Yuna’s Village - A Slice Of The Daily life

Usually I have no patience to sit through the Oscar show listening to 10,000 “thank you”s. Since I feel a bit of “anti-social” tonight, I decided to be a couch potato and eat a bag of potato chips.

I noticed that there were lots of black dresses on the red carpet this year. Check out my personal collections:

Queen Latifah in Carmen Marc Valvo and Hilary Swank in Versace.

Felicity Huffman in Zac Posen and Zhangziyi by Giorgio Armani.

Rachael Weisz by Narciso Rodriguez and Jennifer Aniston in Rochas and Bulgari.

And Yuna’s Best Black Dress Award goes to…
Charlize Theron in Christian Dior .

After boarding at Keystone, Breckenridge, Loveland, Copper, Vail, Wolf Creek and Telluride, I must say that Breckenridge is still my favorite spot.

I went there again last weekend trying to work on my turns. The place has some widest runs I have ever seen. If you ever come to Colorado to ski or board, go to Peak 9 for the blue runs and Peak 8 for the greens.

My next destination is Beaver Creek in about 2 weeks. I visited that spot about 6 years ago and got knocked down by a snowmobile driver and twisted my neck for about 2 months. So that wasn’t much fun. I don’t remember the place anymore, but according to Mike from Heavywinter, it’s the white trash capital of the mountains. Can’t wait!

Other posts of the day:
Dating Dames: Cat and Mouse Chase
Is it true that girls have to play “hard to get” game to get the guy?

Blog Fabulous: Sun’s iWork Program
Telecommunication works

Reposting “Goal Free Living”
I wonder why I was so stressed out on my last project. It was that damn promotion’s fault! ‘Cause I went from “no career goal” to an “important senior consultant” who must have a goal.

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I headed to central Colorado with a few friends for a ski/snowboard trip this past weekend. This was my second serious snowboarding trip after I broke my butt a few months ago. Last time I was at Wolf Creek with a few fun friends and we had a blast playing with the fresh powder. Although I took quite a lot of hard falls, falling into a few foot deep snow pow was like falling onto a feather bed. It was GREAT! I even learned how to link my turns… But Telluride snow is just like everywhere else. It was packed down, icy and hard… I had a rough time on the slope. Every time I fell, my entire body hurt like hell and I felt that I broke something again… I was completely taken over by the psychological fear and ended up with a limp leg after taking a few hard falls on my left knee.

It was frustrating, disappointing and I probably exhausted everybody’s patience that day…I can’t believe learning snowboarding has been that hard for me… Well.. I am going to try again soon enough after getting some heavy duty knee padding, thanks to our pro skate boarder Matt’s help.

We hit Silverton for a night and then stayed at Ouray, both are small mountain towns that have kept the 19th century Wild Wild West type of atmosphere. I wonder if any Western movies were filmed here. Very charming places!

While the guys were sliding down the extreme Silverton slopes with a guide, the girls took an easy stroll in Telluride. I was a little disappointed that unlike Silverton or Ouray, Telluride is very much expanded into a resort town in the past a few years. I may not go there in the winter again since other closer resorts such as Copper and Breck are as nice if not better.

Check out the Telluride/Ouray and Central Colorado photo album here. Some views are phenomenal.

I haven’t done a photo blog for the longest time.. Here comes 2006’s first photo blog - LA 2006 Auto Show!

I was fortunate enough to catch the show while I was visiting the city in January. I am not very auto-savvy so I can’t really remember what these funky cars are.

When I was visiting a high end show room, a few Mafia looking guys were checking out those ultra expensive cars with wings. I thought that was quite amusing.

The lady and the car

They only let the potential buyers check out the cars. These guys sure look like mafia to me…

Anyway, check out the LA Auto Show album. If you know what those cars are, leave a comment and enlighten me.

Seeing shows is my top reason to come to Vegas. I love Cirque Du Soleil, Celin Dion (although I am not a big fan of her songs, the show’s product is simply phenomenon) and the Las Vegas showgirls shows. However, Blue Man Group is something I have been speculating for a while and couldn’t make up my mind to see it until tonight.

