Dreams

Recently I've been having these crazy dreams that when I wake up, it's hard to figure out what's real and what's not. Sounds like Inception right? It's never happened to me before or I've just never noticed it. They're all so realistic and sometimes even feels like deja vu. I managed to skip work because I thought I called them when I haven't. I had a dream that one of my bids didn't go through, and when I woke up it really didn't go through. I miss those random, happy, unrealistic dreams where you can be who you want to be, do what you want to do, and "frolic through a meadow". Haha, maybe everything is getting to my head.

I haven't blogged in forever. Everything I've been doing daily is all blurring together. Work is going great, I love everyone I'm with, they're funny, nice, and just really chill about everything. I've been thinking about going to clinical psychology school instead of medical school just because I don't want my life to be consumed of studying and stress for the next few years. Instead, I want to enjoy my life after college, not to say that graduate school isn't stressful either, but it's a different kind of stress. The people I'm with are taking GREs in a few months, so whenever we have no studies or patients, we just get together and memorize vocab. It makes it a lot more fun :)

I finally went to a lot of restaurants I've been meaning to go to since high school. Some Monday, we went to Il Vicino, which was just okay. I think from all the hype I expected a lot better. My parent's friend invited us to eat Thai food as well just a few nights ago. Maybe I'm picky, but it was just okay as well. Nothing special. Then, there was Texas something and Cattle. Again, it was okay. I can't handle restaurant steak anymore after eating the one Mary makes for me. Her steak is amazing, the way she marinates it, the quality of meat she buys, and the grilling. I absolutely love it. I think I went to a buffet too at one point or another, but I can't remember :p There is one more place I want to go to and it is a crepe restaurant. Only problem is that it's a bit far, so I will wait until Julie and Larr comes back and force them to come with me hehe.

I might update with pictures later, but too lazy right now. I haven't been taking much pictures. It's so hard finding pretty places in Albuquerque because I really hate the architecture and the desert kind of feeling. I remember we went to the mountains one day for just a fun family with other families BBQ and I could not take a single pretty picture. It just wasn't green enough for me and I can't stand those kind of pictures. I can't wait until I go to Europe! It's gonna be picture filled every single day (hopefully).

On another note, so many movies have been coming out this summer; it's hard to keep track! I watched Karate Kid, Inception, Despicable Me, Knight and Day, and probably more. Everything was really good except for Knight and Day, it just bored me to death.

As I'm writing this, the new Chinese girl group iME is on TV. They're getting a lot of popularity these couple of weeks, I always see them on talk shows and such. I'm not sure if it's good or bad that Chinese entertainment is becoming more and more Japanese/Korean, but their song is pretty catchy and the dance is very cute :)

Firefly Come Back To Me

(Ugh so hard to take pics of fireworks with DSLR, much easier with digital, I gave up after a while lol)

I don't know what I've been doing these past couple days besides soccer/work/friends, but time is passing by too quickly. Summer's already halfway done and there's still a lot of things that I need to accomplish. This year's July 4th was probably one of the most boring ones in my whole life. This was the first year that we ended up watching fireworks instead of doing them. It's fun watching and all, but not as exciting because you don't actually set the display yourself. However, Mindy, Emma, Jane, Sining, Qiao, Jenny, Scott, etc etc, the "Chinese" group are all in China or at school that I was the only one left in ABQ, which is why we couldn't do our own fireworks this year. Que triste...

Anway, I've eaten at so many random places this month all because of Susana. Everytime we talk, we talk about food and places to eat, and then I wanna try those places like CiCi Pizza, Lotaburger, Rudy's... It all happens to be things with green chili or SW food of course. East coast only has jalapenos and they're disgusting, so I gotta get enough of green chili here while I can. For example: Green chili burrito, sushi, omelette, burger, fries...

I usually never eat out when I'm back home because everytime I'm with friends, we end up staying at their houses for home cooked meals. All the moms here are amazing cooks, I always crave their food when I'm at Rochester. But, this summer I've been eating out more, what can you do.

Food food food, what else is there food related? I made egg tarts! Haha, and probably some other random stuff that I can't remember like breakfast foods crepes stuffed with fruit since soccer is sooo early. The danta didn't turn out too bad, the first batch burned a little, the second batch was better, and the third batch was good.




(Apparently we had the little tins just for making egg tarts!)



(First batch burned :( forgot to take picture of other batch)



And now I think it's time to talk about soccer.

Nice try USA
Ronaldo you are getting annoying
Good job Villa
Poor Germany octopus
LOL at Suarez
and
HUP HOLLAND! <3>

Every artist was first an amateur.

(Aww it's Lillie!)

