Sunday, November 16, 2008

Updates on Simon and Susie



In spite of what the animal shelter told us, it's become obivous that our gray kitten is female. So "Alvin" is now "Susie". The tiger kitten is still Simon, our sweetest boy. He is very gentle and likes to be held. Susie, on the other hand, is a very strong-minded girl. I am always amazed at the fact that they have such different personality at that young age. They like to cuddle with us at night when we go to bed. Though they've only been here for less than two weeks, I feel they've become an inseparable part of our life.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Our Engagement Pictures








Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Welcome home, Alvin and Simon

Dave and I just adopted two 8-week-old boy kittens, Alvin (the grey kitten) and Simon (the tiger kitten). They are so cute. I love them to death! I attached a few pics below.






Saturday, November 1, 2008

Boston Symphony Night

Dave and I went to a concert last night at the Boston Symphony Hall. After living here for about 4 years, this was actually my first time to attend a Boson Symphony Orchestra concert. The performance of the artists was amazing, especially the Greek violinist. The concert was divided into two sections. The first section was music written by Brahms and the second by Richard Strauss. To my surprise, I did not enjoy the concert as much as I thought I would. This was because I could not understand the music, and the second section, Symphonia Domestica, by Strauss in particular. It sounded like pretty sad piece of music but it was supposed to be happy. After the concert, I read some background about Symphonia Domestica. It was composed in 1903, before the two world wars. The program said that the music is about how "lively, gay, and dreamy" a family was. After the concert, I asked my friend, a musician, how she liked about the concert. She told me she could not understand the second section, either. This made me feel much better.


Sunday, October 26, 2008

Seattle Trip

We just got back from our short jaunt to Seattle this morning. We were only there for 2 days, but made the most of the short time.


We stayed with Shawn and Heather who were terrific hosts as usual. They took us hiking at a couple of different places and to several really good restaurants.



The impetus for the trip was the Notre Dame-Washington game, which Jessica got tickets to through her alumni association.


Head coach Tyrone Willingham appears to be doing about as well at Washington as he did at Notre Dame... there were quite a few UW fans calling for his termination (note that several members of "Team FIRE __R_ME WI_LIN_HAM" appear to have been on a beer and/or pee break when this picture was taken). This game didn't do much to salvage his reputation either. Looks like T-Dub's days at U-Dub are probably numbered.


It wasn't much of a game, but it was still fun, and the views of the mountains and the Puget Sound from the stadium were great. Getting to the game via the city "Park and Ride" buses was absurdly easy. Every time I go west, I'm always amazed at how much easier it is to get around and how much more courteous and friendly people are on the "left coast" than in Boston.




Our redeye flight back on JetBlue was half empty, so we were actually able to get a few hours of sleep. The flight was a little bit late to leave because the plane, which just flies back and forth between Boston and Seattle, arrived in Seattle about 20 minutes late. I can't be sure, but this may be the reason.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Dad's Visit


Dad drove all the way from IN just to visit for the weekend. He was only here for 2 days, so we tried to make the most of it. Friday night, we went and had some seafood (crab to be specific) at the Barking Crab restaurant in Boston's "seaport district". After that, we went and walked around Harvard Square for a few minutes before driving back to Revere and calling it an evening.
Saturday, we went to the Franconia Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The first part of the drive was awful, because there are just way too many people in the Northeast and it was even worse this weekend since Columbus Day is still a bona-fide holiday in New England. It was worth the long ride, though. The trees in the White Mountains were pretty much at peak color.


Sunday, we mostly just relaxed at home. We tried to fly a kite at the beach, but it was unusually wind-free, so we gave up after about 3 tries.


Friday, October 3, 2008

Our Trip to China

We're both back from China now (although Jessica is still dealing with jetlag). I'm going to post some pictures of the trip here.
I've added some descriptions to the pictures since this was first posted.

Here's the summary:
We flew in to Shanghai on Sep. 11th (I'd highly recommend flying on Sep. 11th, as the plane was 2/3 empty)! From there, we took a bus to Jessica's home city of Hangzhou. The next day, we got on a bus headed for J's dad's hometown of Sui Chang in the southern Zhejiang province. There, we had a dinner to announce that we are getting married to this side of the family. The next day, they took us on a tour of the rural area around the small town of Sui Chang. After this, we went back to Hangzhou for a few days before returning to Shanghai on Wednesday evening. This wasn't a particularly picturesque trip, as September is fairly hot and hazy in southern China, but we had a good time nonetheless.