Before seeing the show, I couldn’t really grasp the concept of what type of show it was. Nobody seemed to be able to describe it in plain English either. Spending 100+ dollars on a show that doesn’t belong to any category isn’t exactly my style. I bought the tickets only because Mystere was sold out tonight.

WOW!! WHAT AN AWESOME SHOW! I still can’t describe what kind of show it is. Ok, here is my best shot in plain English - I’d say it is a form of creative arts blended with a mixture of beats, visually stunning colors and shapes and the humorous performance pulled by 3 blue guys with no hair. If you are type of person like myself who loves to be stimulated by creative visuals, sounds and physical interaction with the performers, you are going to love this show. I know… I know… It’s still no plain English… I guess you will just have to see it for yourself. Here is my piece of advice: bring some toilet paper to tie a nice and big head piece…hehehe… I am serious!!

One Blue Man is nice enough to let me take a picture with him.

Da Vinci helped revolutionize science. And sometimes he just dreamed up fanciful concepts. Always, he thought in ways no one else had.

#10 Mirror Writing

Was it a ploy to thwart Renaissance copycats peeking at his notes, or just a way to avoid the inky mess of writing left-handed? Whatever his motives, Da Vinci sure liked mirror writing: most of his journals are scrawled in reverse.

#9 Scuba Gear

Da Vinci’s fascination with the sea spurred many designs for aquatic exploration. His diving suit was made of leather, connected to a snorkel made of cane and a bell that floated at the surface. Proving the artist was also practical, the suit included a pouch the diver could urinate in.

#8 The Revolving Bridge

Always a fan of the quick getaway, Da Vinci thought his revolving bridge would be best used in warfare. The light yet sturdy materials, affixed to a rolling rope-and-pulley system, allowed an army to pick up and go at a moment’s notice

#7 The Winged Gilder

Da Vinci’s imagination was filled to capacity with ideas for flying machines, including several gliders equipped with flappable wings. This open-shelled model, fitted with seats and gears for the pilot, did not include a design for a crash helmet.

#6 The Triple-Barreled Cannon

More thinker than fighter, Da Vinci’s distaste for conflict didn’t stop him from dreaming up designs for more efficient cannons like this one. His jacked-up triple-barrel would have been a deadly weapon on the battlefield, fast and light with lots of extra fire power

#5 The Aerial Screw

Modern scientists agree it may never have lifted off the ground, but Da Vinci’s “helicopter” design is still one of his most famous. The curious contraption was meant to be operated by a four-man team and could have been inspired by a windmill toy popular in Leonardo’s time

#4 The Ideal City

Living in a Milan wrought with plague, Da Vinci envisioned a more efficient city he’d be proud to call home. His architectural draughts are highly detailed and even include horse stables with fresh air vents. To the bewilderment of modern Milanese, he did not make room for a soccer stadium.

#3 The Self-Propelled Car

It’s no Ferrari, but Da Vinci’s designs for a self-propelled vehicle were revolutionary for his day. His wooden “car” moved by the interaction of springs with geared wheels. Scientists at one museum in Florence built a replica in 2004 and found it worked as Da Vinci intended.

#2 Geologic Time

Plate tectonics? No sweat. While most of his contemporaries explained inland, mountain-top mollusk fossils as leftovers from the Great Flood, Da Vinci thought otherwise. He supposed (right) that the mountains must once have been coastline before many years of gradually shifting upwards.

#1 The vitruvian Man

Da Vinci modeled his perfect human form after the proportions laid out by Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect. The angry-looking man drawn by Da Vinci has reason to smile – he’s now considered one of the most recognizable figures on earth

IMAGE CREDIT: By Permission of the British Library Arundel 263, f.4v,11
IMAGE CREDIT: Courtesy of Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia
By Heather Whipps

On this very special day, I have the worst job on the planet!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Have you seen a golden retriever giving birth to a green puppy whose name is Wasabi? Well..now you have..:-)

A dog gave birth to a green puppy. The little pup has been named Wasabi, the spicy green mustard put on sushi.

The green Golden Retriever was one of four puppies born to a dog in California last week.

His color definitely sets him apart. Veterinarians said that it is possible for a newborn pup’s fur to be green because the placenta, which is green, sometimes rubs off at birth.

