It’s just spectacular! I love the sub-shape cloud.
Don't look too long, it might hurt your eyes!
It's really cool how the setting sun tints the cloud and gives it a glow of its own.
Posts Tagged ‘experiences’
A fabulous sunset
laelene Posted in photo blog，Tags: beauty, experiences, los angeles, nature, pictures
22
March
2010
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Riding a ding ding
laelene Posted in video blog，Tags: experiences, hong kong, travel, videos
21
March
2010
The cheapest way to get around Hong Kong (other than walking, of course) would be these ding dings. They’re also a great way to watch the city go by you and enjoy the outside weather. They can be quite jerky and get too hot in the summer, but it’s fun to see the bustling streets pass by you.
riding a ding ding from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
Elephant ride
laelene Posted in photo blog, video blog，Tags: animals, experiences, fun, interesting, pictures, thailand, travel, videos
19
March
2010
A short clip of an elephant ride I took and some pictures to go with!
elephant-riding from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
The elephants coming in so we can hop on for a ride!
Aww, I was tempted to try to "shake hands."
This little boy may be young, but he's an expert elephant driver!
Here comes my ride, ready for a spin.
I joined a mother-daughter pair on our elephant.
We were so high up I got a close look at these butterflies!
They've got this crazy coarse skin that feels really cool. Also note how their ears are used as racks for the hook used to cut up wood.
Check out how cool it is. 🙂
Oh dear, he just decided it was time and went for it.
Those hooks were used to get pieces of these trees for the elephants to eat. Apparently they find it very tasty.
We had a nice field to roam around and at one point, it looked like the people were floating in the trees.
And after our little spin around, it was time to return to the loading dock and head off to the next adventure.
Technomary
laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: advice, blogging, experiences, interesting, opinion, opportunity green, technology, work
18
March
2010
When I was up in Ojai for a lovely weekend away, my boss from the internship with Opportunity Green called me “Technolo-Mary” during dinner, which struck something in me. He had been referring to how I seem to know all the newest gadgets and services out there. It made me realize that I really am a great resource for many new technologies that have come about in the past couple of years. I liked that someone as techy as he (he got a degree in engineering and is awesome at all things related to building and maintaining websites) found my knowledge useful enough to consider me a valuable go-to person.
I do like to stay on top of things, whether it’s things like Google Voice, Dropbox, and reQall or more of things like new social media forums, mobile technologies, and many more. I’ve always loved to learn more about technology, so anything new captures my attention and I like to spend time learning more about it. If I like what I see, I’ll usually go on to become an adopter and even spread the word. That’s what I’ve been doing with CauseWorld, which is a great app for your smartphone that allows you to choose where sponsors’ money is donated.
I really enjoy troubleshooting (for the most part) and solving problems through logic and trial and error. Also, it’s rewarding to discover the best technical solutions for everyday issues, like streamlining processes. Whether it’s organization, documentation, or retrieval, there’s probably a better way to do it than the one you’re doing now. I’m all about efficiency and effectiveness, which is probably also why technology fascinates me so much – it solves a lot of our problems and saves us a lot of time and effort!
Perhaps I should start a help line called “Technomary” – not “techno Mary,” but “tech-nom-ary.” A play on technology and Mary AND -ary as a suffix that means “having to do with.” It’d be a fun name for a tech blog, if I were to ever write one. It could be a cool place to get answers for your “Dear Abby” type tech questions like how to convert a scanned JPEG into a PDF or what type of free phone services there are. Hmm, now there’s a thought…
Finals tradition
laelene Posted in video blog，Tags: experiences, friends, fun, interesting, los angeles, memories, ucla, undie run, videos
17
March
2010
At UCLA, students like to de-stress during finals by doing some silly things, like Midnight Yell and Undie Run. In case you feel like you’re missing out on the fun, here is a look at what it’s like to be a part of the Wednesday night tradition that grew so big it was banned. It would have been tonight (and I know a small group still showed up to do it – we’ll see how that went down when the Daily Bruin comes out tomorrow).
To start, there is a lot of cheering, singing, screaming, and all-around joy.
