Victoria Peak is a beautiful vantage point in Hong Kong, but boy is that a steep ride up!

So this is how the tram mechanism works!

And then the descent, offering beautiful views of the harbor.

You know how catnip makes cats go crazy (in a good, happy way)? Well, this tree apparently is just as good-tasting to elephants as catnip is to cats. When I went elephant-riding, my elephant tried to break off some to eat, but that was a sturdy branch.

Branching off from my description of generational gaps in my family…

For my parents in particular, my maternal grandmother heard of my dad through the wife of a professor at the local university, which is where my parents both went to school.  My maternal grandfather was also a professor at the school and his professor buddy had my dad as a student.  Through the women talking, my grandmother learned that this young man was the professor’s star student and first in his class.  My parents were introduced to each other and my grandfather approved without ever meeting the young man.  All he had to know was that he was a hard worker and an excellent student.  My grandmother, on the other hand, wanted to meet and get to know this potential suitor.  As the legend goes, she sat him down for an interview (probably mostly asking about academics and his professional future) and liked him as well.  My mom decided that of the guys she’d been introduced to, she liked this one the most, and so they were married.  Or something like that.

It turned out to be a great decision, since my dad was smart enough to be allowed to leave China, which was a bit of a mess back in those years.  The country had been in lock down and it was extremely hard to get out.  My dad got into a PhD program at Penn State, which is what took him abroad.  About six months before I was born, he left for the land of the free and began his studies.  A year later, when I was a few months old, my mom followed suit, going to Penn State for her Master’s.  I was left with relatives in China and I believe my paternal grandmother was mostly in charge of raising me those years.  By the time I was three and a half, my parents had saved up enough money to fly me over.

I don’t remember much from those years, but I did have one strong memory from the plane ride, about the lady who escorted me from my family in China to my parents in America.  I have also been told by my mother that when I first arrived, I refused to let my dad sleep in the bed.  After all, it really was like meeting them for the first time – my dad had never seen me before and my mom had only been with me for about half a year.  My mom attributes this behavior to a child’s need to cling to one adult they trust.  Apparently between my parents, I chose my mother.  So I clung to her and slept with her, but initially wouldn’t allow my dad to share the space.  Poor guy must have had a couple of rough nights camping out on the couch or something.

And so that is how I spent the first couple of years of my life.  Most of it’s a blur and photography was too expensive back then to have many pictures capturing my toddler years.  The few I do have are quite amusing, with me all bundled up in winter clothes with a red dot on my forehead, or hanging out in a crib with my cousins standing around me.  Perhaps I’ll dig those up someday and share them too.

The Tiger Temple in Thailand is pretty amazing.  There’s a certain awe surrounding creatures so magnificent and powerful.  When you go, there’s an area where the adult tigers hang out during the day, with lots of keepers around who take you around to get pictures with the tigers.  Each person who goes to take pictures is paired with two keepers – one to lead them and one to take pictures.  I put my camera on video mode so I could get a little live footage before the photographer keeper figured it out and switched it to camera mode.  Here’s that footage:

I then noticed one of the tigers pacing around as the keepers tried to calm him.  Nobody was allowed to take pictures with him while he was in a mood.

And then in another area, two baby tigers were playing with the monks who take care of them.  They’re so cute!  But don’t be fooled, these suckers are strong!

I usually just write about my thoughts and opinions, or include pictures and videos I find interesting.  I think it’s time for a little story – an anecdote from my childhood.  After all, stories can be a great thing for entertainment.

When I was about 12 (or maybe I was already 13 by then), I was set to return to China for the summer.  It was my first time flying alone, but I loved exploring things on my own and was perfectly happy to make the trip without supervision.  I was living in New York at the time and my parents took me to LaGuardia Airport, got me checked in, and sent me on my way.  Well, after waiting with me until the plane actually arrived, that is.  You see, it was delayed (as planes quite often are).

