The weather is weird. The summer had only lasted 2 weeks. It snowed for 2 hours in mid-Oct. But the temperature is still in the teens now at the end of Nov. I took this picture 3 weeks ago in Winchester, MA. The leaves are long gone. But a friend said she saw new yellow flowers on the street.
Glacial Point is a famous spot to appreciate Yosemite Valley, in particular the Half Dome. We arrived there for sunset. To be honest, the sunset there is not any spectacular. I have got some interesting photos out there though, and they are not about the Valley below.
I have just come back from a week's trip in Yosemite yesterday. We spent 5 days in the park, one day in SF and another day in Santa Rosa and Point Reyes. It was a good break amid a tight work schedule. Pictures can been seen in the link under My Photos.
So we have seen some museums. These museums do not only hold great artworks but their architectures are quite pleasing to look at.
MoMA looks like any other glass-walled buildings in NY, but it has a few nice touches inside. It has a hall 4 levels tall with clean and sharp contrast of color and geometry. With the artworks the space becomes an artwork itself.
I have just found that MoMA had been closed for 2 year and a half in 2001 for a complete make-over and was only re-opened on Nov 20, 2004. The building and the interior is designed by the Tokyo-based architect Yoshio Taniguchi. The new building has almost doubled its gallery space. NY Times has an article for the re-opening.
Met. Although we arrived NY at 2 on Saturday, Met happens to close at 9 pm on Saturday. So we arrived Met at 3 and stayed until it closed, but we still couldn't go over everything. We ended up walked the African arts very briefly and skipped the Egyptian mummies all together. As we walked the Greek sculpture at night, the lightnings made the hall glow like jewels. I have been there during the day a couple of years ago, but the hall didn't look the same during the night.
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard. It is only a small museum but it has done a good job in blending modern and Renaissance architectures.
p.s. I took all these picture with my G9. Sue bought me a nice Canon leather case designed for G9. It binds to the camera the sweet old range finder camera way: the front part of the case swing open to expose the lens and viewfinder, now with the back part swings open also to expose the LCD.
We watched an NBA game in NY. It was Knicks vs Lakers. Lakers was leading 24 points at half time and I thought they would win by 20s. The guy sitting next to me kept saying "my tam sucks". But Knicks came back in the third and fourth quarters and they managed to make it a 3-point game to the last 7 second. Lakers stole the ball and added 2 points to the final lead.
Kobe Bryan made his 20,000 points in the third quarter. The commentator said it but there was no flashing billboarding for that. It was Knicks' home game after all.
Sue is here and we have visited a few art museums in NY and Boston lately, and seen paintings of many great artists: Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Georges Seurat, Alfred Sisley, Max Beckmann...
In the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) of NY, we saw van Gogh's The Starry Night. They also have an exhibit of Georges Seurat. Although they don't have the final work of Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, they are showing a collections of over 20 studies Seurat made in preparation for the work.
In Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, I looked at The Cornfield with Cypresses as close as 3 inches from the painting and saw how thick the paint he had put on the canvas.
Part of The Cornfield with Cypresses in Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
There are also paintings of these artists not seen so often:
Three Pairs of Shoes, Vincent van Gogh, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
Foreground: A Woman with Chignon, Pablo Picasso, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
Just come back from Dalian. I spent a week there for a meeting and sightseeing. It was a nicely planned city, but still suffered from quite some extent of pollution. The sky was fogging most of the week, and I believed that it was real fog plus smog.
Since the meeting was co-organized by my employer in the US, I met a bunch of old friends and had great time with them. The students at the university who volunteered at the meeting were very helpful and cheerful too.
I didn't bring my camera nor my laptop with me for the trip. So I could only take pictures with camera of my friends here and there, and I am still waiting for them to send me my photos; nor I could enjoy the free broadband internet inside the hotel room. I will probably put on some of the photos on the web soon after I get them.
今日原本諗住一個人去南生圍行下，同阿爸阿媽講起，佢地又要跟住黎。都好，好耐冇同佢地去玩。
南生圍大部份魚塘已經荒廢晒，行到南生圍外圍一個魚塘先遇到個阿叔，佢話自已係呢度長大，依家半退休，返黎魚塘起番間屋，養魚種菜，出面市區d生活過唔慣。佢養左隻黃狗仔，好痴人，我一行近個魚塘佢就走黎Lam我。
再行到差不多到紅毛橋，經過一個農場。我地去到諗住食豆腐花，入到去先知裡面好大，有幾個魚塘，有d養左烏頭、近木棚既魚塘種左好多睡蓮同蓮花。我地行浮排落去個睡蓮池度映相。有好多拍友入黎映佢地d睡蓮，仲送番d相比佢地，掛出黎威下。
今日係閒日，冇其他客，事頭婆帶我地參觀。佢話個農場開左四年，種左好多果樹，有兩棵大樹菠蘿長滿好大隻既大樹菠蘿，仲有幾棵蘋果芒，長滿紅芒果。我問事頭婆d大樹菠蘿幾時食得，佢話d大樹菠蘿已經比人訂左。
佢個棚內有個錦鯉池，池邊有棵蘋果芒，加上好多錦鯉游黎遊去，好靚。我同事頭婆講，個錦鯉池將成個場個格提升左。佢話，其實成個農場係由佢地兩公婆一手一腳砌出黎，一間屋自已住，一個木棚比人坐低食野同休息、魚池、魚塘、荷花池，全部都係佢地自已用人地唔要既廢料砌出黎。
佢地仲養左蜜蜂，自已整蜜糖同蜜糖酒。個場有得燒烤，但聽事頭婆既口氣，佢唔係咁鍾意呢類客，可能攪到個場又嘈又污糟呱。
最後事頭婆帶我地去田度自已摘甘筍，洗一洗就食得，好好味。佢話後面菜田仲有好多菜，不過多數都係各種鬼佬生菜，阿媽佢地唔食Salad，所以冇去到。
我地剛去到時，事頭婆正打磨緊佢老公刻既木牌片，用黎掛係個木棚內。其中一塊牌片寫住：
This is one of my favorite pictures that I have taken. Aug 9, 2006. I was visiting San Diego on my own. On the night I came back from Ocean Beach, I took a small street back to the hotel, and I came across this street light. I was strike by the mood of the scene - it was as solemn as I was. I grasped my camera and capture the mood.
