see it, whether it is at the de Young or wherever (check Dale Chihuly’s web site for his exhibition schedule), it is definitely a sight to be mesmerized by.
So our many adventures (including hitchhiking cockroaches and death defying bus rides) in Hong Kong and Bangkok have come to an end. I realize that doing a big update after the fact is just too exhausting (kind of like our trip) and unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the hotels that we stayed at charged obscene prices for internet access. So other than a few side trips to very noisy internet cafes (in HK, aka – teenage gaming internet cafes), we managed to avoid the internet and working on our honeymoon.
We actually took a few more pictures than normal – partly due to my guilt of buying a new digital camera. So here are some pictures (including some old pictures from our wedding!):
Honeymoon Trip – 2008 (with an end stop in Laguna Beach for Lei and Bryan’s wedding):
More Wedding Photos (from my camera):
Other New Albums:
Another update accompanied by new Wordpress theme and some nifty updates. At last, with the Wordpress widgets tool and Wordpress-Gallery plugin, I now have a web site that is free of my own hacks! I am not sure if this means anything for the frequency of my updates, but it does mean that there will be more photos in my posts.
In any case, there are no photos to go with this post as I am merely pointing out that Shareena and I will be off to Bangkok and Hong Kong for our honeymoon, followed by a wedding to go to in Laguna Beach.
We are staying at:
1. HK – Harbour Plaza HK (3-9 April) – external link: http://harbour-plaza.com/ (Superior Harbourview Suite)
2. Bangkok – Davis Hotel (9-17 April) – external link: http://www.davisbangkok.net/ (Deluxe Room)
3. Laguna Beach – Casa Laguna (17-20 April) – external link: http://www.casalaguna.com/ (Courtyard Room)
Apparently the both the hotel in HK and Bangkok have rooftop pools. We will be checking those out! Many photos to follow when we return.
I cannot believe that I have not written in my blog since June! Oh well, I have been busy and lazy – it is quite a complicated situation. Shareena and I are still recovering from our wedding – there is wedding stuff everywhere in our house still. Hopefully, we will be able to clean this up during the winter break.
Without further adu, the photos:
There are nearly 1,000 photos in all, so take your time to view them!
Long time no blog. Can you say “laziness”?
I suppose I could blame it on the wedding preparations, but as most people can guess, the groom really has less to do and less to worry about when it comes to making wedding plans. That said, I need to reserve some rooms in Sacramento this week so that my family will have some place to stay.
In other news, Happy day after Father’s Day. Hopefully, when my dad receives his present (a nice 20 inch LCD monitor to replace his wimpy 15 inch CRT), he will be able to see my web site in a fuller fashion.
Finally, this past weekend was my cousin Ken’s wedding, which occurred in one of my previous home town of Simi Valley. It was a very ordinary ceremony until Batman showed up! You can see what I am talking about at:
Also, for those of you who did not see my engagement photos, they are at:
Went to Tampa for a week to make sure my dad was ok. Nothing to be alarmed…all is well.
I got a call from my dad a couple of weeks ago and surprisingly, he was in the hospital. What was first diagnosed as pneumonia turned out to be a problem with his mitral valve not functioning properly, causing mitral regurgitation (basically the leaking of blood back from the left ventricle to the left atrium). And thus, open heart surgery was necessary to fix the problem.
Fortunately, my dad was otherwise very healthy and thus, there were no other major problems to resolve (like blocked arteries). His heart was out of rhythm (atrial fibrillation) due to his mitral valve problem, which was corrected with the maze procedure. While atrial fibrillation normally would not automatically mean the performance of the maze procedure on the patient, in my dad’s case, this was advisable as he was already having open heart surgery to correct the mitral valve. So, both procedures were performed.
In short, all went well and my dad is back home (5 days after surgery). He just cannot drive and have many other restrictions (not diet though, normal food day after surgery). Apparently his heart works so well now, my dad’s blood pressure was a bit high. Hopefully, this is just a temporary issue, but we shall see.
Shareena and I will be spending Thanksgiving (and fighting Thanksgiving travelers at the airport) in Tampa. We are hoping to find some usable pots and pans and cook some cornish hens for Thanksgiving.
