Please make up your mind!!!

Winter finally is here. It started yesterday.
It was freezing cold yesterday and it seems like Autumn has done with her job and give out the position to Mr. Winter. Winter season perhaps just give people another reason to go shopping for winter clothing. Yeahh, I did some shopping for my winter collection way before Mr. Winter has arrived. Not a lot, cause' I still need to save bucks for next week Thanksgiving's HUGE SALE! wow~ I can't really wait for that. I'm extremely excitedly exuberant about it.

After shopping talks, let's get back to some serious issue. Should I work or go travel in the summer? As I told myself as well as my dad, the reason I insisted to go travel was most of my friends are going back to their country for summer holiday. Chances are, I don't have to spend that much if I have someone to provide me with accommodation and probably food. Therefore, all I have to take care of is my flight tickets and miscellaneous expenses. Really! Money is one of the biggest temptation for me to work as a sale intern for V Co. The amount of money that the other interns earned was tremendously astonishing. I never thought that we can be able to make such big amount of money in 3 months. How amazing!?

But the thing is, am I willing to work that hard for it? Or do I want to pursue my dream to explore my Asia Voyage? Because I may not have the chance to complete this exploration after next year summer. I'll be graduating next year Fall and most probably I'll start looking for a job and hopefully I'll get a job here. Once I have a job, I don't think I'll have summer holiday as other college kids do. Job is always one of the barriers to get a kick start to do whatever you want to do. Indeed, they will be a heavier burden place down on your shoulder once you start working. The responsibility that you are carrying is just different. You may not have the guts to challenge your boss as you do to your college's professors because you may get fired and when he tells bad about you, I'm sorry, your future career is partially done. It will be more difficult to search for another job due to your previous history.

In contrary, where else in this world I could earn roughly $10k in 3 months? Sounds ridiculous to people at around my age, really! But I could expand my vision of traveling to different countries that I haven't been to before. The most important thing is I could accomplish my exploration and enhance my knowledge on tea in China, Taiwan & Japan. Tea is part of my life and my life is imperfect without the existence of tea. All I want to do is to indulge myself into the realm of tea. My inspiration, motivation, and determination are come from the indulgence of tea - the day started to learn to drink tea. As I told my friends that I'll literally go crazy if I ever in tea farms because that's where I'm belong to.

What a tea fanatic I am....

Work or travel?? Which path should I take?

Perfectionism makes my life perfectionistly ordinary!

Washington DC is somehow a very nice and memorable place to visit for ONLY tourists. People who live there hate walking around DC and even driving to DC. Because there are not many packing spaces and the traffic is terribly horrible especially during rush hours. My uncle and my aunt brought me to DC and unfortunately they've got a fine ticket which costs $100. Ouchh! Because we didn't know that we can't park there anymore after 4pm.

My uncle and I have something in common. Probably I've got this from him. We both like taking photos, not just taking photo of us but beautiful scenes. I like taking photo from different angle and see how does this building look differently from a several different angles. Just like life, people may somehow find they way out of troubles by seeing things from a different angle. Photos are the same. The original building may not looking good, but if you know how to snap it by the side. It looks fantastically gorgeous on my camera. Dang it, I need to get a SLR Canon. =P No money right now.

Walking alone again in DC was great. I don't have to create conversation with my uncle and aunt since I'm not together with them. All I have to do was just follow my heart and do what I like. Sometimes, I'll do stupid thing if I'm alone all by myself. Such as, making a circle inside the museum and I have no idea why did I do that. I worried what if someone notice what I've done. Loitering?!

I enjoyed walking and walking by myself because I can observe what people do in those kind of tourism places. I saw parents talking to their children and explaining why were they walking around Lincoln Memorial under the HOT sun. There were also parents yelling and screaming at their children, lecturing, arguing, staring at their children. I saw couples hugging and kissing in the middle of White House. I saw so-called professional photographer taking good angle of photos - that's why I always approach them for helping me to take photos. I saw people jogging, running, playing baseball and cycling. I saw people slacking on the bench and talking to whoever pass by them. I saw people with Tuxedo walking around with their working laptop bags. I saw people from numerous of countries - 85% dark chocolate, 75% dark chocolate, 55% chocolate, half & half dark and milk chocolate and very milk chocolate. The melting pot of everything.

I really enjoy seeing all these diversity. I enjoy listening to different people speaking different accent of English.

Isn't fascinating?

The only thing I hate traveling by myself is I don't have a friend to take photo with me. =(

Tremendous Travel TIPS***

~ Prepare a composition book as your travel journal
This would probably help you with sticking all your travel pass, tickets,
receipts and any other momentos which you love to keep.

~ Hotel Rate Watch
People, you gonna check with the hotel rates approximately once in every 2 days
because hotel rates can be changes anytime. When you know the rate has been
reduced,you may cancel the first time and make a new reservation.

~ Archive Articles
You should save all your travel stories as electronic files. Whenever you find any
place that you would love to visit just save everything of that particular place in
Word document.

~ Don't forget your iPod - MUSIC
While you are waiting for the next flight or train, you may have the urge craving
for music. Please make sure you'll have your MP3 with you while you are traveling.

...... and, what else?
Last, but not least..

