B u z z z . . . . B u z z z z . . .

Unexpected Guest

2011-03-22T13:13:00.000-07:00

I was rushing my last homework assignment (Yap I got enrolled in a programming course which had been driving me hectic-ly crazy for the last 6mths!) on a sunny Sunday morning when we heard some rustling and a soft thud on our patio (or balcony as my country folks call it).

Like I said, I was rushing, cos Sunday was the due date, and I was hoping I could finish it soon enough and make it for another skiing trip. But my curiosity got the better of me, so I got up and peeked through the patio door to see "who" the mysterious guest was:

Boy was I surprised! It looked like a strip of wall board had just landed. I was very curious to venture out and locate where it came from.

My ever-so-cautious hubby stopped me lest his "buddies" decided to join "him" and hit upon us.

So we waited, and nope, his buddies decided to stay put.

It was much later after I finally resigned to my fate that I wasn't going to be able to make it for the skiing trip, and we decided to check it out. We managed to find its "home", which was located at the top floor. Geez, how much it had travelled!

Spot the difference! Could you see how long the strip was?

We figured the culprit could be a small earthquake, or the wind which was pretty strong, or wear and tear of the building. So we checked the Internet for records of the earth moving - nope, no occurrence at the time of incident. So the last 2 factors were more likely.

And we brought it up to the apartment manager, who didn't seem surprised this happened. This MUST have happened before, we concluded silently. She immediately arranged for the maintenance guy to pick it up.

Hope our visitor will find his way home soon, though we wondered how.

Happy Chinese New Year! 恭喜发财!

2011-02-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

Our first reunion dinner here in Seattle as we celebrate the coming of the lunar New Year. Do you know its actually year 4709 in the lunar calendar? Thats really long...

May the year of the Rabbit bring you happiness, health and prosperity!

Roadtrip Day 2 - Yellowstone (2010-09-03)

2011-02-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

what an exciting day for us! After a full day's of driving, we'll soon be entering Yellowstone! Maybe I was too excited, cos I wasn't able to sleep well last night. The hostel was pretty comfortable, but I just couldn't drift into slumberland. Maybe I was cold? So I violently shook CH who was already sound asleep (Envy!) and get me my sweats (well, he's nearer).

Still. Couldn't. Sleep.

The wooden floor outside our room would creak whenever other guests walked past, which was pretty frequent, as the bathroom was just down the hallway. Somehow I managed to get into a half-sleep-half-awake stupor, and then the alarm clock rang.

We quickly made ourselves some coffee and toast with peanut butter someone had left for the hostel. This is the nice part about hostels, there's always these kinda stuffs lying around, courtesy of ex-guests who decided to ~~dump~~ share them for ~~less weight~~ the benefit of all. Anyways, we hastily packed up and were out of the hostel by 8am.

We decided to get drinking water and snacks, and bear spray, being our first time staying overnight in a wild wild forest. There's been recent bear attacks in Yellowstone that got us pretty freaked out. Btw, bear spray = pepper spray which some ladies have in their handbag to ward off attackers. You may have seen in movies of them squeezing on the nozzle into the eyes and immediately the offender can't see, the victim then use the time to escape.

While checking out at Safeway, we asked about the bear spray from the staff, she didn't understand at first. CH then waved his hands wildly (trying to 'look' like a bear), and she got it! She gave us very clear and precise directions to the store selling it, and also mentioned about the recent bear attack, which seemed to be caused by someone who intentionally wanted to lure the bear to him, but apparently the bear attacked someone else instead. Its sad cos once a bear attacks a human, it will be put to sleep, no plea given. Whatever happened to us being guests on their turfs?

Boy this bear spray actually set us back by an hour as the store only opens at 9am. We finally reached the town of Gardiner just at the northern entrance of Yellowstone, at 10am. :(

The roads in Yellowstone resembles the number "8". Coming in from the north, our plan was to go southwards along the left side of '8', before heading back to our campground at Canyon (which is at the right middle '8').

Barely reaching our first stop - Mammoth Hot Springs we were hit by a strong smell of rotten eggs. If the photos could show! I guessed we'll have to get used to this, as the whole place is full of these gases released by the hydrothermal features.

The landscape here is totally different from the rest of the park. Hot water from underground brings limestone to the surface and deposits gradually built up and formed terraces. It was estimated that 2 tons of this limestone get transported to the surface each day.

Moving on, the next destination was the geyser basins, namely upper, midway and lower. We had been warned about road construction between Norris and Madison which further set us back by half an hour.

Caught a glimpse of this biker bear snoozing...

At Midway Geyser Basin, Grand Primatic Spring - the largest hot spring in Yellowstone, with its wide spectrum of colors beckoned to us. This is my #1 favorite attraction. Boy wished I could live here.

With great reluctance, we left the place heading for our final destination of the day - Old Faithful. First stop was the highly raved Old Faithful Inn. It was rustic, cozy and big. We had originally planned to have lunch at the restaurant here, but due to the delay we decided to have an early dinner instead. Which was good cos we didn't made any reservations in this ever-so-popular restaurant.


The intricate structure inside the inn	Can you see a small house?