KFC is probably the most popular American fast-food chain in China.  I'd never eaten at one until this trip, but I'd always heard that the chicken at the Chinese KFC tastes different.  After trying it, I guess I'd agree.

Hangzhou is a fairly affluent city.  This area of town has Rolls Royce and Ferrari/Maserati dealerships.

The chinese writing system is complicated, and the etymology is even an order or two of magnitude more complex.  The modern character in the middle at the top means "healthy long life".   The array of 100+ characters below are different versions of that character that have been used throughout the history of the language. 

This is an "ancient villiage" that we stopped in during our trip to the countryside.  Neither of us can remember what it was called.

Jessica and her sister-like cousin QiMing.

Jessica's dad's extended family after our dinner in Sui Chang.

Some of the cousins and 2nd cousins.



Mountains in the countryside (a national park called Nan Jing Yan).


We stayed at Jessica's aunt and uncle's house outside of Sui Chang.  This is their front yard, which has a garden with all sorts of stuff, a small goldfish pond, and a chicken coop.   

The Xu family sorting through chestnuts grown by Mr. Xu's sister (on the right).




They've built a nice walkway along the Hangzhou Grand Canal.  The canal itself is fairly amazing in that it was built over 1000 years ago and goes all the way to Beijing (about 1000 miles away).  It's still very much a working canal.  As we were walking along, we'd see a boat pass by about once every minute.


The Xu family.


Sunday, August 10, 2008

August Update

Apologies for the dry spell here... Jessica's been quite busy with a number of things. I don't have much excuse other than laziness.

It's not been a particularly exciting summer. The condo has been livable so far... it's nice living in a brand new place. I suppose it's nice living next to the ocean, although the east coast weather has been awful as usual (even a little bit worse than usual, I think), so there hasn't been much opportunity to really enjoy it.

I'm just going to post some pictures from the summer so far. These are in no particular order... part of the reason I haven't been posting much here lately is because the Google Blogger service we use to create this site is fairly awkward to use when it comes to uploading and arranging photos. It also has the disadvantage of being blocked by the government in China, so Jessica's mom and dad can't see any of this. For these reasons, we should probably switch to another service, but that would be a bit of a project.


Mt. Mondanock in southern NH:



A couple of pictures of the trip we made to N.Y. in May (the one with Jessica in the stairway is at the main public library in NYC):


The Revere Beach sand sculpting contest, which was a few weeks ago and draws professional sculptors from all over the world:


Some random pictures from the beach:


The Bunker Hill monument that we visited (and climbed to the top of) on 4th of July.


 The "Bridge of Flowers" 10k race that Jessica ran in last weekend in western MA. 

Some scenes from the "bridge of flowers" itself:

My garden on the porch, which hasn't been doing too badly considering the lack of sun we've had this year.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Happy Summer!

We went to Mt Monadnock yesterday. It has become an annual event for us. There are several trails in the mountain. But the two most popular ones are the white dot and white cross trails. In the past, we usually took the white dot trail up and the white cross trail down. This time we reversed our usual route. We took the white cross up and the white dot down. Both trails are almost of equal distance and equal difficulty. However, it looks like the dot trail is more popular than the cross trail. So most rocks of the dot trail have become smooth. This made going down harder. But it was enjoyable. In the evening, we had dinner at a pretty fancy Italian restaurant on Revere Beach Boulevard, about 10 minutes by foot from our home. The food was good and reasonably priced. 

Even though it was the first summer day, it was not hot (a little bit humid, though) in Boston. We went to Lowe's today and got a portable gas grill in the afternoon. We had our first cookout this summer, thanks to Dave's  cooking and grilling skill. We had mahi mahi, zucchini and bell pepper. 

Happy summer, everyone.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

After pictures

Well, don't quite have things cleaned up yet, but close.I was really scared for a while that we wouldn't have room for everything. It's still a little tight, but I think we'll be OK for now. I doubt we'll be here for much more than a year anyway. I hope we'll be able to sell for at least the same price we paid, although I'm kind of doubtful... it's becoming cheaper to live in MA by the minute. On the whole, I think that's probably a good thing, but makes for a bad situation if you don't intend to be planted in the same place for a while.








