Westwood Wizard

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: , , , , ,
04 June 2010
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screenshot of ucla homepage featuring tribute to the late john wooden

Screenshot of the UCLA homepage featuring a tribute to the late John Wooden. (Click for larger image, ucla.edu for original.)

I just learned that John Wooden died today, and what a sad moment that was.  After yesterday’s false alarm, I was hoping he’d get through this trial and make it to 100 and get that letter from the President!  How cool would that be?  But unfortunately, whatever ailed him got the better of him today and now I will never fulfill my dream of meeting him in person.  I suppose I still could, but not at the book signing I had imagined.

I wonder if part of it was because he’s lived a long, fulfilling life and he was ready to go.  Perhaps he just didn’t have the willpower to fight whatever put him in the hospital because he would be perfectly content dying now.  I think that was part of it.  Without a compelling reason to live, it’s very easy to let go.  Certainly he deserved to not have to struggle in an aging body.  After all, it seems the only thing he didn’t accomplish was being a centenarian!

It’s amazing that I can feel so sad that this man is gone.  I never met him and haven’t even read his books yet.  But there’s a deep-seeded respect that runs through every True Bruin, for he was a respectable man who led like no other in the short history of our school.  (Random thing I noted was that he’s 9 years older than UCLA.  Puts into perspective just how young our school is!)  The good thing is that I’m not sad in a bawling all over the place kind of way.  I’m sad in a “I missed out and it’s unfortunate the world has lost a great influencer” type of way.  A pensive, curious, questioning kind of way.

I wish I could have joined the hundreds of students who gathered at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center today, to pay tribute to this great legend.  May his legacy live on to inspire generations to come.  🙂

“If it was my home”

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: , ,
03 June 2010
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One of my fraternity brothers shared this link today, which I thought was a compelling image.  It takes you to a map displaying the approximate area of the spill, then allows you to overlay that to whatever area you want, just to see how much it would cover if it was in your city!  Here’s a look at LA (click to see a larger image):

Counter creation

laelene Post in photo blog，Tags: ,
02 June 2010
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The Counter is a restaurant where you check boxes on a list and piece together your own meal, from the bread to the dressing to the meat to the toppings. It’s pretty fun and you never know if your combo will be that great, but that’s the fun of it. They have these amazing onion strings (kind of like shoestring fries) that are perfectly thin and lightly breaded and fried! Yum.

sweet potato fries and onion strings at the counter

Mmm such delicate onion strings!

food from the counter

Create your own concoction! I got a "breadless burger" (aka salad :-P).

adding tomato slices to the salad

They forgot to give me my tomatoes!

Spring Sing duo

laelene Post in video blog，Tags: , , , , ,
01 June 2010
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los dos performing “our youth” from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Fabulous food

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: , , ,
31 May 2010
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I’ve had a major craving for Din Tai Fung that was finally satisfied this weekend.  I’m amazed that there is only one shop in all of the country and it’s in a little unassuming plaza in Arcadia (although now it seems they have opened a second one not even a block away).  They are renowned for their xiao long bao, which are these coin purse type pork dumplings.  They have delicate skins and the insides have a juicy filling that makes it sort of like having a sip of a rich stock.  I often went to have them when I was in Singapore and hadn’t had any since I returned 9 months ago!  It was high time to see if the US store was as good as its Asian counterparts.

I was extremely satisfied with the little morsels, though they definitely could have been more filling (and given larger portions).  Taste-wise, I can’t tell the difference between theirs and what I had in Singapore, so I was happy!  I haven’t had better xiao long bao in the states.  Though come to think of it, I don’t even see it on the menu in most places.  My craving is still there, so I’m thinking I need to go back regularly.  For me, it’s worth the 30-40 minute drive and 15 minute wait.  Plus, I can take a detour on the way back to get cha for tea!  The BEST boba shop I’ve ever been to.  Now that is a satisfying meal and drink combo!

Larger than life

laelene Post in photo blog，Tags: , ,
30 May 2010
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a large version of a soda bottle in the background of the actual soda bottle

In my hand, the actual soda. In the background, the blow-up version!