We both ordered bison burger *exclusive in Yellowstone only!*, with different 'toppings':

Verdict: Bison meat was overcooked and too dry. Service was pretty sloppy, the waiter noticed the blue cheese was missing on my burger, and gave me crumbled ones instead. Hur? Ain't it supposed to be melted, dude? Oh well, at least the plates looked nice. Oh btw the meat came from bison farms, you can't touch the ones in Yellowstone which are protected. Some ~~guys~~ animals have all the luck!

With renewed energy, we proceeded to check out the trail in the region, including the famous Old Faithful Geyser which erupts more frequently than others at consistent time intervals.

More geysers in Old Faithful:






I think this is Old Faithful?	My #2 favorite - Morning Glory

Believe me, the trail was covered with so many geysers/pools/etc that we couldn't make it for the Old Faithful eruption. :( But I seriously don't think we missed much.

The last pool on the bottom right is Morning Glory Pool - my 2nd favorite, but it has kinda lost its glory. People threw litter, including coins treating the pool as a good luck well, which clogs up the opening underground, reduced the temperature of the water and induced the growth of bacteria around the edges. So this pool was supposed to be turquoise water with bright yellow edges but instead became reddish-brown due to the bacteria.

It really really saddens me. Often I've seen visitors walk on anywhere but the main trail, eroding vegetation and destroying wildlife. I hoped one day people will learn to be more aware of their actions on the environment and curb all these idiotic behavior.

The sun was setting by the time we were done with the exploration. We decided to head back to our camp at Canyon to retire for the night. Caught some beautiful scenery on the way back:

And a deer peacefully munching away...

We travelled slowly in case of animal crossing. It was 9+ when we reached Canyon. After some asking around, we found our way to the registration office to get our assigned campground. There was already a ranger outside the office which had closed. Apparently she was waiting for us as we seemed to have double-booked the campgrounds and she had to confirm. We felt bad for causing her to wait, but she was all jovial and happy cos she would be off the next day with a group of friends to go for some bear sighting. What a life!

Excitedly we headed off to set up our first camp (in our lives!). Boy, I wonder if I could sleep tonight being our first night in the park, with the thought of bear visiting lingering in our minds...

More photos of our Day 2 trip here (in flickr)

[To be continued...]

Snack Day

2010-10-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

pardon the interruption! I was supposed to continue with our Yellowstone trip (I know!) I'm still in the midst of sorting out the photos for the first day, oh gosh, there must be hundreds of them! Please bear with me, I'll get it sorted as soon as I can. Meantime, I thought I'd delight you with my recent baking project?

Its our turn to provide snacks for CH's group meeting (again!) I had a hell time making puffs last year for the same meeting. Ever since, I promise myself NEVER EVER to put up anything if its a first time for me. So this time, I decided I wanna do a cheesecake (been craving for one), and a bread. How about char siu (roast pork) buns? Nah... refer to Rule No. 1 (up there) I've never made buns before... how about floss buns? It used to be a craze back home, and Rule No. 1 came up again.

I was patient to slowly take my pick from the hundreds of recipes available in the Internet. And voila! I found it! Focaccia bread! Back home when I had a bread machine, I used to get the pre-mix, dumped them in, programmed it, and then happily went to sleep, knowing I'll be greeted with the strong savory aroma of herbs and warm toasty bread on the next morning. Unfortunately focaccia bread is not cheap here, a loaf costs about $5 from the Farmer's market here.

I thought I'd do a trial first. I had no bread machine, so I had to knead by hand. Happily I used the recipe from here, which said to knead till the dough is slightly sticky. What in the world does that mean? slightly means how much? So I used my guess-tation, and leave it slightly sticky. The bread didn't rise a lot, probably caused by me making small dimples in it RIGHT before placing it in the oven, which was wrong - gotta let it proof a second time. And I thought its probably too sticky. Anyways I was glad this wasn't the actual deal, so it gave me time to research on the proper steps to making the right bread. And I found another recipe which I used instead.

Ahem! So sharing what I've learnt - yeast which is a leavening agent used in breads loves sugar. The first step I did was place yeast and sugar together in a mixer bowl. Then boil some water till temperature reached 45C (113F) which felt like lukewarm to the skin. Pour this water into the bowl, wait for 5 mins for the yeast to react. The bowl has to be put in a warm place, so I preheated the oven to the lowest temperature, turn the heat off when its ready, and place the bowl in with the oven door ajar.

Sure enough the mixture was foamy, with a layer of foam on the surface. In another bowl, I had measured the flour, salt and rosemary. I then made a well in the middle, and poured the yeast mixture in. Pour the olive oil in, mixed them up, and then rolled the dough out on a heavily floured surface for kneading. And I knead, ignoring all the sticky wetty stuffs collected on my fingers, palms, pulling back and pushing the dough down with all my body weight. Till it became a smooth, pliable, and springy dough. Place it back into the oven again (should still be warm, else preheat again) and wait for an hour for it to proof to double its size.

Then punch it down, made dimples all over it, threw some cheese and garlic over it, then proof again in the same warm place. Once it doubled, its ready for baking! Easy peasy?

Turned out the bread was a bit too high, looked more like a cake. Hm, gotta reduce the flour next time. No worries, I sliced the bottom off, then sliced the resulting loaf into half, ready for next day's grill.

The next morning, I placed mozzarella, prosciutto and capocollo over it, and grilled them in my panini press.