See original story on Milwaukee channel.

As stated in a recent study conducted by a British geneticist,

… an unusually high prevalence of a particular set of genes in China has suggested that 1.5 million Chinese men are direct descendants of Giocangga, the grandfather of the founder of the Qing dynasty.

I am well aware of that part of the history so I wasn’t really shocked when I saw that number. Based on my knowledge acquired by watching TV shows with my parents in the earlier years, I know each emperor in the Qing dynasty was entitled to 72 official wives classified by different titles. You’d think.. “Gee, weren’t they gonna kill each other? How was the King ever going to remember every wife’s name?”

Well, he couldn’t. Again, based on my TV knowledge and a couple of trips to the Forbidden City in BeiJing, China, the Emperor never knew all of his wives. Some wives never even met their husband until the day they die. Except a handful of Queens, these wives were restricted in a section of the Palace. The higher the wife’s title was, the larger the living quarter she got. Every night, the Emperor was presented with a book of the drawings of all the wives (photos hadn’t been invented yet) so the Emperor could pick one or more wives for the bedroom fun. Every day, these wives would wait for their names to be called. The lucky ones would take bath. The servants then wrapped the naked wives in the blankets and carried them to the Emperor’s bedroom. Of course, if the Emperor was craving for some women outside of the Palace, there was never any problem to make that happen. Being said, with all of these women bearing his children, having 1.5 million descendants after hundreds of years is quite possible.

In today’s society, a guy probably gets headache when dealing with just one woman, let along trying to have 72 wives. So, if any guy wants to spread the seeds and have more than 50 people carrying his Y chromosome in 500 years, dream on!

Here is the full text of the study.

The best part of Halloween is to dress up in anything you want. The even better part is to watch other people dressing up like freaks.

Picking out a costume could be pain in the ass sometimes. Last year, I was quite into the Geisha idea so I worn a Yukata (a Japanese bathrobe I bought from Japan), tied a Chinese red pillow case on my back, and I did my own makeup with a $1.00 paint. Well, it turned out to be quite a disaster. This year, I spent about 15 mins picking out a wizard lady dress in the store and headed over to a private Halloween costume party a few hours later.

Very interestingly, I only saw 2 people out of 1000 wearing scary masks to cover their faces. There were quite a lot nurses, French maids, police officers in mini shorts and butterflies with their G strings exposed. A few guys even made their own “one night stand” costumes with paper made boxes wrapped around them and lamps on their heads. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw one guy carrying a backpack with a battery in it to supply the watts for his lamp hat. If I were not running around so much, I could have taken a few more photos. But hey!! With all the free beer, free wine, great music and an interesting crowd to amuse my eyes, trying to concentrate on snapping photos was a real challenge.

Check out the Halloween party photo album.

I know ins and outs about the computing industry, and I can tell you exactly how much you need for retirement down to the penny. But when it comes to poems or any forms of structured expressions, I can be as dumb as a sheep with a pea sized brain.

I go to Liz’s site to read her beautiful writings that sound like flowing water. I envy my old neighbor’s daughter who can perform Shakespeare plays. I learned my A,B,C and that was all the literature education I had.

The first poem I wrote was to answer Mike’s question when I was ready to be his June author, “In Haiku form, ” he asked, “Please tell us your impression of Denver…”

“Haiku? What the heck are you talking about?!!” I had to google the word, read Haiku 101 and put down these 3 lines:

Snow falls in May
Beggars from 16th St Mall don’t want my apples
Mike runs HeavyWinter

Ok, that doesn’t exactly qualify as haiku, but 3-sentences-with-different-lengths-on-3-lines is as good as it gets.

Now, the haiku lover Mike put out a haiku contest. The best snowboarding related haiku writer wins a ticket to see Warren Miller’s film. There are a few entries submitted already, including mine. Check it out. If you have a few ideas, help me out here and put yours in. I can have a use of your ticket if you win the contest.

It’s Friday! So… no serious talking…
I have loaded a couple of albums in Photoblog :

Once in a life time pictures of the lovely animals that live on the same planet with us
How many dogs does it take to change a light bulb?

Ya’ll have a great weekend and thanks to Kimmi for the photos.