Wish you a blessed Christmas

Today, I spent my Christmas first time overseas. No, there was no white, romantic Christmas here which was good since traveling would be a hassle. Instead, we had a calm and almost warm Christmas.

I went to work half-day on Dec 24 and tried to get an afternoon nap as I wanted to attend the midnight mass service at Saints Philip and James Church. I tossed for about 15 minutes before giving up and watched TV instead.

Street in In the evening, I arranged with Jingshi to take pictures of Christmas light up at intersection of Chestnut Avenue and 34thHampden. Only at this block could you see every house decorated with lights and Christmas decorations. It has become a tourist attraction at this time of the year to see the light ups. Traffic came to a crawl as many cars slowed to take pictures and pedestrians covers the walkway on both sides of the street. Snowman, The Grinch, reindeer, candy sticks etc were out on display.

I overheard a conversation between an owner of the houses and a sightseer that the electrical bill was expensive but she rather sacrificed and spread Christmas cheers. What a noble spirit!

Thereafter, I went to the midnight mass where they had a special half-an-hour of carols. The choir and music were good. After mass, I took pictures of the church decorations, especially the Nativity scene which is the reason we celebrate Christ-mass (celebration of Jesus' birth).

The walk back to my apartment was peaceful and silent like the carol, Silent Night and I contemplated on the meaning of Christmas. I called back home to wish my family a blessed Christmas and opened a gift.

Christmas was spent cooking lunch for Eduardo and family. I grilled and baked pork loins which I marinated with three separate recipes on Sunday night. I also served stir-fried Shanghai cabbage with shrimp, fried sweet potato fries and white radish red dates with wolf berries soup.

My boss, Prof. August invited the 'lonely' post-docs for a dinner at his home. I had red and white wine, chicken, salad and baked potatoes, followed by dessert.

It had been an eventful Christmas here and pray for peace to reign in the hearts of men!

Hampden Christmas pictures.

The Gift by Richard Paul Evans

After a hiatus of not reading novels, I picked up a book entitled 'The Gift' which had an attractive cover. It had my favorite color and a beautifully wrapped gift box.

I woke up at 2a.m. this morning and could not get back to sleep. So, I decided to finish this novel revolving around the main character, Nathan Hurst. He was carrying emotional baggage from his past. At Denver airport where planes were grounded due to a snow storm, an act of kindness to Addison Park and her children changed his life. He discovered her son's gift of healing which Addison tried to hide. As more people discovered about this gift, Nathan's and Addison's lives intertwined.

A touching book on love and making life choices. I had to dry my tears after reading.

Talking about gifts, I hand-delivered greeting cards to my colleagues this week. I observed that they were eager to open up the cards upon receiving them. People still find the suspense of getting a greeting card. If a small card could lighten up their day, imagine what greater joy others would have when you share your gifts of time, companionship and many other gifts, not only during Christmas season but everyday of your life.

A Season to Reflect

19 days to a brand new year.
346 days had past, leaving memories of laughters and tears.

While looking ahead to new adventures and making resolutions,
also reminiscence on friend and family relations.

Tis the season to buy gifts and send out greeting cards,
loved ones receiving them will have warmth and joy in their hearts.

Washington Monument light-up

On Thursday Dec 6, there was the annual light up of Baltimore's Washington Monument at Mount Vernon. This is not to be confused with the Washington Monument at D.C. although both were designed by Robert Mills.

Visitors to the 178 feet (54 m) monument can climb 228 steps to the top for an excellent aerial view of Baltimore city and obtain information on George Washington and construction of the monument at the ground floor museum.

Shortly before 7 pm, the mayor of Baltimore, Sheila Dixon, gave a rousing speech and flipped the switch, lighting up the monument and triggering the fireworks display.

For the sake of taking pictures, I took off my right glove. My hand was numbed from the bitter cold that night. Without a tripod, I had to hold my breath to minimize movement for longer exposure (1/10 s) .

Traffic was re-routed for this event. Among three of us who had arranged to watch the fireworks, I was the only one who caught it since Eduardo and Jianshi could not find parking lots. They arrived at 7.20 pm, long after the fireworks had extinguished and workers were removing the road blocks. To make things better, I treated them to Korean food at Jong Kak Restaurant at the intersection of Charles St and 20th St.

Cute egg-themed kitchen gadgets

The collection of egg-themed kitchen gadgets began in 2003 when I bought an egg-shaped hour glass in Australia. At that time, I did not think of collecting them since I only saw the hour glass.

While passing by the kitchen section of Sears at WhiteMarsh in 2005, I saw the egg whisk and it dawned on me that there were other similar gadgets. I started to look out for them whenever I was near to any kitchen section and thus began my collection of egg-themed kitchen gadgets.

The pan and spatula were bought from Su Casa in Fells Point. I also checked out the website on the packing and discovered that these interesting and cute gadgets were sold by MSC International. Other cool gadgets included Mr Potato Brush, Carrot Peeler and animal-shaped ice cream scoops. I love their creativity and ingenuity of turning simple ordinary things into works of arts.

Ranking of my photo albums on Webshots

I created my Webshots account (littlesaul) on March 21, 2006 to share my travel pictures online with friends and family back home. My initial idea was to upload every single picture so that I had backup of all my pictures online. In addition, I had saved them on my 100Gb external hard disk.

Charles once mentioned that he browsed through the majority of pictures in an album and clicked on those that caught his attention. This set me thinking. He suggested that I should select the best and do some editing such as cropping and changing colors before letting the world see. For me, I just simply use PictureProject which came with my Nikon D70S to do auto-enhancing. The software usually brightens and sharpens my pictures. He also recommended to burn CDs on top of storing pictures in my hard disk.

As time passed, I set for myself a limit to upload a maximum of 45 pictures per album. This meant making decisions to include only those which I wanted to tell a story or my point of view. So far, two categories which I uploaded my albums are ranked while the rest have this annotation "see the top 1000 members in this category". In outdoors, I am ranked 6956 out of 16,132 members and in fall scenic, my rank is 857 out of 14,353 members.

I get a kick out of seeing my works noticed. This definitely motivate me to improve on my capturing skill which reminds me of a book I bought on all I need to know on digital photography. I will need to set aside some time to go through it.