Sunday, May 18, 2008

NYC, here we come

We are in the Big Apple now. We will be driving down to NJ to attend a friend's wedding.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Before pictures

As promised (a long time ago), here are some pictures from before we figured out where to put everything. We still haven't figured that out completely, but getting close (see next post).






Monday, May 5, 2008

Progress.

My plan is to post some "before" and "after" pictures, but 2 things are impeding the progress of that:
  1. My computer is in the shop due to a broken keyboard.
  2. We aren't quite to "after" yet.

I thought this would be easier than a typical move, since the place was brand new.  What I didn't see, however, is that even brand new places require some work in the beginning.   The bathroom, for example, didn't have any cabinets above the sink or toilet, so J. and I had to install these ourselves (which ended up being somewhat complicated... I'll spare you the details).   We've also had to deal with the challenge of "merging" our personal belongings, figuring out what is redundant, and trying to decide which things we each  could part with, since space is at a premium in our small place.

It's all coming together... the piles of stuff in the bedroom and living room are finally shrinking instead of growing, but we aren't quite there yet.   Hopefully we'll be able to post an update soon!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Beach day

We haven't posted anything for a while...

We still aren't really living in Revere yet, but we finished most of the painting, closet shelf installation, etc. last weekend, so we've been slowly moving small things in all week.   I rented a U-Haul for Saturday morning, so that's when all of the "big" stuff will go.

Today was the first 80+ degree day in Boston, so I went to the condo to work on the contract project that's constituted "employment" for me over the past month.   It felt like a real mid-summer beach day, so there were tons of people at the beach in front of our condo.   I managed to escape work for about an hour and take a walk on the beach.   I walked in the water, but didn't submerge my whole body... although the water wasn't freezing like I thought it would be, it was still pretty cold.   Some people were actually swimming.  They're crazy.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Pictures of the place that will soon be "home".

We went to the condo on Saturday to take measurements and some pictures. Our unit is the one right in the middle of the picture on the left. The picture in the middle pretty much shows the whole place (except for the bedroom, which is off to the right). The loft is big enough to serve as a "den" for us, and an extra bedroom when people visit. The last picture in the set below is the view from the loft. It's hard to tell from this picture, but you can see the Boston city skyline through the window.



This is the kitchen and bathroom. It looks like most of the new condos being built these days, so there's nothing terribly special about it, but everything's shiny and new, which should be nice.


It was a typical cloudy New England March day, so the outdoor pictures don't exactly bring to mind a sunny day at the beach, but a grey day on the coast can be nice too. Our private balcony is 6'x8', which isn't huge, but big enough to put a small table out so that we can eat outside. The whole public beach is 3.8 miles long, which makes it one of the largest public beaches on the east coast (well, the northeast anyway). Since the stretch of the beach in front of our place is now a residential area, they've designated it a "quiet zone" at night. This is a new law, and it remains to be seen how well it will be enforced.



Sunday, March 9, 2008

Homeowners

I know we haven't posted anything for a _long_ time, but I just wanted to quickly say that Jessica and I bought a brand new condominium at an auction today.   The place is right on Revere Beach, which is about 5 miles north of downtown Boston, and is on the MBTA's "Blue line" train, which can get you into Boston in about 15 minutes.  We got one of the only units that has an outdoor porch with views of both the ocean and the city skyline.

This is an area that wasn't so nice from the 70's through the late 90's...   It seems to be on the up-and-up for now, although I think that story is still playing out.  Either way, we got the place cheap enough (we paid about $110k below the developer's original price) that if the "revitalization" doesn't seem to be happening after a couple of years, we should still be able to sell it for the price that we paid.  In the mean time, it should be nice living near the water, and it will be good to get the tax breaks that come with making payments on a mortgage.   And our mortgage payments will be less that we've both been paying for rent recently.   More on all of this later!

Here are some pictures of our home (from when the Boston Globe reported on the auction...  I don't think they're particularly good, so I'll bring the camera next time and hopefully we'll be able to post some better ones soon!) 

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Over!

Well... I'm still disappointed that the Colts blew it a few weeks ago, but I'd have to say I'm pretty happy right now.   After hearing about 200 premature proclamations of "perfection" during the past month, I really think this is poetic justice!

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Puerto Rico

Days 1 & 2: Yabucoa and the east coast
There's really nothing special about the town of Yabucoa itself, but we stayed about 3 miles outside of the town in a very plain, but clean hotel that was about 100 yards from the beach you see above. The place had a very rural feel about it.


