Your help to the drought stricken provinces in China is NEEDED!

So sad to see the upsetting pictures from the drought stricken provinces - Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Guangxi.  Some of these places have had no rain at all for 250 days!!!

This is the bottom of a reservoir in Yunan Province. 

These two are Huangguoshu Waterfall in Guizhou Province now and one year ago.

 This is Wujiang River - one of the largest branches of Yangtze River in Sichuan province now.

This is Grandfather and his granddaughter travelling 10 miles on the mountain road to get water in Guangxi Province.

This is students drinking muddy water to quench their thirst in Sichuan Province. 

What can we do?

First and foremost, DO NOT waste any water any more. Water resource is limited and precious. It's Southwest China that's suffering from the drought now, but it could be any place in the world tomorrow. We can only save our world by cherishing our resources.

Second, offer your help to the drought-stricken areas. Simply clicking on the link below, and filling in the information as shown on the picture below, you will be helping thousands of people to fight against the drought. 

The world is a much better place when people are willing to help each other! 

http://gongyi.sina.com.cn/z/siyuan/index.shtml

Vintage Seattle - 1914

I found a really cool and old article about Seattle with a picture of the city back in 1914. That's almost 100 years ago. Check it out.

So next time, when we talk about Seattle, we don't just say "It doesn't rain every day". We can tell people
- Seattle has the finest climate and best scenery in the world, and its death rate is the lowest of any city of the nation.
- Seattle has the most equitable climate
- Seattle has the lowest rate of illiteracy of any city of the Union
...

A MUST have i-phone application for businessmen

like my husbie, who often finds himself being called by his office to sign and then fax back an urgent 50 page long document when he is hiking in the mountains or relaxing on the beach, with no access to printer or fax machine. What a hastle! But thanks to an innovative new app - Zosh, problems are solved. 


Zosh allows you to fill in and sign your office documents in forms of PDF, Word, Excel, PPT, JPG, GIF, PNG & BMP on your i-Phone. Afterwards, you can just simply email it back in PDF format.

No more rushing back to the hotel room or the office for signature, do it on the go! Check out Zosh for how to use it. It's $3 now. A great application I want to introduce to my darling man, and other business friends.

Loveliest of trees - the cherry

Every year, around the end of March and the beginning of April, cherry trees burst in blossom. In the oriental culture, cherry blossom resembles fragile feminine beauty, and there are many poems appraising the gentleness of the beautiful flowers and also many lamenting on their short life-span (around one week).

Here are some of my favorites:
***
The cherry blossom tree
sneezed on the wooden bench below,
covering it in pink pedals,
accenting the snow.
***
They blossom, and then we gaze,
and then the blossoms scatter, and then ...
***

My fondness for cherry blossom comes from my memory of the two cherry trees outside of my mom's office. They swayed and swang, just like two pink clouds floating over the window.

I read from a Chinese blog yesterday that 100,000 people swarming to the campus of Wuhan Univeristy in Wuhan, China to admire cherry blossom there. Oh, man, 100,000 people. Not sure they could see more flowers or people.

I'm excited to have found that the campus of the University of Washington is a cherry blossom hotplace in Seattle. Carrying my Nikon super camera on my back, I headed to the UW campus this morning. So glad it's another gorgeous sunny day here in Seattle. Since it's winter break for the school students, I didn't see many people there. Here are some pictures to share.

Cherry blossom in the Quad

More cherry trees

Old couple sitting down the trees

Up-close shot of pink cherry blossom

Up-close shot of white cherry blossom

Pedal the ground

Squirrels peeking at me. Sorry buddy, I didn't bring food for you today.

Lovely kid running under the cherry trees

Enjoy spring!

Weekend Trip to the Islands

To celebrate me becoming a Lawful Permenant Resident of the US, Robert surprised me with a weekend trip to some of the islands around Seattle. How sweet and thoughtful! We took a ferry to Bainbridge Island, and then traveled to Langley to stay there overnight. We got back around 7:00pm on Sunday, tanned, tired but contented.

There are too many wonderful things about the weekend trip. We found us happy and smiling for the entire weekend. Here are a few highlights:
1. 15 mins - a ferry ride away from the city Seattle are a bunch of peaceful little islands. They are neat, quiet and a bit rustic. We felt our minds being peaced and souls being rinsed, the moment we got off the ferry at the Baybridge side. Every island has its own town center, which is composed of many individual and creative art shops and food stores. Every island is surrounded with beautiful beaches, which I find are especially exotic with all the drift wood sitting elegantly there.

2. Visiting the spendid Bloedel Reserve. Located on the north tip of Bainbridge Island, Bloedel Reserve is a garden house of 700+ acres, composed of a beautiful French style house, a Japanese garden, a gorgeous and well-remained french garden, hundreds kinds of trees, flowers and birds. We had a pleasant stroll around the reserve, and was totally impressed with how much effort Mr. & Mrs. Bloedel put in this beautiful residence.

What surprised us the most was a pair of bald eagles that are nesting on the top branch of one of the big trees facing the resident house. The housekeeper told us that eagles usually have a nesting tree and a viewing tree. When they come back home, they usually perch on the viewing tree to observe the surroundings and then fly back home. Here is a picture of the eagle sitting on its viewing tree.

Bald eagles are the elblem of the United States. They went nearly extinct in the 80s, because people were hunting them for their beautiful white tipped feathers. The number of bald eagles seems to have come back quite a bit. We even saw them twice on the Seattle highway. I really like to watch this giant bird, gliding across the sky, displaying a gesture of freedom up there.

