My iPod Touch

My new ipod Touch arrived yesterday. I gave Dave a call as soon as I opened the package. He came over to take a look at it. This is by far the most expensive thing I have ever bought for myself. I am so excited.

Our Movie Night

Last night Dave and I went to see "Lust, Caution", Ang Lee's latest movie. The movie was based on a novel with the same title by Eileen Chang. I have read and heard comments from different people. Some thought it was good while others considered this a disappointment. The movie was 2 hours and a half long but I think it is one of the best movies I have ever seen. I would recommend this movie to my friends. However, without knowledge of the Chinese history during the WWII, it would be hard for a non-Chinese person to understand or appreciate the movie. As the director himself said, he was not expecting American audience to appreciate this movie, it would make him very pleased if they can understand it. On the way to the theater, I told Dave that I was not going to tell him anything about "Lust, Caution" and saw how much he could understand it. Except for the last part of the movie, he pretty much understood it. The last part of this movie actually moved me most. Between her mission to help assassinate the guy and her love for him, the girl chose the latter. She let the guy go.

The Vineyard

In an effort to try to continue to enjoy the great weather that we've been having in New England this fall, we spent Saturday evening and most of the day Sunday on Martha's Vineyard. On Saturday night, we stayed in the "1720 House" in Vineyard Haven, which was actually built in (you guessed it) 1720. It reminded me a lot of my Grandma Theobald's house (lots of crooked doorways, etc., but cozy).

Sunday was one of those gorgeous sunny October days when it looks like fall, but feels more like summer. We spent most of the day bike riding from Vineyard Haven to the southwest side of the island. One interesting nice thing about the Vineyard is that it actually has 7 or 8 actual towns, each with their own town hall, police dept, etc. We went through the town of West Tisbury, which has an old general store that's evidently been in continuous operation since the 1850s.

After that, we went through Chilmark. There isn't

a whole lot in Chilmark, but the town cemetery is where John Belushi is buried. People leave all sorts of things at his grave site (mostly beer and wine bottles, matches, and cigarettes... someone had also left a toothbrush).

From there, we went to the cliffs in Aquinnah (the picture at the top of this post). Aquinnah used to be known as "Gay Head", but they changed the name in the late 90's, I suspect because they were tired of hearing 13 year olds (and 30-somethings ;) snicker every time they say it.

After that, we rode back to Chilmark, then took a bus back to Vineyard Haven where we caught the ferry back to the mainland.

New York, NY

We went Manhattan this past weekend for a quick overnight trip (Saturday to Sunday). As you can hopefully see from the pictures, it was a perfect fall weekend.


Went in the Apple store on 5th Ave. at around midnight (like many things in Manhattan, it's open 24 hours) and checked out the new iPod "touch". Jessica decided she must have one sometime soon. We actually looked at this blog on the iPod's web browser and it worked just fine.



Sunday, we didn't do much other than walk around Central Park for a few hours, but we didn't leave before having some lunch from the street vendors.

Our First Wine-Making Experience

It sounded so cool when Dave told me that he wanted to make wine. He briefly described the process which, surprisingly, did not sound too complicated as I expected.

Step I: prepare ingredients and equipments. Grapes, a plastic container where grape juice will ferment and a big bucket where grapes will be crushed into juice. This is easiest part of the whole process.


Step II: select the most ripen grapes and throw them into the big bucket.


Step III: crush the grapes. Now I understand why people long time ago used their feet. It was really hard work.



Step IV: add in chemical and let the grape juice ferment. There were two bags of chemicals in the kit Dave got, one helps fermentation and the other stops it. The two chemicals had slight difference in spelling. Unfortunately, we accidentally chose the one that stops fermentation.