It was also only about an hour's drive from El Yunque, which is a small, but real tropical rain forest, where we spent most of Saturday afternoon. It was steamy and hot, but it's amazing to see the variety of animals....



and plants...



that can live in such a small place. All of this rain also makes some nice waterfalls.





Day 3: South Coast and Ponce
After leaving Yabucoa around noon on Sunday, we headed off toward our next destination of Ponce. We started out on the Ruta Panoramica (the series of roads that traverses the mountains from coast to coast). The mountain roads are curvy, narrow, and generally difficult and slow to drive on, but I think it's worth the effort for several reasons: First, the small mountain towns are a place where P.R. really feels like a foreign country (not a strip mall or chain restaurant in sight). Second, the views are terrific! Third, the elevations are high enough (3000-4000 feet) to provide some relief from the afternoon heat. Unfortunately, I took almost no pictures during either of our mountain excursions, because it's difficult to stop anywhere on the narrow roads that have no shoulder, and pictures taken out the car window don't usually turn out very well. I'd like to drive the entire Ruta Panoramica some day (according to most of the stuff I've read, you should really allow 3 days to do that).

After a while of driving through the mountains, we cut down to the south coast. It's amazing how different the climate is down there, even though it's only about 40 miles from the north coast.



As you can see from the golden tone of the mountain in the picture above, this area of the island is almost as dry as the rainforest is wet. It looks quite similar to California in the summer.

At around 3pm we arrived in Ponce. If you only drove into the periphery of Ponce, you'd probably be under the impression that it's just another unexceptional town full of strip malls and fast food joints. The downtown, however, is another story altogether. Ponce is a city that has it's origins in Puerto Rico's Spanish colonial days, and it still feels very much like a European city.



We stayed at the "Hotel Meliá", which was built in the 1890s (when P.R. was still a colony of Spain). It may not be quite as "nice" as some of the new luxury hotels that on the periphery of Ponce, but it has much more charm, and it's located right on the town plaza where we were treated to live Latin music that went on until about 11:00 in the evening (on a Sunday!).




Day 4: Las montañas y Rincón

On Monday morning, we headed out on another excursion through the mountains. We sort of got lost, but it's hard to really get "lost" when you're on a small island, so we made it to our evening destination of Rincón by about 4:00. Rincón seems to be quite popular with mainland Americans (especially the hippie and surfer types). It's hardly a cultural experience, but it's a nice place to hang out for a while nonetheless. The Lazy Parrot, the inn we stayed at in Rincon is neat and homey. We enjoyed a fancy seafood dinner that evening.


Day 5: San Juan
When planning the trip, we honestly never gave San Juan a whole lot of thought. It was our flight destination, and we got a really cheap rate at a resort hotel (the Caribe Hilton) through Priceline, so I really figured that this would just be a place to relax on the beach a little before getting on the plane to go home. What we learned after we got there was that San Juan by itself really warrants several days (if not more).

San Juan, which was established in the early 1500's is the oldest city under U.S. jurisdiction. This means that if Puerto Rico becomes a state, it will be the oldest city in the country... even older than Boston (I have no doubt, however, that Bostonians, who are often capable of emitting a reality distortion field larger than Steve Jobs, would quickly find a reason to claim that this isn't actually true... or at least doesn't matter).

The original part of the city (Old San Juan) looks like a cross between Boston and San Francisco (complete with cobblestone streets _and_ steep hills) and is surrounded by a wall that was built several hundred years ago as a barrier against potential invaders. Nowadays, the area inside is full of restaurants, various shops, and lots of really nice apartments. We ate at a restaurant called Barrachina, which claims to be the place where the piña colada was invented, however, the Hilton where we stayed also has a plaque on the wall proclaiming that their bartenders invented it 9 years earlier than the date that Barranchina claims. After dinner, we took a short walk to the gates in front of the governor's mansion. Most of the government buildings have long since been moved outside of the walls and into the more modern part of the city, but the governor, not surprisingly, still prefers to live in Old San Juan. Unfortunately, aside from that short 15 minute walk, we didn't really have any time to explore Old San Juan.