It's halftime of the South Korea vs. Uruguay game, so why not write a post? It's 0-1 right now, but I'm really impressed with Korea just to get into top16. Their play style is very European, whereas Japan seems more South American. I'm so glad the referee didn't see the should be penalty kick :) I remember thinking this earlier in the group plays, but Suarez reminds me of a mini C. Ronaldo with his style of play as well as how he looks haha. Forlan reminds me of this American actor, but I can't remember the name right now.

I still can't believe all 5 South American teams got in plus Mexico and USA, the rest of the world is catching up! US really got lucky with their bracket, no European nation, hardest just Uruguay. However, their defense is just amazing, Korea could barely get into the box, which is why the little passes didn't work out. However, they were so accurate and very pretty style of play.

I'm really nervous about the USA vs. Ghana game haha. Although an African country, they have really proved themselves to deserve to be in the top 16. US needs to step up the defense, stop being so sloppy and have a good mindset in the first half of the game especially. I think what USA lacks is one or two world class players, sure some of them play on European clubs, but they're not stars or anything. I mean look at Portugal, the rest of the team is just okay yet they still do well because of a famous striker and a few good defenders.

Enough with my soccer analysis. I could honestly go on and on but halftime is almost over.

I've learned a lot more about taking photographs by tweaking the white balance, aperture, shutter speed, and (somewhat) ISO. I love how if you just change one of these, it completely changes the tones of the picture. Also, I've learned how to further use curves, selective coloring, color balance, and layering styles on photoshop. I really love muted colors over high contrast/saturated pictures, because it seems a bit more realistic, more depth, and has that gentler/relaxing feeling to it. What I really want to do now is successfully do an HDR shot. The ones I've taken so far don't look that nice, perhaps because my exposure settings not at the right interval. I have no idea. As for now, I took a few pictures with Lillie, Larr, and Julie to learn portrait shots. I ended up taking about 70 good shots. So crazy! Below are a few of them, I tried compiling some of them because there were just way too many. I still got a lot to learn!


(The bottom picture with "Dream" is my favorite. I'm not sure why, maybe because of the tones and it's just so happy haha)

(Ahh it looks so weird small, click for bigger image!)

(Why is Julie centered >.<)

(Inspired from the "Bad Day" music video. I thought this was so cute, although anyone could've taken the shot.)

(Again, another cute concept shot, but badly taken.)

(Got lazy on editting so I did a simple high contrast, low saturation.)

We finally went to 5 guys. The burgers were pretty good! (But...Fudruckers is still better) The good thing was the it was really cheap, around $4-5 for a burger with all the topping you want. I think the toppings are what made it good. I was talking to Susana about going to Rudy's in Houston because they had one of the best burger/meat places around and you buy it by the pound. Then, I realized it was in ABQ as well! I'm definitely going to try that place sometime this summer.(I tried taking a picture of my massive burger, but it looked too ugly to post because the bun was squished.)

Three days ago, Leah and I decided to try to make a cover of "Yesterday" by Leona Lewis. I've never recorded anything seriously, so I think this will be a fun project. However, so far it has failed. I REALLY love this song.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ_j6YVCKYM)
Day 1: Pick a song, took hours.
Day 2: Leah sings verse 1, her voice is not the "Leona Lewis" type voice, so she tried tweaking it a bit. Nonetheless, it took a whole day only because we're perfectionists and we can always find something wrong with it x.x
Day 3: Trial and adjust! Hopefully we're gonna get something productive :D

Yesterday, we went to celebrate Julie's birthday at the bowling alley. Laryssa bought some Baileys and we attempted making Baileys brownies, but ended up wasting so much because it didn't even taste alcoholic! I guess it's the same concept as hash brownies? Haha, who knows. After that fail, we made Julie "bubble tea" since my house had the straws and plastic cups and everything. Julie thought it was good and then got confused as to what it really was lol. We just mixed milk and Baileys on ice and snuck it in. Today, for the first time in my life, I broke 100 in bowling! I got THREE strikes (although the first one was because the lane was faulty...but who cares ;)) Now, this might not sound amazing, but my average is usually a 50-60, maybe it was because of the Baileys!

(The brownie's supposed to look like this. We put too much Baileys and it ended up being very soft, forgot to take a picture.)

Finally, my big made me an awesome present for my birthday. I took a picture of it at 4am haha, it's sooo cute! I can't believe she made it from scratch!


Oh, and on a final note, I've been looking through some homemade things on Flickr and I REALLY want to make cute bento box lunches and sew stuffed animals....but I doubt that's ever gonna happen. Ah, too many things on my to-do list!

World Cup

(Inspiration picture after USA tied with England)

I took out my old cleats the other day and was surprised that I still fit into them! Ahhh start of my favorite game EVER. I still remember playing soccer in elementary-middle school and realizing that I sucked haha. This pretty much means that I'll get no sleep if the good games are at 5:30am + work, ugh, why do I have to go to work when FIFA is on...once every four year opportunity!

