Posts Tagged ‘interesting’

Turtle power

laelene Posted in video blog,Tags: , , ,
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Check out how he just attacks his food! Must’ve been ravenous. Such a funny and awkward creature. 😛

turtle shredding leaf from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Head-turners

laelene Posted in photo blog,Tags: , , ,
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Sometimes you notice things on the street that are different enough to catch your eye, or even downright peculiar.

a Toyota Prius converted into a taxi cab

Now that's a first! A hybrid taxi, yay. 🙂

two lanes that both allow left and right turns

Now that's just a disaster waiting to happen.

sign advising caution on turns

Yeah, seriously, thanks for the tip. Why would they allow this?!

bus on corner letting people off in middle of street

Apparently this bus decided that it was going to turn the middle of the street into its stop.

crowded crosswalk

I've never seen so many people cross the street at once in LA.

Zen descent

laelene Posted in video blog,Tags: , , , , ,
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It was a very zen moment, going down the escalator to the MTR and having this music and commercial playing all around me.

zen mont blanc commercial from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Haha, check out the couple kissing. So random.

Elephant ride

laelene Posted in photo blog, video blog,Tags: , , , , , , ,
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A short clip of an elephant ride I took and some pictures to go with!

elephant-riding from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

elephants approach mounting area

The elephants coming in so we can hop on for a ride!

elephant reaching out trunk

Aww, I was tempted to try to "shake hands."

the youngest elephant driver was only a boy

This little boy may be young, but he's an expert elephant driver!

the elephant I rode arrives

Here comes my ride, ready for a spin.

sitting atop the elephant

I joined a mother-daughter pair on our elephant.

butterflies mating high up in a tree

We were so high up I got a close look at these butterflies!

view of the skin around the ear of the elephant

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.

happily enjoying the elephant ride

Check out how cool it is. 🙂

elephant standing peeing, with riders

Oh dear, he just decided it was time and went for it.

hacking off wood from tree trunk

Those hooks were used to get pieces of these trees for the elephants to eat. Apparently they find it very tasty.

field where elephants walked around

We had a nice field to roam around and at one point, it looked like the people were floating in the trees.

heading back to the loading dock

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: , , , , , , ,
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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: , , , , , , , ,
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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.

undie run from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

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.

Humorous drives

laelene Posted in photo blog,Tags: , , , ,
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There are just so many entertaining spottings!  I can never get enough…

"move over" printed in mirror image on windshield of car

Imagine driving along, then seeing this guy pulling up behind you. I don't know if I'd just laugh or actually move.

hiring class a drivers, with "cl" fallen off

What they mean is they are hiring Class A licensed drivers...

lime green car with rear nearly on the ground

Now that is some major low ridin'. Plus, what's up with the lime green?

ernie tied to the front of a big rig

I'm not sure if it's meant to be cute, funny, or morbid. To me, it's a little bit of each.

More to come, for sure.  I’m running out of post titles, I’ve had so many noteworthy encounters on the road.

How long can you hold on?

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , , ,
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It’s been awhile since I’ve read some of the blogs I used to follow loosely, so today I took a look at my Google Reader.  One of the ones I’d stumbled upon had written its last and final post at 999 or 1000, over the course of five years.  So often, people start a blog fresh and excited, then it wanes into a duty before it fizzles out after a few weeks, months, or years.  Blogging hasn’t really been around for people to do it for decades, but I doubt many would ever make it that far anyway.  What is it about maintaining writing that is so difficult?  Many a time I’ve been told by people that they once kept a journal or diary, only to have it fade away after awhile.  (This is after I told them I had been keeping a daily journal since 4th grade.)

Even I haven’t lasted forever and 13 years into writing those journal entries, I have stopped to take a breather (nearly 50 volumes in!).  It is always in my heart to go back and fill in those missing days, but as the days go on, the feasibility goes down.  Nevertheless, I still faithfully document my life in one way or another – via photos, blog posts, e-mails, tweets, and random memos to myself.  It’s a habit I don’t intend to kick, this need to have a record of my life, my past.  I guess it’s easier for me because I took it when I was young and made it a habit, a need.  Even now, not having a written journal keeping track of my life doesn’t sit well with me.

People go through a lot of changes in their lives and it only makes sense that this is one of those fluid things that comes and goes.  For me, the need to remember details of my life remain, but the medium through which I do that depends on how I develop as a person.  Makes me wonder how long this will last…

Jager bomb line

laelene Posted in video blog,Tags: , ,
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Well, that’s the first time I’ve seen them done like that!

jagerbomb line from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

On the road

laelene Posted in photo blog,Tags: , ,
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An endless source of interesting sightings.

fire truck and police car

Two of the three main types of emergency responders.

US license plate laid over a European one

Well, this was obviously an import! It's still got its European license plate!

protesters march across the intersection

We got stuck in traffic when the protesters decided to march across the intersection during the green light.

fire truck parked in the middle of the street, blocking off a lane

This fire truck apparently couldn't just park behind the cars lined up by the curb and had to take up its own lane.

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