Birds in the wall

laelene Post in video blog，Tags: , , , ,
29 May 2010
0

About a month ago, I started to awake to noises that sound like wires being dragged along a wall (you know, like when you have cables dangling behind a desk and you’re adjusting them).  A few days of that and we began to wonder if it was the neighbors getting up early each day and moving things around.  However, one day it became distinctive scratching.  So I posited that it was rats in the wall.  Which seemed to all make sense as the noise continued, until THIS happened:

birds chirping in the wall from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

And that is how we came to learn that it was actually birds.  I suppose they were building a nest and then when their young hatched, they started to chirp.  So a good two weeks of this goes by and we had enough.  Time to move the bed.  The next morning, peace.  Then the day after that, I heard them again.  Less loud, but still there.  Maintenance had been informed, but I guess they hadn’t gotten a chance to extract the nest.  It got really annoying being woken up (usually around 7) by these noises, which included chirping, scratching, and even the thud when the birds flew in from the entrance of the air vent.

birds scratching in wall from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Television news magazine

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: , , ,
28 May 2010
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I love to watch 20/20 and 60 Minutes, which until today, I didn’t know how to describe.  So I looked it up and thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that they are referred to as TV news magazines.  They’re in-depth enough to provide good background on a story, but don’t cover every little thing going on in the world.  Perfect for when I want to hear about some of the interesting things going on in the world.  Unfortunately, there aren’t many of them (the Wikipedia article says they lost popularity to reality shows – what a pity), so after only a few hours, I’m left with wanting more.

To try to compensate, I’ve taken up shows like Dateline and 48 Hours, which pretty much only cover murder cases.  It’s starting to get tedious as I hear about death after death… what happened to things like profiling notable people or digging into recently significant events?  And since it’s news I crave, TED.com just doesn’t cut it either, with more of thoughts and looks into the future.  What am I to do when there aren’t enough Barbara Walters out there?  🙁  I wish I had the patience for other types of video media, but all I want to do is watch my two favorite shows – 20/20 and 60 Minutes.

Arcade win

laelene Post in photo blog, video blog，Tags: , ,
27 May 2010
0

Out one night with some friends and our group played Deal or No Deal, winning quite a bit!  Here are our tickets coming out:

arcade tickets dispensing out after a big win

And they just kept coming…

arcade tickets from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Finally, it was done and we were 500 tickets richer. 🙂

a pile of 500 arcade tickets

And what did we do with all those tickets?

playing air hockey with over-sized sunglasses on

Oh yes, we got ridiculously large sunglasses and then played air hockey until all our coins were gone. That is a sweet victory. 😛

Lookalikes

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: , ,
26 May 2010
0

I’ve been noticing a lot of people who look like people I know.  Most recently is Steve Nash (Panda’s had basketball running every day, so this guy kept showing up), who looks like one of my former roommate’s boyfriend!  Or perhaps it is the other way around.  Nash, after all, is older.  And on an unrelated side note, every time I hear Nash I can’t help but think John Nash, the mathematician.  But back to lookalikes, when Yeardley Love, a college senior from University of Virginia was murdered, the picture of her they used in the news reminded me of a high school classmate.  A few months ago, I went to a concert with Panda and the second chair celloist looked just like a futuristic version of a middle and high school friend from New York!

Thanks to mobile technology, when I noticed that lady, I pulled out my phone and got on Facebook to find a picture to show Panda.  Indeed, he agreed, she did look like my friend if she was only 20-30 years younger.  I also used Facebook to find pictures of my other friends with lookalikes in the news and perhaps Panda is just humoring me, but he nodded that they did resemble the person of interest.  Is it just that when you see enough people in your life, you will inevitably come across those who look eerily similar?  Or maybe it’s just the way I am, looking for patterns and similarities.  But I really do think they look like they could have been the same person.  I’d share the side-by-side comparisons for you to judge yourself, but I don’t want to violate their privacy.

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