~ Write HOME!
Do inculcate a habit of getting postcards wherever you travel. Your friends and
family would love to know where the heck are you while you are having tons of fun
and they are still stuck at their same old/dull place. =)

杭州 - 茶城

天啊~我本来只是想找一找中国杭州一些青年旅舍的相关资料，后来却忍不住要去了解一下杭州茶馆茶楼茶坊茶舍一事。结果没想谷歌地图一打开，杭州的茶馆果然是遍及全城，简直就是每一条大街，每一条小巷统统都是充满着与茶有关的东西。我心里在想，我到底要花多少时间才能逛完所有的茶楼？

还有，我已经说过，除非我不去中国，要不然我非要去杭州西湖的龙井村龙井问茶去！不止，我还要去附近的中国茶叶博物馆看一看。

A marvelous trip started to begin ....... HERE!

Out of a sudden, I had this formidable desire and urge to have a tour around Asian countries. This mind-blowing thought began in last year Fall semester while I was still half way through suffering with my SPA - Sensation & Perception (Frankly, I never like this class, not to be mean). In fact, my jealousy towards my cousin who born in United Kingdom had been rooted intensely in my heart since 2006. Once she done with her bachelor in Physical Therapy, she decided to leave UK and travel around the world for A YEAR.

This was greatly astonishing! I still remembered the day we went out together and bought a backpacking bag in Liverpool. Her out-going, daring and adventurous personality is what I always looking for. And yeah, I adore her a lot.

Since college life is somehow boring for me mainly because of my major - psychology as well as my schedule is usually amazingly FULL. Therefore, the idea of traveling around Asian countries for the whole entire summer could be just easily appeared on my mind. I'm exceedingly confidence with this trip because I understand my parents won't against it and they might support me mentality as well as financially. Apart from that, UCO has quite an amount of international students and I know a couple of them quite well. So, going to visit their countries might not be a problem.

I decided to take this challenge all by myself in the very first place. But so happen that there's someone called Yida, a friend from China. He's a travel freak too. There was no way that he could resist this Asian tour temptation when I told him about my summer plan in 2010. Also, one of his American friend decided to join us as well. And yeah, I have companies for this magnificent voyage !

Finally we had our first official discussion on our voyage yesterday. Our first station is gonna be in China - his hometown!

We are planning to go
- Hong Kong
- HangZhou (I'll definitely be there for LongJing Tea!)
- Hunan
- GuiZhou (Yida's hometown)
- Beijing
- Shanghai
- Tibet
- Sichuan, and may be a few places more.

This Asian Voyage will be heading to Vietnam, Japan, and Taiwan as well.

International Photographer

Life is somehow dull and tasteless when you are not doing something that you are keen to or things that you enjoy doing it. Unfortunately, there are countless people do not aware of their interests as well as the things they enjoy doing the most. This is called pathetic! If you do bring up a question and ask, "Hello, people! Do you know what are you doing right now?", "Do you like what you are doing right now?". Most probably, you will get a tons of "NO".
....or may be "I don't know" (That would be the saddest part of all! I mean, how would you not know what is your purpose in life?)

Today, I got stunned when a guy told me that he has gone for 2 years because he has been to 24 countries for a couple of years. He is an international photographer. Not to be exaggerated, I Lurvvveee his job!!! Sorry that I have to say "I don't know" why do I like to go traveling around. No matter where, I'll just go without any further consideration. Probably I might want to have a better understanding of others' life, cultural backgrounds and daily practices. I think to me, this is so LIFE and there is no where that you can actually learn the life of others. I just simply love the diversity of the world. Everything is different in their unique way. The uniqueness that delighted me always. I find the uniqueness of the world is very fascinating and making me very exuberant.

When he told me about his job and I literally ask myself, what the heck am I doing here? How could you be more of yourself if you are just gonna stay here and do nothing. People tell me life likes this and no choice you might have to stuck it here because this is life. But I denied it intensely. Everyone has their choice of freedom. It depends how you make up your choice to get your freedom. Do not get affected by family members and peers easily or somehow negatively. Well, just want to advocate to whoever is reading this - BE YOURSELF!

I think being an international photographer is the best/awesome/coolest job ever. Can you imagine you telling your friends, "Owh, my dad is an international photographer and he has been to every single place of the world. He is able to speak more than 40 different languages." Wow wow wow... too much too much...

Traveling is somehow tiring but it worth it after all.


I think I'm just way too far to be an international photographer, hmmm...

Angle Fire Ski Valley

5 of us decided to get a t-shirt from Angle Fire as a souvenir and thus this is what I've got from the souvenir shop. Crap! I've got the most expensive stuff among 5 of us. Actually, I wanted to get the t-shirt with the wording "Ski Bum" which fit me a lot according to Mr. Benjamin. But the overall looking of the short isn't that attractive. Therefore, this is what I've got!!! ..... and I like it very much! =)

I bought this three badges from Angle Fire Ski Valley!
..... Hmmm, bad habit influenced by Leo Club, still devoted to badges!

In a nutshell, Angle Fire Ski Valley is such a fantastic place for those who loves to go skiing and snowboarding as their hobbies. They have valleys for beginner level until professional level. Besides, they also have easy route, intermediate route and professional route. Unfortunately, we only tried their easy route which consists of beginner section, intermediate section and an advanced section. We only had 2 days to ski at Angle Fire because we forgot about the ski date. Anyways, I'm addicted to skiing.
Just call me a Ski Bum then! *wink


Kindly visit this website if you wanna know more about the ski valley that I've just came back,
http://www.angelfireresort.com/winter/