As for the cheesecake, I got my recipe here

My proud productions:

Verdict: The cheesecake was light, fluffy, tasted really good! So was the focaccia bread! Both were a hit with CH's colleagues. Aah, I'm still relishing my victory moments.

Roadtrip Day 1 - Seattle/Spokane/Bozeman (2010-09-02)

2010-10-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

since a long time ago, I've been thinking, and thinking of Yellowstone. I've heard from many about how beautiful the place is, gawked at the photos taken, watched documentaries on the picturesque landscape. How I longed, dreamt, even salivated at the thought of going there. Finally when we came to US, I thought it would be more likely now that we're closer to this awesome place.

So last year, I started researching on how to get there - by plane, or car. Going by plane would land us at one of the following places:

Billings, MT (129 miles to northeast entrance)
Bozeman, MT (87miles to north entrance)
West Yellowstone, MT (3 miles to west entrance)
Jackson, WY (56miles to south entrance)
Cody, WY (52miles to east entrance)

Sounds easy hur? Then I checked the airfares going to these places, and they turned out to cost (in Summer) at least $500. Each. Which means $1,000 for both of us. With such a high overhead, it would be worthwhile to stretch the trip to more than a week. Alas, CH's leave is limited as he's used all of it for our home trips. And Summer is the preferred time to go as most highways like Beartooth Highway are closed from October-Spring. We had no choice but to put this trip on our KIV list.

Fast forward to now...

A month ago, one of my Thai friends did a road trip all the way from here to Yellowstone within 4 days! He was very garang (aggresive) - he reached Yellowstone in 1 day! I was fascinated, excited that I might be able to do the trip this time, and drilled all the details from him.

We did a cost comparison between taking a plane/renting a car from there vs driving all the way there. The latter was cheaper, minus the hassle of going through the airport checks (we brought propane gas canisters). With that decided, we hastily reserved the campground which was still available (to our utter surprise!) despite the short 4-day and booking for the weekend holidays. Boy, we fully utilized whatever time left planning the itineraries and getting all the gears ready for our first car camping!

It takes 15hours of driving to get there. Being the only driver, we decided to stretch the driving to 1.5 days instead, stopping for the night at Bozeman, an hour's drive to Yellowstone.

And happily, excitedly, exuberantly, off we go...

Deviating from our plan, we set off an hour late. No worries, as the speed limit increased to 70mph after leaving Seattle.

Along the way, there were some road construction going on, all the cars stopped and 2 contruction trucks, 1 in each lane, carrying a "Do Not Pass" sign led us along the detour. Interesting.

Some of the beautiful landscapes on the way:

Lunch break at Spokane (after 4 hours on the road):

Delicious ants climbing trees (literal translation: 蚂蚁爬树) which is glass noodles (冬粉) in a spicy gravy sprinkled full of tongue-numbing sichuan peppercorns!	Sweet and sour pork, which was very crunchy, non-spicy but tad too sour for us. CH said it reminded him of his mum's cooking!

On the road again (for another 7+ hours ride... *yawn*):

Reached Bozeman at 10pm. Rewarded ourselves with a cup of instant noodles before turning in for the night.

Here's where we stayed at, taken on the next morning.

[To be continued...]

Car

2010-09-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

before we start rambling about our most recent road trip to Yellowstone, I should really touch on one of the factors that made this even possible. Well, shouldn't I? Without it, the trip may still be possible but the higher expenses would have put it off to a later date.

After years (like 2?) of pining and hoping, we finally got our first car in US, in our lives! And I bet this will be the last new car we'll ever own, since we don't foresee getting another car in the next few years, and we definitely won't get a new one if we moved back to SG.

So without much ado, let's welcome Zuki - our newfound buddy and companion!

She has a long story behind...

Being foreigners, its really not easy getting a car in US. There were several roadblocks to overcome, first being the car dealer we were ready to clinch the deal with refused to give us a car quote. Called twice to request for it, but no reply. Why? We don't know, we guessed maybe we don't have US license, no auto insurance, no credit history, he didn't think we were serious?

We resorted to getting a car broker to help us. In the mean time, we started to get quotes from insurance companies, which is a must being in a sue-friendly society. Insurance for foreign license is possible, but at a higher premium. Which brings some to ask: "Why didn't we get a US license before getting a car?" Well, its those kind of chicken-egg scenario - get a car then get license. But now it seemed to be the other way round - get license then get car. This is the way the locals do it. Usually they'll borrow the car from either their parents, or friends and drive to the test center. Yap, the driving instructors whom we learn driving from don't provide cars, not like back home.

And by the way, its not mandatory to engage a driving instructor to learn driving. When you pass the knowledge test you'll get an instruction permit, and anyone who has a valid license can teach you how to drive, meaning I (yes, me! Ahem!) can teach CH how to drive! Hm, I could do the same trick of using stickers on the windshield to do parallel parking, like what my former instructor used to teach me. I guess thats why learning to drive in US is so much cheaper than other places.

Anyways, we got our insurance settled. The broker was almost done negotiating the car. We wanted to get the financing provided by the dealer, but couldn't cos we did not have enough credit history. Its another chicken-egg again - we choose financing to build our credit history yet couldn't. Finally, we scraped the idea totally, pooled all we have + some from our savings in SG :( and clinched the deal.