Other than that, I'm predicting that Brazil or Spain will make it to the finals, though I haven't seen them play for a while. Portugal is still a team to watch just because my favorite guy is on there. And US...well...it's US, I gotta root for them. But then again, usually the good teams people want never make it, so we'll see!

Other than "football", just had a yard sale and life is amazing :)

Food for Thought

Well, these couple of days have been pretty uneventful. I honestly forgot what I've been doing except going to work, working out with Julie, insanity workout, Mindy's house, etc.

Hmmm I guess it's food blog time! I've been kinda bored these days that I've made some random things haha, mostly dessert and Korean food. My mom used to have a Korean friend who taught her how to make many Korean dishes, and I was craving Korean the other day haha. But I only took pictures of the stuff I made....

(Chocolate chip walnut banana bread from a Chinese recipe)

(Rum chocolate cake/bread from a Taiwan)

(Mindy made these for my birthday haha)

(Mini oreo cheesecake from American recipe)

(Ok so this is totally not dessert, but only food pic I remembered to take. Kimchi fried rice LOL easy but yummy!)

Also, I've been trying to get more creative with pictures, not sure it's working out that nicely though. Julie gave me this "Live Love Laugh" hanger thing so I thought about taking pictures around that theme :) It was fun, but I'd like to get a lot more creative than that.








I'm not sure I really like how they came out, maybe I have to be more creative with the lighting or post-processing, or maybe I should just stick with taking non-worded pics haha.

Make a Wish!

Ok so that birthday cake wasn't actually made for me (though it could be...), but I thought it was really pretty. Props to Mindy for making it! It was 李奶奶's birthday today, so we went to Mindy's house to celebrate it. Apparently, she thought it was Lillie's birthday, which is actually in March, so we celebrated for Lillie too haha.

On another note, I can't believe I'm 20 already! It feels like just yesterday that I was at Eisenhower and enjoying life without thinking much about the future. I went to Macaroni Grill on my birthday, it was delicious, like always. But ugh, I'm getting old...

I finally got word on Sussex! The school starts September 3rd. I'm sooo excited to study abroad, finally! I'm considering going to China right afterwards because 1) family 2) never been there during the winter. The only problem is that one way tickets are almost as expensive as round trip, so the whole trip ends up costing way too much. Ah, there's so many places I want to visit in Europe, especially Delft. I've been keeping in touch with my childhood friends (well, just two of them) and it would be amazing to visit them after 13 years :) Yay!

哪里有彩虹告诉我

I started my first day of work today! And then the patient didn't show up...and I was really sad...
LOL I guess at pubic neuropsychology clinics it's expected because the patients have problems already and don't realize it so they do things perhaps because of lesions somewhere in the brain, maybe frontal lobe? Jk but, lalala oh well I got off work early.




Mindy and Emma graduated from Albuquerque Academy a couple of days ago on Saturday. All grown up and ready for those amazing colleges they got into! So proud of them! I'm actually really surprised that their class is smaller than my middle school class, private schools...

(Fried ice cream for Aimie's birthday)

Later, we ate at a New Mexican restaurant called Sadie's that Emma/Aimie's "grandparents" suggested. I've never been to it, but it was amazing. Yes, I realize every time I eat out it's NM/Mexican food, but gotta love it. At first, I thought the price was the usual, but then the food came. Holy crap, the portion is enough for 2-3 people. It was HUGE. No one at our table finished the food, not even the parents. And I was so full that I didn't get to eat a sopaipilla. Until next time...

(Drove 3 1/2 hours for this boat!)



(Chilling)



(Comfy couch in the shade, 'cause she doesn't wanna get skin cancer.)


(Driving the boat, and failed)

For Memorial Day, Julie, Laryssa, Adrianne, and I went to Navajo Lake. We rented a boat for $200 for 4 hours. The lake stretched from Farmington, NM to the Southern border of Colorado. Needless to say, it was really pretty. The boat we rented has a roof, the wheel and a couch under it, then two seats in front and two in the back. Julie and Larr mostly drove the boat because Add and I were too lazy, or we sucked at driving it. I've never been much of a water person, but just sitting there under the sun and enjoying the cool breeze, made me change my mind. We visited one of Larr's friends during the trip, they had a boat home, and the thing was really big. It was two stories, the top had a slide that went into the lake, a barbeque area, and a big roof with seats and tables to sit under. When I get rich, I'm so getting one of those. They also had a wakeboard. It made me really jealous, because I've ALWAYS wanted to go wakeboarding, always always always, it beats surfing anyday.