Other Random Notes:
I should probably mention something about the street signs, which have several unusual attributes. Speed limits are always posted in miles per hour, but distances are always given in kilometers. For the most part, the shape and format of the signs is exactly what you'd see in the mainland U.S.... except that they're always in Spanish. Generally, the Spanish on the signs is pretty basic... most people who have taken a couple years of classes in high school would have no problem understanding them. One notable exception to this: Before you try to drive in P.R., be sure to memorize the fairly obscure Spanish word "ramal". It means "branchline", and it can often make the difference between getting on the right road or getting lost!



Puerto Rico has something of a reputation for being crime ridden and dangerous. For the most part, we found this to be an exaggeration, but you do have to be careful sometimes... looks can be deceiving. If you zoom in on one of the previous pictures of Old San Juan from across the water, you'll notice a set of colorful buildings quaintly perched on the side of the hill that leads down to the ocean. This picturesque scene is actually the district of "La Perla", which has a reputation for being one of the most dangerous slums in the Carribean.



If you ever go to San Juan, however, don't worry too much about this. It would be very difficult to accidentally end up in La Perla, as it's almost completely separated from the rest of the city by the wall.

On a different subject, there seem to be dogs all over the island, and people don't generally seem to keep them chained up, behind a fence, or indoors like people in the mainland. On the first morning in Yabucoa, we took a walk down to the beach after breakfast. As we started walking down the road, we were approached by three scruffy looking mutts, one fairly large; the other two pretty small. They accompanied us on the entire walk and acted like they'd known us forever... I think they were actually just hoping we'd give them something to eat, but they were friendly nonetheless. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me that morning, so as we pulling out of the parking lot to leave for Ponce on Sunday, Jessica said we should try to get a picture of the dogs. Well, the best I could manage to do was get a picture of the large dog's butt.  Here it is:




Conclusion:
When I was a kid, I had "map of the United States" puzzle. For some reason, the makers of this puzzle decided to include Puerto Rico (maybe they thought statehood seemed inevitable at that time). I was always intrigued by the 3 pieces that didn't fit into the continental 48 part of the puzzle, but especially interested in that little orange island that was even more different than the others since it wasn't actually even a state. So I've wondered for a long time what this place was actually like.

So is visiting Puerto Rico really just another part of the U.S. at this point? There's no denying the American influence.



They use the same currency, drive the same kinds of vehicles, and their stores are mostly stocked with exactly the same items that you'll find in mainland U.S. stores. I found this disconcerting at first... whenever I'm in a different country, I always get a kick out of having to use different money, and seeing labels on products that look a little different from the ones that I'm used to. You'll get none of that in Puerto Rico, but if you can look beyond all of this superficial stuff, it really does start to seem like a different and interesting place, that has its own culture and way of doing things. We tried quite a bit of the traditional food, and both liked it quite a bit. I don't know why there aren't more Puerto Rican restaurants in the mainland U.S.

Oh, and did I mention that it was really nice to get out of the cold Boston weather for a few days?

Thursday, January 31, 2008

¡Nuestro vacación puertorriqueño!

We got back from Puerto Rico last night at around 6:00. It wasn't long enough, but other than that, it was a terrific vacation! P.R. has a lot going on for an island that's only 100 miles long and 30 miles wide, and we saw a little bit of everything: We spent some time in big cities and we spent some time in small towns and rural villages. We laid on the beach a bit, but also explored the mountains. We hiked through the tropical rain forest and drove through the almost desert-like area on the south coast.

Our itinerary was as follows:
- Friday and Saturday night we stayed on the east coast, near Yabucoa.
- Sunday night: The Spanish colonial city of Ponce.
- Monday night: The west coast town of Rincón.
- Tuesday night: San Juan (P.R.'s largest, and America's oldest city).

I have much to say about this trip and lots of pictures to share. So much so that I can't possibly put a decent post together in one evening without staying up all night, so the real post will have to wait until this weekend.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Happy 2008

This is the first post of 2008.  First of all, we wish everyone a late but warm "happy 2008".

Like 2007, we will continue to be a pair of world travelers. We've just planned our first 2008 trip to Puerto Rico. We will set off in less than 2 weeks. Dave is teaching me some simple expressions in Spanish. Depending on where the exchange rate goes, we might make one or two international trips. Compared with Europe, Canada is still relatively cheap to go. Since the U.S. is such a big country, there are a lot of places we'd like visit, such as Lake Tahoe. Later this year (probably around November), we will make a trip back to China to visit my family. I am sure Dave has plan for himself. For myself, I will continue to take dancing classes. Now I am learning Modern dance. I am taking a drawing class, too.

Happy 2008!