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I’ve been a complete digital photography convert for the last three years. Then one day I found the old mechanical camera my dad gave me in the drawer, with some film still left in it. I snapped a few pictures around house, feeling nostalgic and odd with heavy body, heavy mechanical clinks of the shutter – much louder and more authentic than even the digital SLR.

And a few weeks later, I finally got around to the one-hour photo place to get it developed.

The whole experience is so different from digital. It is planning and anticipation to digital’s instant gratification. The lightings are delibrate, the angles are carefully planned. Everyone poses for the pictures. There’s a sense of stillness, a touch of elegance in the pictures.

Then, You have to wait for a while to see how the pictures look. It is often long after the vacation or holiday gathering has ended. It natually extends the vacation or holiday when friends and family get to finally check out the pictures – relive the experience and reminisce the happiness.

I hope some company will find some ways to extend the life of film photography, not just for professionals, but also for average people like us. Digital is so convenient. But we have lost a piece of experience in the waiting and anticipation. It is like email, we can live without it. However, a part of me will forever miss those handwritten notes and letters of our youth.

English is a frustrating language. For example, all the pronouns have plural form except “you”. So people usually have to say “you guys”, “the three of you”, or “you’all” to clarify.
Chinese is much easier. All the pronouns become plural by taking on a common suffix .

This year, for the first time US is hosting the Badminton World Championship. So when Qing told me this, I found there’s no excuse not to move my butt over there to take a look – I’m so glad I did!
The IBF’05 Championship is hosted in Anaheim stadium – a great facility meticulously adapted to the badminton events. For example, all the entrance hang heavy double wool curtain to prevent unwanted draft from entering the center court. Then of course there’re lots of police cars and security checks, the usual American hospitality.
Badminton is very popular in California, even then, it is nothing like football or basketball. So my friends and I can still enjoy the luxury of strolling to the venue half an hour earlier and get the best seats for only $40 a piece. Those are nice seats, only about 10 meters from the court!
The afternoon events are 5 semifinal games in Men’s single, Woman’s single and Mixed double. All are really great games. The last event, the semifinal between Lin Dan of China and Peter Gade of Denmark is the pinacle of the afternoon. I’ve never seem such unity of Chinese people in US, supporting the Chinese team. It’s a very well played and well balanced game, with Lin Dan’s familiar power-play style and Peter Gade’s surprising net-play finess and overall tenacity. The game lasted three sets and more than two hours, with the whole stadium boiling through-out all three sets. In another semi-final, Taufik of Indonesia beat Li Chong Wei of Malasia with his superb control and smoothness, despite my cheering for the young Malai player.
On the way out, I took a picture with some members of the Chinese team (Fu Haifeng and Sang Yang):

It’s not a typo. It is the building title of the old Tsinghua 科学馆 – on the west wing-side of the 大礼堂.

You can see it is a “v” instead of “u” in the title. When I was there we used to do Physics experiments in that building. I was very curious about the spelling and too shy to ask the English teacher – what if he doesn’t know about it. I was also a bit embarrassed to advertise this to the people outside the University – what if it is a typo.
Anyway, the typo theory doesn’t hold well because I know this group of buildings are the original Tsinhua buildings designed by the Americans. If you don’t know already, Tsinghua was “donated” by the Americans using our (Qing empire) money. The empire had done too many of those embarrasing things in the early 1900 that the last emperor was over-thrown the year Tsinghua was built.
It was until after I left school, about 8 years ago that I finally solved this little puzzle. I start to see “v” used much more often in ancient English and suddenly realized that “w” was pronouced as “double-you” instead of “double-vee”. It’s all clear, “v” was the “u” in the old days, there wasn’t the letter “u” even less than 200 years ago.

I’ve been in China for two weeks. First in Beijing, then Hangzhou.
Everytime I went back to China, there’re big changes. This time is no exception. Tremendous wealth has been created in the last a few years, especially in big cities in coastal area. The emerging upper middle class is becoming much wealthier, to the point of running out of things to buy. Automobiles of all makes and models are jamming the streets and parking lots. Highend apartment buildings and even luxurious houses and townhouses are mushrooming around town.
The problem with only a few percentages of elite class getting richer is that the overall living standard can ‘t really keep up with them just yet. It also creates potentially dangerous social unrest with the widening of the wealth gap.

The cleanup project starts to pay off. I found many interesting small items such as the missing manicure tool Qing’s been looking for and three unused gift cards.
Technology advancements make many things obsolete, such as all the paper maps we’ve collected over the years. Overall, I’ve removed three big boxes of paper waste.

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Qing left for Hangzhou yesterday. Qing had the foresight of asking me to set up this blog so that I have things to do. In fact I have a number of projects that I’m going to get to in the next a few weeks. Here is a few:

Putting things in order around the house: I plan to attack one room at a time. Throw out stuffs as much as I can. And for things I’m not sure of, I’ll box them up.
Games: Since last time I checked, there are already two Myst sequels out. Myst is my favorite francise. I’m going to catch up before the upcoming Myst 5 becomes old news.
BBQ: I have to get ready for hosting a BBQ at 7/16.

We visited Sedona over the Memorial Day weekend. It is a great place surrounded by the very unusual scenary red rocks formations under the blue sky. Sedona is a small city with 18,000 people. But it has a great artists community and has one of the highest per capita number of galleries.
We stayed in Phoenix at the Scottsdale resort and conference center, which is two hours drive from Sedona.