Luray Caverns, Virginia

This was last year's trip to Luray Caverns, Virginia after I had recovered the pictures from my crashed laptop.

Upon entering the cavern, the cool and moist air hit you like a blanket. Lights were strategically placed to illuminate the pathway and interesting natural wonders of stalactites, stalagmites and columns. A way to differentiate between stalactites and stalagmites is a stalacTite hangs from the top like capitalized T and a stalagMite has two mounds protruding from the ground like capitalized M.

Other formations looked like two fried eggs or shells, waves at sea, majestic draperies towering down from the cavern roof and 'frozen' waterfall. Besides different formations, there were various colors to the limestone caves where white is the color of pure calcium carbonate, red calcites contained iron, and blue and green calcites have copper minerals.

There was an underground pool in the middle of the tunnel which reflected the hanging stalactites. It had a calming effect on me. At the last part, there was a wishing pond where the coins would be collected at the end of the year and donated to charities.

Due to the dim light condition, I had to use flashlight to capture the spectacular carvings and wonders. My battery was flat by the time I emerged from the caverns.

More Luray Caverns pictures here.

Recovering lost data

After nearly a year since my laptop crashed, Debbie informed me that her husband had recovered my data and had uploaded them onto his server.

I was glad to get back the data since I had pictures of my travel which I had not edited and family pictures. Downloading 8 gb took longer than expected since some files were corrupted and interrupted downloading. I had to manually checked which files were missing and downloaded those which were not corrupted.

Lesson 1: Always back up your files frequently.

Lesson 2: Don't give up when people who were trained in IT told you that it would be very hard and expensive to recover the data.

Thanks to Mr. Giam!

Following another car for direction

On Feb 24, Singapore International Foundation (SIF) had organized a post Chinese New Year gathering in Virginia. There were two rental cars and 10 people attending from Baltimore.

Due to some last minute changes, I had to drive a car and followed Wen Min's car since she had a global positioning system. This was the first time I had to follow behind some car since I would plan my route before going anywhere.

I hated leaving only a car space between us on the highway, so I left two to three spaces. Along the one hour odd journey, there were intervening cars obstructing my view where I struggled to ensure we were still in the right direction.

My passengers also complained that my overtaking was not smooth initially which I made a mental note and overtook smoothly.

The last part of the drive along D.C. was tricky as there were many turns at short distances. I had vague memory of the direction because I was concentrating on following, rather than constructing mental road map.

We arrived in one-piece at the cafe. The food was not superb but the company was. There were performances put up by young Singaporeans and I was picked to play 'Who is smarter than a fifth grader'.

I did not have to drive on the journey back since I hopped onto Wen Min's car. I only had the slightest memory to get back to 295.

Snowboarding Part II

After recovering from countless falls from my last snowboarding trip on Jan 19, I was determined to try it at least one more time.

I went to Liberty Mountain again on Feb 9 with my colleagues, Jianshi and Vladimir, together with his wife, Dijana and a new Singaporean friend I made, Charlene.

Because we did not have to rent a car, we reached there around 1pm. As I had lost my previous ticket, I could not get a mountain pass that day. If I had the mountain pass, this trip would be free for me. On hindsight, it was better that I did not get it since this winter season was coming to an end. I would rather utilize the pass for a full season. The cheaper alternative to renting the gears and getting a lift pass was to pay $77 for a lesson again.

I thought it would be a waste of time but I was proven wrong. Charlene and I joined a group taught by James Abbey. Since he had started with the group, he briefed on what we had missed. Sometime later, another person joined us and he patiently repeated the lesson to her all over again.

Compared to my first snowboard instructor and him, they were miles apart. James was professional to go around each person to check that our shoes were fitted snugly to the snowboard. He demonstrated alternative placement of the free foot. Now, I found I could move faster and freer, placing my free foot on the toe side than heel side of the board. He also corrected our individual mistakes by observing us one at a time.

I also learnt from him how to stop the helicopter effect where there was changing in the leading legs upon slowing down. The trick was to continue to shift my weight onto the same leg, which in my case was the right.