To me, this little street light hooked on the wall is like a lonely guy trying to make a mark in the world by shooting its dim light onto the ground. But that is not easy. The light has to go through the rough wall before reaching the ground. The little fellow has to shoot so hard that some of its light leaks out from its back.
San Diego has a Gas Lamp District where all the street lamps are still burning gas. But those gas lamps are more like empty shells without a soul.
I was looking at the pictures I have put on my Picasa Web Album (see the link on the right). Yes, I have been to many places in Europe. But what is the point if no one shares with me the memories of being in those places? To me, there is no such place in the world that attracts me as much as the people who I want to see.
Sunday River is the biggest ski resort in New England. It has over 50 trails covering 7 mountains and 6 ridges.
We went there skiing and snowboarding for 2 days. On the first day, I took a snowboarding lesson in the morning and got on the hill on my own in the afternoon. But I couldn't managed it and hit my butt quite badly.
So I got back on the skis on the second day and took a short skill improvement lesson. The instructor is probably in his late 50's and has over 35 years of teaching experience. He brought Shamik and I up the hill and showed us what and how to ski in the right form in a few runs down the hill.
After that skiing lesson, I could ski in a controlled manner and started enjoying it. I was not even tired after skiing for the whole day.
But that was not the end. The journey back home was a lot more adventurous than skiing/snowboarding. We were hit head on by freezing rain, which froze on the ground and the windshield in 2 seconds. I had to drive in the 3rd gear all the time and use engine brake to stay in control. We even needed to stop twice to scrap the ice from the windshield. That turned 1 hour's drive through the local streets into almost 2 hours. It almost killed me mentally. I passed the driving seat onto Shamik soon after we got on the highway where the driving condition was a lot better.
We went home safe and sound after four and a half hours.
Surprisingly, the most impressive encounter of the whole trip was a few unintended words came out from the skiing instructor. I was skiing from behind him and he suddenly said to me, "Go on, son." Maybe he is like all affectionate American old men who always address young men "son", but it touched my heart like a father who is encouraging his son to explore the best of his potential and standing by his side when he needs him.
The US is a country made up of webs of highway. Somehow the American decided to build more highway than railway, probably meant to create more jobs for the automobile industry. Now this country is overconsuming fossil fuel.
This is pretty much what you will see in any section of any interstate highway. Wide opening of highway lined with trees and forrest on both sides.
Over I-93, somewhere in New Hampshire; Oct 3, 2004
I have been to Munich 5 times.
It is a city that is unfamiliar but heart-warming to me. It is not the locals who are particularly welcoming, but I was always accompanied by my love there. I always want to fly there and stay with her forever.
Aug 13, 2006, the day after Aug 12, 2006, obviously. But the world means completely different to me all at once since Aug 12, 2006. It was quite amazing that I was feeling I owned the eternity only a few months ago back in Greece, and suddenly I felt nothing worthed living for anymore. I could have locked myself out at home but I figured it was better to do something outside. The walk had been planned a week before after all.
So we drove two and a half hours south to have a walk at the famous Cliffwalk in Newport, Rhode Island.
It is not the Rhodes Island of Aegean Sea, but the Rhode Island state of the USA. Historians are disputing the origin of the name. Some historians believes that an Italian explorer name the largest island in the Narragansett Bay Rhode Island because of their similarity in shape; others think that the name came from "Roodt Eylandt", old Dutch for "red island", an Dutch explorer referred to the red clay on the island's shore.
We arrived there at 2 pm. That was fine. The sun was not going to set before 7 pm in the summer. Half of the distance of the Cliffwalk is paved, and half of it is covered with gravels or simply boulders to walk on. As the name implies, the trail is all over a cliff.
With a beautiful view like this, it is quite natural to believe that houses sitting right on this cliff are incredibly expensive. In fact you cannot really buy a house there anymore. People had done that 200 years ago. And they are terribly wealthy folks. They built huge mansions along the trail. Some of them have become museums that admit with entry fee, and some become private clubhouses. There is a private university there too. There are a couple of restaurants there though: one at the head of the trail and a "Chinese Teahouse" in the middle.
A round trip takes about 3 hours. It was a fairly easy walk, except the section made up of boulders. It is mostly flat though, and you can easily maneuver over the boulders as long as you are not on high-heels.
I got this day spent nicely, but worse were still to come.
CLIFFWALK, RI; Aug 13, 2006
Acropolis is always in restoration since 1960's. It is almost impossible to find an angle where you can picture the Propylaea without cranes. It was crammed with tourist even before tourist season.
The Propylaea survived almost two thousand years, through Greece, Rome and Byzantine. It was only destroyed under the rule of the Latin Empire in 1656, and during the Greek-Turkish War in the turn of 1920's. I felt the misery of its state of destruction more than the greatness of the Atheanean culture. It was a good walk though.