So when it was finally time, I got on my flight to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.  When we landed there, I quickly exited the plane to rush to the gate of my connecting flight.  When I arrived there, I was happy to see they were still boarding.  Most people had already gone on, so there wasn’t much of a line left.  When I got to the front, the steward took my ticket and stopped just as he was about to rip off the stub for me.

“You aren’t going to Amsterdam, are you?” he questioned.

I paused.  ”No…” I replied, confused.  ”I’m going to Beijing.”

“Well,” he said, “this isn’t your flight.  That one has already taken off.”

Whaaaaat?!  I hadn’t noticed the sign saying this flight was headed to Amsterdam.  And I was baffled that I was so late that not only had my flight packed up and gone, the next flight was nearly ready to back out of the gate!  Oh no.  Not good news.  The steward directed me to a customer service area where I could be helped and I trekked over, for the first time unsure of my travels.  When I arrived, I found that a lot of others on my flight had come across the very same issue and were all standing in line to work it out with the people at the counter.  Frantic, I called home to talk to my parents about the disaster.

I don’t recall much of the conversation, except that they told me to remain calm and go talk to the people at the counter, then let them know what was going on.  I obediently went to stand in line and was told that the next flight out was the following day.  At this point, realizing I was a minor traveling alone, the airline sent a representative to be my escort.  They planned out the rest of my trip and called my parents, informing them of my new itinerary.  Now I was to stay the night at an airport hotel and take a flight to Tokyo, then transfer to a flight to China.  Slight detour, but that was the next available flight so there wasn’t much of a choice.

The airline stewardess sent to watch over me led me off to a room hidden away, where a whole room full of kids sat around playing with a variety of toys!  It was an awesome game room and I quickly settled in to play a Yoshi video game.  I’ve never owned a gaming system, so it was a joy to be able to play for hours.  For lunch, I was taken out to get some food at one of the food court type areas.  The lady had a voucher of some sort for me to use.  For the rest of the day I played games until dinnertime, when I was taken out again to eat.  Throughout the day, kids had come and gone as they waited for their flights.

By the end of the night, it was just me and four teenage boys left.  We were shuttled over to the Four Points hotel and taken to our rooms.  The guys each shared with one other boy and occupied two rooms.  Being the only girl, I was given a suite all to myself!  I remember it was so big I could have done cartwheels all around the place.  Now that was some luxury!  I happily got under the covers and watched some late night shows, not really caring about TV but wanting to do something.  Outside my door, a gentleman sat on a chair all night, guarding my door and watching those of the boys across the hall.  I’m sure he got a break from a colleague, but I was too busy resting inside to know.

The next morning, we all got up and headed back to the airport.  I stayed in the game room until it was time to go and by that time I’d made a friend with a Korean girl who was going to be on the same flight as me from Chicago to Tokyo, after which she would to to Seoul and I would go to Beijing.  We boarded our flight, another delayed one, and sat together for the trip.  Arriving at Narita International, we found that we’d missed our connections.  We were passed off to Japanese airport officials, who got us flights for the next morning.  With our parents informed of the new development, we were taken to a back room where the airport staff hung out.

All I remember of that place was a dingy feel with poor lighting, guys lounging around watching an odd game show that I couldn’t understand, and the air filled with smoke.  Hating cigarette smoke, I had a difficult time breathing as the guys puffed away.  It was sort of awkward, but late in the night already, so we didn’t have to stay long.  My friend and I were taken to an airport hotel, where we shared a room.  I remember looking out at the peephole to find a very cute guy sitting in front of our door, guarding us for the night.  We girls giggled over our littles crushes and chatted late into the night.