Grievances aside, we're proud owners of this car! It looks cool (agree?), has a sporty look, and comes with a GPS! Acceleration is great, and it has AWD which can be turned off to boost mileage economy. When I stepped on the pedal, I can hear the engine 'booooooooom', exactly like a Sports car.

As part of the car purchase, we were given free oil change for the first time, and a gas card worth $300 which we used to sponsor our road trip for Yellowstone, to and fro. Cool!

Happy Mooncake Festival! 中秋节快乐!

2010-09-20T17:15:00.000-07:00

mid-autum or mooncake festival is here again! When I was still in Singapore, I would gleefully digged out my good old tortoise-shaped lantern - the traditional type made of red cellophane paper and metal wires - and carried it around the neighborhood, together with my nephews and their lanterns. The nearby playground is usually littered with families doing the same thing, playing with fire sticks, candles, etc, and catching up with each other. I'll never forget the warmth, happiness and fun we all shared on this night.

Though I can't do the same thing here, fortunately I could still get hold of mooncakes in the Asian stores here, which are plentiful coming from countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and US. I'm not much of a mooncake person, but this year I have a strong craving for them, especially the red bean ones.

I originally wanted to get online from Oversea (Hai Wai Tian/海外天) from Malaysia. The next minute I knew, they were sold out! Ok, settle for the prawn (shrimp), since fish is out. Next on the list was the ones from 美心 (Mei Xin) from Hong Kong but they were also sold out. Next time I'll be earlier, for now, I'll settle for this one also from Hong Kong, and it happened I got the last box! Lucky!

Have a really wonderful Mooncake Festival! Do look at the moon, it should be awesome!

I'm back!

2010-06-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

yo guys I'm back from HK/SG. Boy I had a great time, busy meeting up with so many people and doing a big favor for myself - Lasik for both my eyes! Am so happy, no more glasses, no more contact lenses, no more peeking over my glass frame looking like an old lady ^_^ Banzai! I would encourage everyone who's been hesitating to do so to go ahead, its really painless, only side effect I had was dry eyes which should subside once my tear glands recover.

I'm busy unpacking my stuffs, boy were they heavy, can you believe I brought back 2 luggages of 23.7kg and 20kg ? I just couldn't resist buying all the foodstuffs from HK and SG. Haiz... I was super paisay to the people who helped to carry my luggage. Arigatou!

Hope to update more of my trip in HK the next round. Have a happy Father's day!

Away...

2010-05-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

i'll be going to Hong Kong this week, and leaving CH behind. :)

And I've been busy with these:

Yap, the meals for CH while I'm away. The ones on the left are the ones I've prepared and frozen, the others are store-bought. I could probably let him source for his own meals, but then somehow I just don't know if he'll do that (he can get so focused he'll forget night and day). Or maybe I did this to lessen my guilt for having my own fun while he's earning our keep. Oh whatever.

And while at the grocery store, I saw some herb plants and bought them home. Except for the rosemary, the rest are kinda drooping, probably due to lack of water (I left them alone for a day :b) and "relocation" from their pots to a new one. But I'm seeing some of the stems straightening up, not as limp as before. I hope they will stay strong and green forever. (The first batch of basil I got did not survive through winter.)

And our Kalanchoe is in full bloom:

Organic

2010-05-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

I'm aware of pesticides and other chemicals present in the fruits and vegetables. I'm also aware of the harmful effects associated with them. Yet I'm not so willing to invest in healthy organic produce, largely because they are costly, almost double the price of normal ones, and some vegetables are not available. The times I would get them would probably be when they're on sale, or I'm suddenly on a health spree.

Imagine my joy when I came across this helpful site that actually provides this cute cheapsheet showing the "dirty dozen" and "clean fifteen", in other words the must-buy-organic and can-buy-normal fruits/vegetables:

This can be printed and conveniently kept in your wallet. You can download this here, and go here for the full list of produce.

Crazy Month!

2010-04-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

its been a very busy month for us, well, me mostly since CH is always busy (or seem to be). I decided to take up some short course, little did I know what I'm in for.

It all started out with this:

Few months back, I tried to bake a blackforest cake for someone's birthday, not too bad, but the process was tedious for a rookie like me. Baking the cake was easy, then it comes to icing the cake - I bought ready-made whipped cream, which was a mistake - too stiff, and I had no prior experience with cake icing. No matter how much I scrape and spread there are bumps everywhere! I gave up, decided to cover the blemishes up with something.

So this course came along, and I thought, I should take it since its a good skill to have - I do envision myself becoming a lady boss in a cafe shop. I DO have dreams you know? So without much ado I took the course up, which consists of 4 sessions, once per week, 3 hours per session.

I realized I don't have the necessary tools, and I bought these:

Every week was very hectic for me. I have to prepare a cake and ice it before the class. Then we would do our decorations on the cake. All the preparation actually took days, as I had to bake the cake, frost it, freeze it overnight, then covered with 2nd layer of frost. And I had to make the icing, and flowers too.

My pre-mixed icing for the class:

It was so tiring. Though I enjoyed every minute of the lesson, I'm really glad it's over.

I didn't think the icing was tasty (too sweet) and my decoration skills were, er, basic, so I decided to practice on my cake board instead. So every week, I baked something to the class, did nothing to it, and brought it back. Both CH and I got to savor them. Yum!

