Artwork growing around Mac and iPhone

I don't have a Mac, or an iPhone, and probably won't get one in the near future. Partially because so far I'm still craving for an Android phone, and PC still works great for me. However, I love the art and artists that grow around the Apple products. I want to make that Apple Pie so bad! And wish I could make those iPhone and Mac cakes, and own a set of iPhone app coasters! They are just way too cute!

Life sharing and Thanks giving

I think I just stumbled upon "Jon & Kate Plus 8" early this year and got absolutely obsessed with it. On and off, I watched how the parents handled a crowded, chaotic and yet exhilarating house. Then, sometime in this summer I came across a piece of Yahoo news about the danger of their marriage, and quickly enough, the event unfolded with Paparazzi being involved, the Mom and Dad being apart, and the castle of joy and blessing being stormed. I felt shocked about all these, and would read their stories next to a stand for a long time. Although this might be the longest reality show that I've followed in the States (my other favorite is "The Biggest loser"), it didn't keep my interest for that long. Or, maybe because I thought a nice family episode now turned into yet another tabloid story, what a shame.

Tonight, I stumbled upon the show again. Ironically, it's the Series Finale. Most of the time was Kate's talking. She kept saying "It ended too soon", and she "never had a clear picture about its ending". And I got emotional at some point by watching scenes when the kids had enjoyed being with their Mom and Dad in doing all kinds of crazy things. Although I'm pretty skeptical about how final this finale would really be, since to me American shows can always have "pre" or "post" series, still, at least this particular ending was pretty powerful.

When Kate talked to her kids that she will not be wearing the wedding ring much longer, the kids were upset. However, when she told them that she will buy a ring for herself that has eight diamonds surrounded by mother of pearl, the kids were extremely happy. I like symbolic stuff, so I like this line.

I guess I would probably check from time to time how Kate and her eight kids are doing in the future. Their lives have been changed from the life sharing experience. And I thought this would be a pretty proper post on the Thanksgiving Day.

She's Geeky and a new (English) blog

The very motivation for starting an English blog is that I attended She's Geeky in Washington D.C. on Nov. 14, and met a bunch of great women in the technology fields in the area as well as people from afar, i.e. Canada! Seems not only everybody has a Twitter "handle" (didn't know this term before going to this event), people use Twitter just like using cellphones, or writing emails, etc. It was very common for them, but still pretty new to me. I still remember a person's startled reaction when seeing my name tag: "You don't have Twitter?" Well, I do; I just don't use that often -- actually, only one post thus far...and I quickly added another one after coming back. So I guess, being an Information Systems major, being in the IT field, with such little online presence, maybe it just doesn't feel right. Also because I'm not sure how far writing casual English will take me. Ironically enough, I have more confidence in my academic English writing than conversational ones...So, I decided to start this blog, to babble a little, on anything I feel like, in a second language.

She's Geeky was a lot of fun. Having been to a lot of "conferences", this is the first "unconference" for me. It is an unconference because no agenda was set beforehand. After a round of self-intro with sentence completion (I found She's geeky likes sentence completion A LOT :-) ) with "I am geeky because...", whoever wants to lead a session writes down a topic and puts them on the wall calendar, just like this, and the rest was a good talk organically developed by everyone in that session. Whenever the group member feels it's a time to end, the session ends. What an interesting way of organization! Imagine, if students get to decide whenever the class should end, it ends, companies that manufacture bells would probably be put out of business, and, professors...would have enough time to do research. While it may sound too organic, it is still a very organized event. Especially, when they mention there would be proceedings available in 2 weeks, I was impressed. Of course, the proceedings are not any individual papers; rather, they are notes taken from each session.

Most interesting thing about that day, was that it was also an "unplugged" unconference. There was no electrical power for the entire building the entire day. So people's face contours in the flashlight were the immediate images I would be able to think of about that day.

Among some cool websites I heard about on that day, one is DC Concierge, a guide to Washington D.C. The other is DC Tech Events. I probably know well enough about official tourist attractions in D.C.. However, in order to live a Washington life, these two resources are definitely a must have for me!