Two days after my initial departure, I finally got on a flight to Beijing.  My flight buddy had gone off to her flight to Seoul and I never saw her again.  Meanwhile, I was babysat until mine came.  I made it to Beijing after many hiccups, but there was one more small one to get through – the train from Beijing to my hometown of Shenyang was delayed!  I can’t remember who got me, but we waited about an hour for a train and by this time it was nearly 1 in the morning.  Somewhere here the details get fuzzy, since it used to take 12 hours to get between those cities, but I distinctly remember arriving at my grandmother’s door right around 4 AM.  The poor woman had been waiting up for me, as good grandmothers are apt to do.  :)

I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, but perhaps – just perhaps, I had taken a flight from Beijing to Shenyang and then gotten driven back by 4.  It does make sense, but I can’t quite remember.  One day, I will rifle through my journal entries to confirm the details.  I hope I wrote all of it down.  And so there you go, a most arduous journey that you could attribute to the domino effect, with pieces falling down and causing the next one to fall down too.  Or you could blame Murphy’s law, where anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.  Not to say that things going wrong can’t be a beautiful thing!  In fact, for me it really was quite a wonderful experience!  I had a lot of fun and got to enjoy the type of adventure not many pre-teens can ever say they’ve had.

Yesterday Panda was feeling a bit antsy and wanted to move around.  Knowing that I needed the exercise,  I decided to go on a walk with him.  I had mentioned awhile back that I wanted to do a treasure hunt on campus, so he suggested we go do that.  You see, there’s this iPhone app called DreamWalk where you go to various places and either collect a stamp or get an instant win prize.  Each stamp is a letter and if you get all the letters to a word, you can win a prize, like an Amazon gift card or movie ticket.  Instant win prizes are some form of food that you can eat when you are in that area.  Well, the only spots on campus are for stamps for the Victoria’s Secret gift card or a movie ticket.  I wasn’t particularly interested in either, so we opted to try out the Geocaching app I had also gotten (and never really used).

There are quite a few on campus, so we headed to one near the IM field and John Wooden Center.  I had no idea what exactly to expect or look for, so I felt rather silly standing next to a bike rack, trying not to draw attention to myself while searching.  After taking a look at the hints, I was able to find it and was surprised at the huge water bottle full of little goodies!  There was nothing I wanted/needed, so I left it as is, but there were some cool items.  With our first find under our belt, Panda and I found another one to locate.  This time, he saw it and we sat there as two guys on a bench nearby probably wondered what we were sitting on the ground for.

On our walk to the next site, we came across a Star Wars photo shoot.  Darth Vader was hanging out around Broad Hall and two Storm Troopers were near the parking structure, one posing in front of a vent and one posing in a tunnel.  Amused, we stayed out of the way until people started to walk into the shots, then continued down the tunnel and into the parking structure.  There we found our next geocache, cleverly hidden (but unfortunately rusted shut!).  I spent a good 15 minutes prying the thing open because I’m stubborn and would never allow such a thing to foil me!  :-P  Finally, we headed over near the Chancellor’s residence for our final one, which was in an area most UCLA students are probably not aware of.

After that, we headed back, proud of a good day’s work.  It was great to get out, enjoy the day, breathe some outside air, and be active!  In the future I definitely want to have more of these adventures with Panda (I don’t think I’d have as much fun alone – plus, it’s a perfect way to spend time together).  We even decided to do some team building along the walk back and gave each other piggyback rides, then took turns guiding one another as one person kept his/her eyes closed.  Yeah, yeah, cheesy, but we had a lot of fun bonding in so many ways!  :)

I had noticed a plank of wood floating in the waves at Nai Harn Beach, so I decided to pull it out.  But once I saw that these mussels had made it a home, I couldn’t let them die!  And thus I released them back to the wild ocean currents.

Outside the Night Safari in Singapore, you can find these guys and gals performing as the night darkens and you get ready to peek into the night lives of animals.

Continued…

Taking a tour outside Bangkok and it’s time for lunch on the river, literally!

Then we zoomed upriver to the bamboo rafts awaiting us.

This looked like a fun party!

And a peaceful ride back down to our floating restaurant/hotel.

This was reminiscent of my grandfather’s house. Not that it’s quite so loud, but he does love to raise birds and out of sight in this clip are bamboo/wooden cages that really reminded me of the ones he has at his home.