For the last lesson, I decided to make something more challenging, and tasty. So I made a yellow butter cake, with chocolate frosting from my favorite chocolate brand.

Boy it was so good! It was a 8" cake, a bit too much for us, but CH thought he should be able to finish them. Wow.

We used the leftover chocolate as a fondue for fruits and cookies. It was finished in no time!

My not-so-perfect decoration - I'm working on it, as the teacher says, it takes lots of practice to become pro at it. I'll be working on it! Promise!

Meanwhile, the cake is calling me from the fridge. *Drooling*

Update May4: I used this recipe for the cake, and this for the cream, which I adjusted the ingredient amount as I was using 8" pan:

100g semi-sweet chocolate (I used my favourite brand Ghiradelli bar!)

1/4 Cup Chocolate powder (I used Hershey's)

1/2 Cup milk

1/3 Cup butter, cut into pieces

1 3/4 Cup powdered sugar

1tsp Vanilla essence

Duk Li Dim Sum

2010-04-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

there are a few good Dim Sum restaurants in Seattle Chinatown, and one of our favorites is Duk Li Dim Sum. Its a small eating place with some of the foods (like spring rolls, ham jim peng) displayed at the counter. What we like about this place is they're fast, food is tasty and cheap, and well, we felt more at home here.

Anyways, we decided to have Dim Sum here yesterday. The main communication language is Cantonese, which we weren't good at, but we survived with mixed Cantonese and Chinese. :D Once we settled down, the waitress wasted no time in serving us with a hot pot of tea, gave us the menu and a pencil to write down our orders. In no time, our food was readily served.

Fried Glutinous Rice (炒糯米饭)	Siew Mai (烧卖)
Congee (皮蛋瘦肉粥)	Shrimp Rice Roll (虾肠卷)
Egg Tarts (蛋塔)

Don't you just love those innocent-looking egg tarts? I greedily devoured them within seconds! *Yummy*

Duk Li Dim Sum
Neighborhood: International District
664 S Weller Street
(at S Maynard Ave)

We're back!

2010-04-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

How do you like the new look of our blog? I'm trying out Blogger.com's new feature (which is still in draft) that provides more templates and allows more ways to customize our blogs. Great improvement, but I'd love to have a menu bar just right below the blog title to include miscellaneous links. But anyway, mai hiam buay pai (not bad if you're not picky) isn't this a good change? And refreshing too I'd say!

Wow, we've been away for so long! I'm surprised it was April already! Geez! What have we been up to? Well, we had 2 groups of families/friends who visited us (boy were we so glad), and then we went back to Singapore to celebrate the Chinese New Year (very important event for us), then we came back, and I caught the flu, which was really terrible cos it took me 3 weeks to recover! And then, I was busy looking for things to do here, especially volunteer stuffs, and here we are!

Any case, enough of my ramblings. Spring is here, though weather had been rainy lately, but Spring IS here. People and flowers are starting to liven up. So are we! Gear up guys, we'll resume our blogging pretty soon! Till then, have a great time out there!

Meet our lovely couple, Mr and Mrs Gingerbread! (Special gift from our dear friend, thank you!)

And here's our Kalanchoe bearing buds:

Merry Merry Christmas!

2010-01-08T13:51:00.000-08:00

The weather on Christmas eve was very good, we had a grand view of Mt Rainier from our house.

Prepared a very simple Christmas Eve meal, with pumpkin soup, basmatic/wild rice and garlic roasted chicken.

Hope you had a great time too!

Happy Solstice (冬至快乐) !

2009-12-22T08:39:00.000-08:00

What does this mean? We've survived a full season cycle here! This is our 2nd Solstice here! Ah... How time flies!

I'm really happy that the shortest day is finally over! The whole place goes dark at 4pm now. I'm better in adapting now, but still find this abit hard to accept. I guess we all do need plenty of photosynthesis.

This time round, I couldn't get the soy drink with peanuts (花生仁汤) :( So I had to prepare the soup from scratch, which wasn't too difficult, and it taste good.

If you want, the recipe is here. I also added 2 slices of ginger and used palm sugar which is much more flavorful than the normal sugar.

Looking forward to longer days. Yippee!

St Helens (2009-08-29)

2009-12-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980 at 8:32am PDT. The huge pressure build-up ripped off the top of St Helens and wiped out forestation in its vicinity.

This was one of our must-see destinations.

CH's colleague - Qing was interested too. Unfortunately the weather for the week had been cloudy and rainy. However The forecast predicted the clouds should clear by afternoon, despite some raindrops in the morning. We were hesitating if we should go for it, and after much discussion, we decided to take the risk. It was 10am when we set off, which was pretty late as the ride takes 3 hours to reach.

We were on the outskirts of St. Helens when we passed by Sediment Retention Dam Viewpoint. We decided to explore that area as well as have our lunch there.

Walking on the dam...

Qing doing a "go stun" (backward) walk

Drainage

Nice flower...

We moved on, and reached a small park (can't remember the name). It looked pretty scenic, we took a walk.

Johnston Ridge Observatory. Notice the surrounding tree stubs that had been blown out by the eruption.

And these too...

Wildlife restoring back to the park

By the time we reached Johnston Ridge Observatory, the clouds were setting in, we couldn't see St. Helens. :( Oh well, at least we made it.

