Day 366 - Hike

Thought of the day: I can't believe that today is already my birthday. A year flew past since I started my blog. I learned a lot by doing this blog and enjoyed it tremendously. Of course, there were days, and even weeks, when I had to force myself to keep going. It was particularly challenging when I was sick, busy or traveling. For the entire year, I had my backpack and camera next to me pretty much every day and I constantly reminded myself to pay attention to what was happening around me and to see and capture the extraordinary moments in the ordinary daily life. This year long journey has not only taught me to truly appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of our experiences on earth, it has also taught me something about patience and perseverance. Now, it's time for me to sign off and move on. A big hug and thank you to everybody who has followed my journey and sent me encouragements along the way!


Photo of the day:

Taking a hike with a few people this morning. There was no better way to celebrate a birthday than sitting on some big rocks, drinking coffee, eating a surprise birthday treat and looking out at the beautiful Boulder valley opening up in front of you. That was one of the most memorable moments that my wonderful friends helped me create throughout the day. There will be challenges and uncertainties, but I feel so grateful today to be living in this community, this world and on this day.

Day 308 - Apple Tree

Thought of the day: I had my car washed today and I was not very happy with the result.  It's so often the case when it comes to the quality of work performed by a third party.  The third party certainly doesn't care about the outcome as much as we do.  When the third party needs to serve a large number of customers, quality suffers even more. Every customer is not the same and they may have different demands and expectations. It's difficult to provide a customized solution for everybody. When you work under pressure - either time-wise or financially or both, you do the minimal work necessary to satisfy the majority of your customers instead of doing your best work to satisfy those with high expectations.  This is true for car wash, and is also true for so many other services like housekeeping, cooking, construction and, sadly, public education.  Sometimes there is a good reason to do things ourselves, but we all have limited amount of time and resources to do things in our own way to our satisfaction, so eventually it all comes down to a matter of choice.  What can we put up with and what can we not?  Sometimes we don't even realize that we are making such choices everyday, and when we do, some choices can be hard to make.

Photo of the day:

Girls climbing up an apple tree.  This tree is situated outside of Lila's preschool and has been there for a while.  Jasmine used to climb it when she was little and now they both love to climb it.  As parents, we're making many choices for them on a daily basis, including whether to allow them to climb a tree, whether to send them to school, what to pack for lunch, what activities to do, etc.  Some choices are made subconsciously but they may nonetheless have an impact on their lives.

Day 291 - Forest

Thought of the day: We took a hike in the Big Basin Redwood Park today.  Hiking in a redwood forest can be refreshing and invigorating. The unfathomably tall trees, the light coming down through the branches, the smell of the forest, the sound of the birds, the stillness of the thousand year old trees, the soft steps on the trail...a forest like this is somehow able to activate a primitive part of our brain and give us a sense of peace that can't be experienced anywhere else. I tried to capture the images of the forest that speak to me, but it was proven difficult. The best images I took home today were those in my memory and they will be there for a long time to come.

Photo of the day:

Image of a redwood tree in the forest.