After one and half hour of lesson, I was ready to practice more. This time, I came prepared for falling. My secret weapons were wrist guard and two sponges (the type used for washing car) which I tugged into my ski pants. My jacket was large enough to cover the protruding 'bums'. The sponges really cushioned my falls.

My satisfaction came from not falling thrice while getting off from the lift and better maneuvers on the heel and toe sides.

I also thank God that my wallet was not lost when I looked down and saw that it was on my snowboard. It had dropped out of my pocket. Being a novice snowboarder, I am grateful that I did not suffer any major bodily harm where I witnessed a man falling off and injuring his right arm. He had to be escorted by a medic down the slope.

All said and done, I am looking forward to the next winter season where I visualize myself snowboarding down the hill.

Welcoming the year of the rat

This was my second Chinese New Year (CNY) spent away from home. I had no mood to celebrate since my family was not around and there was no holiday in Baltimore. In New York where there is a large Chinese community, Feb 7 was a holiday. Anyway, I spent CNY working away on my experiments.

With the addition of two Chinese colleagues to the lab in late 2007, we decided to take Wednesday morning off to watch China's CCTV countdown towards the year of the rat. Since Eastern USA is 13 hours behind China, we had to catch the program at 7am i.e. waking up at 6am to go to Jianshi's place.

I was told that the singers/performers had to pay the producer to appear on the program. That was new for me since I thought that the producer will pay artistes to sing or perform on stage. According to Jianshi, there was a large viewership in China and from overseas Chinese like us. Paying the producer is like advertising for your career.

While watching, we made some dumplings. I learnt that Northern Chinese eat dumplings while Southern Chinese eat glutinous rice balls (tang yuan) and Singaporean Chinese and Taiwanese have steamboat. Interesting!

Thereafter, we went back to work after lunch.

In the evening, I was invited to eat steamboat with a small group of Singaporeans. It felt good to speak Singlish and Teochew. We ate and chatted till 11pm. I had a whale of a time and was exhausted by the time I reached back to my apartment.

At 1am plus, I called back home to send my mum CNY greetings. I was exhausted when I hit the bed.

On Friday, Feb 8, I was invited to attend a CNY celebration at the Singapore Embassy in D.C.. I wore my suit while most of my Singaporean friends were put off by the formal attire.

There, I met a lot of familiar faces I knew from attending Cecilia's events. At the beginning of the reception, we had YuSheng, a Singaporean signature CNY dish which can be described as a Chinese raw fish salad. Auspicious greetings are said while adding spices, sauces and ingredients and mixing the salad. The tradition is to toss the higher to bring in better luck for the new year. Chinese loves auspicious stuffs.

In this new year, I am hopeful of finally publishing a paper. It will serve as my reward for my stay here.

Turning into "Super Webbed Handman"

Now that my left knee hurts when I run, the other ways of burning calories are working out on an elliptical machine, climbing up the staircase to my apartment on the tenth floor or swimming.

There is less impact on the knees while working on the elliptical machine compared to running on a treadmill. Climbing does not hurt my knee though I am careful not to aggravate my injury.

While browsing at Sports Authority, I chanced upon this pair of Speedo aquatic fitness gloves. It is different from the usual swim paddles which are not allowed in most public pools in Singapore because of safety reasons. You may hit someone with the hard plastic paddles. The fitness gloves is soft and has a flexible rubber palm for gripping and webbing for increased water resistance. I am improvising with this to swim faster and burn calories.

My obsession with burning calories or keeping my weight down started after I weighed myself recently. I thought my previous latest weight of 77kg/170 pd was due to dinner since I weighed after eating. At Jianshi's place, I weighed before and after dinner and found I could consume 2kg/4.4 pd of food. According to the Body Mass Index (BMI), I am 1 kg/2.2 pd short of being overweight. Coming from a BMI of 19 when I was around 20, I could not reconcile this latest figures.

Time to trim and burn before it is harder physically and mentally.