Cheer from Qing

More stubs here...

We watched a movie about how St. Helens erupted, before making our way back.

Stopping at Hoffstadt Creek Bridge

The clouds cleared slightly for us to have this picture.

It was really disappointing not being able to see St. Helens. We'll definitely be back again.

The Burroughs (2009.08.15)

2009-12-04T22:00:00.000-08:00

Its another fee-free weekend to the National Parks - the last one in fact. We had been looking forward to visit Mt Rainier in Summer. In June, we explored the southwestern portion of Mt Rainier with my cousin, and there were snow everywhere. This time, we decided to check out the northwest portion of Mt Rainier, and hiked one of the trails there - Mt Burroughs.

Considering the traveling time, we wanted to set off very early - 7am, but got delayed by an hour. I was pretty worried about the parking lot, as it was a pretty popular hike. Surprisingly, the traveling time was lesser than the last, and we reached around 9:30am. We were able to get a parking lot reasonably close to the visitor center. Without much ado, we changed into our boots and set off.

Taking our 1st shot at the visitor center:

Briskly we climbed uphill, and came to a viewpoint. A couple were looking at the far distance using their binoculars, and talking to themselves "Its there, I see it". Curious, I edged slowly towards them, and asked: "Are you looking for marmots?"

I had never seen one, was hoping I could catch a glimpse for this trip.

The woman shook her head, her husband answered me: "There's a bear out there".

We asked to "borrow" his binoculars which was mounted on a tripod stand, and he carefully adjusted it, before letting us gain control of it. It was a very big bear, without this powerful binoculars, it would be impossible to locate it with our SLR lens, let alone our eyes. I asked about the power of the binoculars, which was 15.30.60. Hm, didn't make any sense to us, but I made a mental note.

Bear, bear! Spot the bear!

I really doubt you could see it. Its very far, but believe me, this bear was much bigger than the one we saw at Mt Olympics.

By now, many people had gathered, wondering what we were looking at, and taking turns with his binoculars when they learned of it. I jokingly told CH they should set up a "Bear Sighting Stand" here, and charged for the use of the binoculars.

We moved on, leaving the horde of people there admiring. It was a sunny day, and there were beautiful meadows with blooming flowers everywhere. The climb was enjoyable, scenic, and relaxing.

We arrived at Frozen Lake, a water source for some parts of Washington. There was a fence around it, barring intruders from access. We carefully walked around the fence, observing the interesting ice hanging over the lake.

No tramping! Its our water source! Yes, we drink from this!

Then we moved on, uphills. Reached the first Burroughs.

We decided we'd had our lunch when we reached the second Burroughs. Shortly, we met a couple on the way down. They'd stopped to wait for their son, who was crying. Looked like the poor kid was either tired or hungry to go on anymore. We went past them, then re-traced our steps to the family. CH offered the kid a packet of waffle biscuits we brought along as our snacks. The kid accepted, and immediately stopped crying. Its like magic!

"Don't cry anymore!" I shouted to him. We smiled at his parents, as the family began to move on.

We continued on, overtook a couple who had passed us earlier.

"Now it's your turn to lead," one of them jokingly said. We all laughed.

On our way up, we spotted a marmot, foraging for food.

I was getting impatient and quickened my footsteps. When I reached, CH was far behind me, taking his own time to take pictures and enjoy the scenery. I found a piece of rock, and sat down as I waited for him. There were many people here already, and 2 rangers, talking to some of the hikers.

CH finally reached and we settled on a spot to have our lunch, facing the burroughs as we enjoyed our rewards.

Isn't she beautiful? I wished I lived here!

It was time to go. We took a different route back, joining the Wonderland trail. Glad we did, it was really scenic.

More pictures at flickr.

Rattlesnake Ledge (2009.08.08)

2009-09-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

Since coming here, CH's jeans had been giving up on him, starting from a small tear to a significant hole, just below the right bottom. Ok, near the butt. Could you imagine wearing out 2 jeans in a year? I wonder if he's grown more rough-like (like me) or the weather's too dry for clothes...

Anyway, we decided to make a trip to one of the factory outlets to get him new pair of jeans. So we settled on a hike nearby which should be just sufficient to give us half a day's shopping pleasure - Rattlesnake Ledge.

However, there are more people than snakes you'd find. How this mountain earned its name was somehow due to the sound it made similar to this viper. A mountain full of foliage, not difficult to conquer.

Round-trip: 3miles
Elevation Gain: 1,100ft

As you can see, there were INDEED more people (and dogs) up there. We didn't find any snakes.

To shopping time! We finally had a chance to check out Malay Satay Hut at Redmond. If you remember, we had visited this restaurant in Chinatown, but were so disappointed. This Redmond branch is the original, and said to be better. Well, it IS better, BUT the penang char kway teow (fried rice noodles) still wasn't authentic enough. I'm beginning to suspect its due to the quality of the noodles sold here. Anyway, we had a very satisfied meal, with my long craving for chicken rice finally satisfied!

This also marked our 1st year anniversary here in Seattle. Yes, a year had passed. Looking back, we were worried about being able to survive winter, and now we've experienced the 4 seasons, wonderful in their own ways. How time flies!