Day 258 - Photo Sharing

Thought of the day: I have been playing with Google Plus for a couple of days now and I am really loving it. OK, first I have to admit that I'm a hopeless addict to Google products.  I am already relying on a bunch of them on a daily basis.  That's all for good reasons, though, as they are free, they are useful, and more importantly, they make sense to me.  I have two main issues with Facebook - the lack of control for privacy and the cluttering of messages on my wall.  I have long concluded that I have very little to gain on Facebook when it comes to getting valuable information and have a lot to lose when it comes to privacy. As a result, I have been using Facebook only sporadically. I hadn't deactivated my account yet because there were no other alternatives out there and I didn't want to lose all the contacts I had established over time. Not any more - with the launch of Google Plus, there is now a viable, and in fact far superior, alternative.  In addition to addressing the privacy and cluttering issues, Google Plus has many other edges over Facebook, at least from my perspective.  That includes, for example, my higher level of trust in Google for safekeeping my data and handling the growth of the social network, the seamless integration of Google Plus with other Google tools that I use daily.  My biggest concern for Google Plus is that many of the Facebook users may not feel the same discomfort with Facebook as I have and won't find a compelling need to switch over to a new service.  There's a chance that my online social network will be split into two - some of the more technically savvy and privacy minded folks will make the switch at the first chance they got while the rest will linger on Facebook. As a result, I may lose half of my online social network but it's still better than losing all if Google Plus had not come into being. My biggest hope is that the concept of Google Circles, which is a fundamental concept in Google Plus, will succeed and will permeate into other online services as well.  That might very well transform and dramatically expand our online universe and make it a better reflection of the real world.  After all, we don't live our lives as a singular personality. We are more complicated than that. We do different things, talk about different things, and may even behave quite differently in different circles.  It would be wrong to ignore or deny the subtlety of the real life.  In any case, even if Google Plus would not be able to unseat Facebook in the same way that Facebook had unseated MySpace, it would have already made big contributions to social networking by introducing the concept of Circles, in addition to demonstrating that our privacy and our sophisticated nature need to be, and can be, respected as much in our virtual life as in our real life.

Photo of the day:

Jasmine and her friend climbed up high on a tree - time to snap a photo and share it with grandma!  With instant upload and  tight integration with Mobile, Google Plus is going to make cell phone photo sharing even easier than before.

Day 216 - Tree Climbing

Thought of the day: A switch must have been turned on in Lila's brain right after her birthday.  She had been more difficult in the past two days - had the dreaded "terrible three" arrived?  Just like Jasmine, Lila didn't show any classical signs of "terrible two" - albeit being a little stubborn at times, in general she was a really sweet and easygoing two year old.  Friends and babysitters alike had claimed that she was an angel.  Well, it had been different in the past two days.  Even her preschool teacher noticed that and gave me a few words of caution today, which had never happened before.  I remember a similar phase that Jasmine went through after she turned three.  Is the same thing happening again?  Well, I guess the good news is, we have been through this before so we know what to expect (well, sort of).  And we know that this too shall pass.

Photo of the day:

Girls on a tree.  Jasmine is into tree climbing these days.  I think this phase, too, shall pass!

Day 210 - Misty Green

Thought of the day: Today I was trying to figure out whether I should get a new lens for the summer break.  I am getting a little tired of using only one lens, which happens to be the lens that came with the camera.  It has a good range and it does a decent job in a variety of situations but it doesn't do anything spectacularly well.  It's especially lacking in the handheld low light situation which I seem to run into a lot lately.  I would love to get a fast normal prime lens and a fast telephoto zoom lens.  But fast lens typically means big glass which typically means more money and more weight. So I have been hesitating before taking a plunge. When I was taking an inventory of what I already had at home today, I happily "uncovered" a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens.  I couldn't believe that I had pretty much forgotten all about it.  I will surely miss the unparalleled object isolation effect of the 85mm f/1.4 lens (see my previous blog post about it), but I think this smaller and cheaper lens will serve me well, at least for a while. One thing I learned from this experience is that before I search far and away for something ideal, I should first take stock of what I already have and the chance is that I will find in my possession something close enough.  It may not be perfect, but it may serve me just as well - and nothing will end up to be perfect anyway especially after you can claim it your own.  This can be so true for worldly possessions, and also for other more abstract things in life as well.

Photo of the day:

Misty mountains and greenery in a rainy spring day, taken with my "new" lens.

Day 189 - Tree and Bike

Thought of the day: Today I went out and shot some of my favorite flowering trees.  They didn't come out exactly the way I'd like, but at least it was a fun experience.  After all, what's a better way to spend a sunny day then spending it outdoors?

Photo of the day:

This is one of the flowering trees that I shot this morning along the Broadway bike path.