At the stroke of midnight, the crowd begins to move, hollering at the top of their lungs. Note the traffic lights that have been disabled – police took measures to ensure motor vehicles stay away from pedestrians overtaking the roads.
undie run begins from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
In the recent year or so, the route of Undie Run was changed to go through this tunnel, which actually makes it quite fun since it’s so thunderous in there.
through the tunnel from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
Bruins enjoying themselves always shout “UC! LA!” and do multiple 8-claps (not captured).
spirited undie run from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
The last “legal” Undie Run was re-routed once again so that it ended not by Powell Library and Shapiro Fountain, but on the IM field, where there were plenty of lighting and spectators, including this helo!
helo checks out undie run from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
All in all, a great celebration that gives students a relatively innocent outlet for the intense studying that had taken over their lives for the past week or two. It’s a pity the university wasn’t willing to work out another revision to allow it to continue. I’m sure the students will continue to fight for it, until they either get it back or find a new way of letting out their tension.
Motorbiking in Phuket
laelene Posted in video blog，Tags: experiences, nature, thailand, travel, travel tales, videos
07
March
2010
A beautiful sunset along the Thai coast as I hitched a ride from Patong Beach back to Phuket Town. You can read about that story here.
Zebra days
laelene Posted in photo blog，Tags: experiences, los angeles, pictures, weather
05
March
2010
When I was a kid, I used to call the days when rain would come and go very quickly “zebra days.” Much like the stripes of a zebra, the dark would quickly be followed by light and then dark again. This spotty weather fascinated me, so I just had to take some pictures when it happened again. We’ve been getting a lot of little storms coming through, apparently due to El Nino, as I’ve been told.
Dark trimmed with glaring light.
Got some precipitation even in seemingly clear patches.
The view through my moonroof.
Quite ominous, isn't it?
Some poufy cotton ball-looking clouds in the "white stripe" zones.
Where are the good Samaritans?
laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: experiences, ipod touch, observation, technology
03
March
2010
I’m feeling really disheartened right now. My iPod Touch was taken yesterday. Though I’m bummed that it’s gone and this coming within 5 weeks of losing my first one, I’m more disappointed that it was not returned, even though it has my name and this website engraved on the back. It should be easy enough to find me, what with a name and website to go by, but I guess whoever took it never intended on returning it. After all, I’d say it’s pretty easy to find me, if you were trying. Whatever happened to nice people who return things to their owners?
I can’t help but hold out hope, but I have received no e-mails, no Facebook messages, no nothing. It’s sad to think the world isn’t as full of good people as I always expected. I’ve grown up sheltered from a lot of the worse side of life and this is a bit of a blow in the face towards my rose-colored glasses view of the world. I guess I will have to dim it a bit now and recognize the reality that there are people in the world who steal and blatantly lie and hurt others.
Thankfully, the information on there isn’t lost since I have a backup on my laptop – I just hope they don’t hack in and get any sensitive information.
Kollaboration 9 winner
laelene Posted in video blog，Tags: asian american, entertainment, experiences, los angeles, memories, performance, videos
02
March
2010
It’s almost time for Kollaboration again, so here’s a look back on the winner last year:
low battery! from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
See more performances here.
Handywoman saves the day
laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: experiences, mommy, opinion, products, storytelling, technology
28
February
2010
Sometimes the smallest things can really create extreme disturbances. My laptop charger (already the 4th one I’m on), isn’t the best of quality (that’s what you get for just a few bucks, I guess) and only works when pressed firmly into the laptop charging port, at a certain angle. When it moves just slightly, it will stop charging unexpectedly. Add on to that a battery that barely holds a charge now and this means that whenever I am using my laptop, it will shut down randomly without warning. Very inconvenient, especially considering how it’s taking much longer to boot up nowadays.
Thankfully, I have a mother who is quite the handywoman. She’s great at fixing things and given her engineering background, a small thing like charger circuitry was a small task for her. Once it was decided that I couldn’t care less what the charger actually looked like, she set to cutting the cable that hard started to sever on my original charger. She took the original head, connected it to a charger that hadn’t developed a frayed wire, and soon enough I had a brand new charger to use. The head fit perfectly into the port now because it was from the original charger and not one of the cheap ones I had gotten as replacements. No more spotty charging results! Problem solved. To think, I nearly dished out $70-80 for a new charger just to get rid of that annoyance!