Mt Olympics National Park (2009.07.26)

2009-09-04T10:50:00.000-07:00

After spending a good night at a hostel in Port Angeles, we were up and kicking on Sunday morning as we hurriedly prepared our sandwiches for both breakfast and lunch in the kitchen. The best part of staying in a hostel is getting to meet and talk to various people under the same roof. There were an elderly and young couple from Canada, and a group of backpackers who just hiked from Montana all the way to Washington. They took a whole month to reach here, and will be taking off (by foot!) trekking Mt Olympics from East to West! My full admiration for them! *Applause*

Friendly hostel:

Bidding our kind host farewell, we stopped by Dungeness Spit, which is a long stretch of land off the coast of Port Angeles town. It was pretty early, around 9am. A couple was loading their yacht onto the pickup, several seagulls chirping as they flew and landed. Its all very peaceful and quiet. We could also see Port Angeles town from here.

At 9am, we began making our way to Hoh National Rainforest, which is about 70miles drive. We came across a big cedar tree on the way.

Slightly before noon, we reached Hoh rainforest.

We then proceeded to our last stop of the day - Marymere Falls.

It was time to go home. Traffic was pretty smooth, we reached the ferry terminal at Bainbridge Island around 7:30pm. We patiently waited in our car for the ferry, while other drivers walked around, chit chatted with one another to pass the time.

Came the ferry... arh... home sweet home, at last!

My first ...

2009-09-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

Blueberry muffins!

Yum yum, the texture is so soft and fluffy. Its super easy, just mix everything and pour into the muffin pan, or whatever pan you have. The recipe makes 6 medium size muffins.

You can get the recipe here. Just substitute the black sesame with half a cup (120ml) of fillings, in my case I use blueberries.

A Taxi Driver's Blog

2009-08-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

There's this guy who's a PhD holder from Stanford University, now a taxi (cab) driver in SG. Do check out his interesting blog as he depicts his daily encounters with passengers from all walks of life.

http://taxidiary.blogspot.com

Mt Olympics National Park (2009.07.25)

2009-08-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

To encourage Americans to visit the national treasures, entrance fees to several National Parks are waived for 3 weekends, respectively in June, July and August. We'd planned to visit Mt Olympics National Park during the fee-free weekend, but it coincided with the annual Lavender Festival, and all the accommodations were fully booked. We had no choice but to postpone the dates to the following weekend.

There are 2 ways to get to the park - by ferry/car or car only. We chose the former which will reduce traveling time by half - 3hours. I was pretty excited as this was our first time driving a car into a ferry. How cool is that!

From Seattle, we'll get to Bainbridge Island by ferry, and drive north from there for the rest of the journey. I was thinking the ferry travel time took a little longer than reported, but didn't suspect a thing. Till we alighted from the terminal and were trying to locate the highway did we realized we were on the wrong island - Bremerton. As we pulled over to read the map, a man on the sidewalk saw us, hesitated, then walked towards our car.

"Do you have change for a dollar and fifty cents?" He asked, as we wind down our windows.
Great, we were lost, and someone just asked you for money. How bad could it be?

We looked at each other, sighed, gave in, and CH passed him the change. I took the opportunity to ask him for directions. He looked surprised, then started giving advice. He asked CH to get out of the car, and showed him the way. With that, we made our way back to the road again. Luckily the mistake was minor, we just had to drive more miles to reach, that's all. And we were pretty early - around 9+am.

At 10:30am, we reached the town where we'd spend the night. After checking in at the hostel, we proceeded to get some picnic sandwich to go, and Voila! We're off to our first stop - Hurricane Hill.

Loved the clear blue skies, and alphine views!

Round-trip: 3miles
Elevation gain: 700feet

On our way uphill, a couple of men greeted us, and told us they saw a bear up there. That got us very excited, but we couldn't go any faster on the steep trail, much as we'd wanted to.

Finally we reached, and had our lunch here. We had forgotten about the bear, till a woman hiker asked us if we had seen it.

"Is it still around?" I asked.
"Yap, right there." She confirmed, pointing to our left.
Our eyes followed her direction, and saw a black mass on a heap of snow. Looking through our SLR camera confirmed it was a black bear, lying on the snow, maybe suntanning. We were very amused.

First bear sighting of our lives:

It was really far, a pity our camera couldn't zoom any further.

More views at the top:

Feeling happy and satisfied, we made our way back, and proceeded to hike the next trail - Obstruction Point. The road to this destination was pretty scary. First of all its a sharp turn into a side road that was very hidden. We missed it and had to reverse the car to make the turn. And we got a shock thereafter. The road was completely gravel, unpaved, and narrow. Very very narrow. The edge of the road is a steep drop several miles into the valley below. And then we saw it - a pick-up, coming right towards us, fighting the limited road space with us. I froze, waiting for it to pass. Though I felt I could still move the car a little bit more to the edge, I wasn't willing to take the risk.

The vehicle was too big, it couldn't make it through. The driver stopped at my window.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't move anymore, I am so scared!", I confessed.
"You're doing fine. Just move slightly forward." The driver assured.

I did as told, inch by inch while he moved slowly away from us. And we cleared! Wipe sweat *literally*

Unpaved, narrow, and perilous:

We proceeded with the rest of the journey, cruising at speed slower than 10miles/hr. This went on for 7.8miles. By then the car was very dirty, the rear windscreen and whole body was covered with sand. Time for a car wash, I murmured.