3. Whale watching from BED! Yes, from the bed of the hotel room in Langley. Neither Robert nor I knew that gray whales sometimes show up in the Sound water right in front of our hotel room. When Robert looked out of the window from our hotel bed on Sunday morning at 8:00am, I heard a shout "Jesus, what is it? Look. I think that's a whale." Following his finger, I looked out and saw a big triangled fin only 20-30 feet away. We could hardly believe in our eyes. That was a playful gray whale, digging in the sand along the beach and tipping one of the fins out of the water. We saved $75 dollar/person on getting on a whale watching boat and watching whales from far far away. How cool is that! Here are some pictures of the big fish.

4. Natalie driving 30 miles on the island. Wahoo! My spanking new intruction permit came right in time. I enjoyed sitting behind the wheel, driving at 60 miles an hour for 2 hours and a half. My darling husband, however, had a nerve-racking time. He was so responsible, didn't take his eyes away from the road for a second and kept on instructing me
- "Staying on your side of the road",
- "use some brake", "use more brake", "more!!"
...
Apparently, it's more tiring watching me driving than Robert driving himself :)


BTW, the spring came on Mar. 20th. So happy spring, everyone!

Watched Alice in Wonderland - 3D

I would recommend everyone to watch it, but only on 3D or 3D I-Max if you are able to get a ticket. My buddies in China, no cheapo dvd for this movie, because it's a movie of 3D effects not story lines.


The original Alice story is really simple, so is the movie. But Tim Burton did expanded his imagination and turned Alice into a 19-year-old, who is enlightened by her experience in the Wonderland and is heading to a journey to China. Yep, China! Shall we expect a sequel coming out soon, Alice in Orientalland :)

The things I like about this movie are:
1. The performance of Alice, the Red queen, and the Mad Hatter. Mia Wasikowska is such a talented young actress. she brought us a lively, brave and confident Alice. Helena Bonham Carter made Red Queen such a funny, odd and pitiful character. Johnny Depp as Mad Hatter didn't let me down, but also didn't excel his performance in Edward the Scissorhands either. 
2. The portrayal of the Chesire Cat. I just love the way he appears in the middle of the air and then disappears in the same way. He talks slowly and smiles so broadly. He is the most fun and lovable character in the movie.
3. The graphic details of the movie. The red castle and white castle are so intricately designed. The poker army of Red Queen and the chess army of White Queen are really vivid. The grass, mushrooms, flowers in the wonderland look totally real. This is also why you should watch it on 3D.


A few disappointments are:
1. The performance of White Queen. Ann Hathaway is too cute for the character of a kind, beautiful and well-loved and respected queen. It's just odd to see her carry her two arms way up close to her face when she moves. Liv Tyler to me should be a better choice for this role.
2. Alice apparently is influenced by his late father a lot in the movie, but Tim Burton only showed her Dad at the beginning of the movie. It would be nice to echo the beginning with how proud the father is of Alice at the end of the movie.  


Overall, it's a fun movie to watch. Go for it.

Instructions for Life

Dalai Lama has lived 14 lives. Let's listen to what he thinks of life. I found his Instructions for Life truly inspiring. What do you think? It's never too late to ponder on your life and then follow a few of these instructions. Robert and I have decided to start from Instruction #19. You? 

钥  INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIFE

ByDalai Lama

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2.  When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three res. Respect for self, Respect for others, and Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

“Your Visa is approved! Congratulations and good luck in the US.”

My heart almost melted and tears almost came out when I heard the words from the US visa officer at my visa interview in Guangzhou. 5 months of preperation, and 5 months of waiting and praying just came to an end like that.

That is my wife Natalie's strongest memory from the US immigration process.  My strongest memories, however, were the US consulate in Guangzhou, China, losing our application and Air Canada telling her she absoutely could not board our flight from Hong Kong to the US after her visa had finally been approved.


By way of background, applying for a US visa as a spouse of a US citizen is supposed to take somewhere between 3 and 6 months to do, assuming you can follow mind-numbingly tedious and inconsistent directions and instructions.  We were fortunate enough to be able to do that as we submitted our application in October 2009, the week prior to getting married.  After the initial excitement of hearing that everything we initially submitted was approved by the US embassy in Beijing, China, we waited for months while the application was "transferred" by diplomatic pouch to the US embassy in Guangzhou, China, where all Chinese spouse applications are processed.  Little did we realize "transferred" actually meant it was sent to a pig farm in Inner Mongolia or else transferred to the circular file in the Guangzhou embassy basement.


After hearing for weeks and weeks, "we will probably find it at some point, so sit tight and do nothing and put your life on hold while someone takes 20 minutes out of their weekly schedule to check a few places it could be," the Guangzhou consulate finally (three months later) told us our application had magically appeared on someone's desk and it could continue being processed.


Then $900 and a battery of medical tests later, Natalie finally got a letter saying that the magical day for her interview was March 8 in Guangzhou.  Seeing how prepared Natalie is for everything, the interviewing officer at the US consulate took one look at the suitcase full of materials, photographs, tax returns, affidavits, etc., and uttered the magic words Natalie heard in the title of this post.


Little did we realize that as we were celebrating her final acceptance by the US to be a lawful permanent resident by flying directly from Guangzhou to Hong Kong and then through Vancouver to the US, the Canadian embassy would tell their Hong Kong Air Canada agents that under no circumstances could a new US green card holder transit the Vancouver airport on his or her trip to Seattle.  But all was not lost.  United Airlines magically happened to have a flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco and on to Seattle at exactly the same time, and the stars were aligned when we were able to get two seats together on both legs to enjoy the rest of our journey to Seattle.


One very convoluted trip and process later, we were warmly welcomed to the USA.


- Courtesy blogging from my darling hubby


With the blessings from our families, our friends and even the US visa officer :), we finally landed safely in Seattle and settled down well in our apartment here. Thank you all for being so supportive for the last seveal months. Welcome to Seattle to visit us! It doesn't even rain that much :)