Without further ado, we embarked on our next hike to Obstruction Point. Boy this had got to be the best hike of my life. Really. I enjoyed the entire trail very much - every direction we looked was so spectacular. We were totally immersed in our surroundings, didn't even realize it was 5pm already. We had not reached.

A couple of ladies came by, greeted us, and we asked them how much longer it'd take.
"We came back from the lake, took us about an hour to get here," one of the ladies reckoned, "Its probably gonna take you guys more than that, going uphill".

I asked them the name of the trail, showed them the guide book on the trail we wanted, and was told we might be on the wrong one.
"This is a great trail, and the lake is beautiful", she comforted.
I nodded my head furiously, "I enjoyed every minute here".

We'd have to decide if we wanna go on, or turn back. Much as we wanted to move on, we knew we would not have enough time. Reluctantly we turned back, but not before taking a good long rest to take in the beautiful views to our fill.

On returning to our car, we found a piece of note inserted into the side window:

We were not really sure if someone's playing a joke on us, but I emailed the person anyway, and turned out it wasn't a prank! We got $25 driving credited into our account, for taking the car to such a cool place. Sweet!

Reward of the day:

[To be Continued...]

Hot Hot Hot!

2009-07-28T15:23:00.000-07:00

Its getting hotter and hotter each day. Oh boy, I feel like soaking myself in ice cold water. We've been hit by a terrible heat wave, with temperatures expected to reach triple digits ie. 100F or 38C.

I feel like I am back in SG, though its still dry here, not humid. Its so bad that we'd wait for the sun to go down before we go home. Worse, no aircon in our apartment. And fans are out of stock everywhere! This is indeed a crisis. I suspect I may have to do the dance ritual for rain soon, if this continues.

Pray hard for me, and stay cool, my friends.

Going to the sun...

2009-07-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

A Russian, an American, and a Blonde were talking one day.

The Russian said, "We were the first in space!"

The American said, "We were the first on the moon!"

The Blonde said, "So what? We're going to be the first on the sun!"

The Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads. "You can't land on the sun, you idiot! You'll burn up!" said the Russian.

To which the Blonde replied, "We're not stupid, you know. We're going at night!"

Lake Serene (2009.07.03)

2009-07-22T14:20:00.000-07:00

Oh boy, we couldn't get enough of the last hike at Mt Rainier. This time, we decided to check out Lake Serene, in Snoqualmie Park, with a shorter drive, about 1+ hr drive from Seattle.

We went to the same French bakery again (their sandwich and croissants are super-delicious!) to pack our lunch, and we set off. Reached at 9:30am, changed into our hiking boots, and started our hike.

It was a really really really long hike. Many uphills, many switchbacks, many stairs. We ran out of breath several times, had to stop and pant our lungs out. Oh dear, is age catching up with us? Or is this the toughest hike of my life? I wondered.

Start of our hike:

More climbs, as you can see, we were starting to pant real hard.

We were getting impatient, the stairs seemed endless. A guy was coming down, listening to his ipod. We stopped him.
"How much further to go?", I asked, in between breaths.
"Well, not much, I would say, about a mile left".
I looked at him, wide-eyed. Is he serious? I thought we were reaching soon.

I wasn't convinced, had to seek a second opinion. Shortly, 2 elderly men with their trekking poles crossed our paths. We posed the same question.

"Probably another mile or 2 more, you are probably at 75%", one of them confirmed.
"Hur? I thought we're already at 90%", my heart sank.
"Well, 80%", the other guy smiled.

They wished us luck, and we continued our journey. At one point, we rested on some rock just before climbing up another flight of stairs. A group of hikers came down, greeted us.
"Very tired," I replied.
"This is the last stairs you're gonna climb", one of them comforted.
"Really?", That rekindled my energy.
"There's alot of rocks though," warned the other, "but its worth it".
Encouraged, we mustered up all our strength and determination we had left, and pressed on.

Nearing target..

And there she is... We were overcome with an immediate sense of tranquility, quiet and at peace with ourselves totally, as we stood admiring at her beauty. Everything was so still as if time seemed to have stopped moving here. Honestly, the pictures we took couldn't do justice to her. It's so hard to describe the exact feelings at that time, its like watching a live concert vs from a television, if you know what I mean. Its a totally different kind of experience.

We had our lunch, rested for an hour here, before descending.
By this time, the soreness/pain of our feet had intensified, especially our toes. Downhill was tougher, IMHO, without any poles to aid. I can feel the impact of each drop on my knees. Despite these, we made another turn to check out the Bridal Veils Falls which was formed from the waters of this lake.

Towards the end of the trail, my feet was very shaken and had problems keeping to a straight path. Never had I experienced this phenomenon before. I guessed we would need to keep off hiking for a couple of weeks, while we recover from the sore legs, feet and toes, one of which is still bruised now.

Lake Serene
Round-trip: 8miles
Elevation gain: 2000ft
High Point: 2550ft

Did I break my record for the longest hike of my life?

This is not a squirrel. I think its more like a chipmunk. Correct me if I am wrong. It was running around trying to catch scraps of food as we were eating our lunch. Sigh, spoiled by humans.