Pictures from the air!!! Mt. St. Hellen And Columbia River!!!
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Yesterday was my third full day in NYC. It was also the first day that I don’t have to work in NYC. And on top of that it was Good Friday. The day started pretty late after sleeping in. Since we were staying near Madison Park in The MAve Hotel, which btw reminds me of the hotel in Paris France. Why? Because of it’s small size in the hotel room and the modern hotel room design. It even use a similar RFID door opening system. Cool huh? So in the morning (more or less Noon time), after the complimentary non-existing hotel breakfast, we went back for a to Madison Park for a walk also to take some pictures more pictures of the flat iron building. Afterward, we stopped by the Museum of Sex. Yes it sounds really bad/good. But in reality, it was a big waste of money. Yes… the 5 minute gallery of history of condom is interesting, however, after that it was all pretty boring and could probably got most of the gallery items from a store like Lovers. After the walk around the Madison Park area, we grabbed our stuff and move to our new location. For this weekend, we are staying in a studio apartment 2 blocks from Central Park. It is very nice even with a small balcony on the top floor of this old building. The place is very small but it does have a kitchen. And the price was good relative to the hotel in the near by area. For lunch, Whole Foods. Got some salad from Whole Food and ate on the bench of Central park while we people and dog watched. Yep, since it was Good Friday, we saw so many people. Around 5 we went to MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), since it is Friday after 4 it is free to enter. Oh my, the line was super long, however, it went through pretty quick and we were able to go in. We saw almost everything except for the Tim Burton exhibit. After MoMA, we met up with some friends of Vicky and had a interesting Bday dinner at a cheap Thai place. The food was crappy, but the company was great. They even said that I don’t sound like I am from Seattle. They said that they thought I was a New Yorker… I guess that is a good thing right? So after dinner around 10:45pm we decide to catch the last elevator up the Rockefeller Center Tower. We ran few blocks from the restaurant near MoMA to Rockefeller center and we thought we were late, but we were not the last. we got our tickets and got to the top. At the check in, the attendant told us, we just help break their entry record. Yes… with our help we broke their attendance record of 150,000 people in a day. Wow… And with the beautiful view of New York… that concluded another wonderful day in NYC. Enjoy the pictures.  Man near Madison Park  Flat Iron Building  Central Park  Towers Near Columbus Circle  Flowers Near Columbus Circle  Central Park  Imagine  From Central Park  From Central Park  Bench in Central Park  LOVE  Tim Burton Exhibit  Living Art in MoMA  View from top of the Rock with Min  Another view from top of the Rock  Time Square Well, it is day 2 of CTIA in Las Vegas, let me recap my experiences from yesterday. The day started with meeting up with Xavier for breakfast. We had a simple breakfast at MacD’s, but I have to say this McDonald has the look and feel of a coffee shop. It was really interesting. We then walked to the convention center to get my ID and head toward the Keynote. As we were headed toward the keynote, we ran into couple of Google Androids.
The keynote was ok, a little dry, but you get to learn a bit about the common trend
CTIA Day One Keynote After the keynote we attending the series of classes on backhaul technology for the future wireless systems. I’ve learned alot and picked up a few new topics to research. (e.g. IEEE 1588 , carrier ethernet, vendor such as Dragonwave) After we enjoyed our free lunch and can’t listen to any more seminars, we headed down to the show floor. It’s pretty exciting to see all the different vendors, however, it was not what I expected. I was expecting alot more.. but it was very very few consumer high lights that I’ve found. Few notes, Nokia was trying to push for their email service, which was lame. Why would I get email from nokia? But what was cool was nokia’s bluetooth headphones!!! no no not the one ear kind, the bluetooth stereo headphones!!! The supersonic is the first “4G” aka WiMax phone out there. It is spec’ed with a pretty high megapixel camera and it also has a front camera too… so video conferencing on the go? Neat!
HTC EVO 4G (aka Supersonic) After the show, we met up with some contractor friends for a show and dinner. Thanks Ryan and Sam!!! Yes, Zumanity was shocking and amazing. When Ryan said, yeah meet us at New York New York for a Cirque du Soleil show called Zumanity, I thought oh ok… that should be fun. I’ve never been to a Cirque du Soleil show and I thought this one was the same PG rated show that you can see in Seattle. Oh… was I in shocked!!! It was a good show!!! After dinner and show I walked 3 miles back to my hotel and called it a night. Fun huh…
Vegas Strip at night
Paris?
France National Library?
Bellagio Hotel Good Morning, Today is CTIA day one. It is pretty exciting. I am staying at a pretty nice hotel in Vegas. Even though it doesn’t have a casino in the hotel, which is a bit strange for vegas, but it is a suite, with a living room kitchen and even a hot tub. All that room for myself. So getting ready now, then breakfast and then head over to the keynote speaker presentation.
An interesting thing happened while I was going through security. While I was waiting for my bag, he person next to me was getting his bag checked by TSA. He said, “it’s phones in there, can you check them without taking them out, our cover them up while you check. They are confidental!!!” Oh really? What does that mean? Does he mean that he is taking a brand new secret phone to CTIA?? Exciting !!!! Enjoy the picture!!!
Well.. for the next few days.. I am going to try to back fill my blog post with events from my France trip. After the blog is complete I will post the pictures on my blog and on Facebook. Stay tuned!!! With my school done and just work left… during my travel I came up with two new ideas… 1) A book…. a travel guide for photographers, maybe for Paris or even just for Seattle. 2) an invention for making the bed. hummm.. I wonder if I can accomplish part of this before 2011. Today was a Museum day. It is our second day with the museum pass and our second to last day in Paris and France. Inside Orsay it was pretty awesome, I was amazed to see the real version of a painting that my parents have at their place. I have to say Orsay was an interesting art museum. After a few hours it was time to move on. We Walk across the pedestrian bridge and on to Louvre park. Along the way, I took some very good black and white stair pictures of the pedestrian bridge. I’ve also took some more pictures of the tower. From there we walked along Champs Elysees toward the Arc De Triomphe. We stopped by a small side street greek food restaurant and hand lunch. The owner was interesting, when we told him that we were from Washington state in the US, he says oh… I have a relative in Washington DC. I guess, that is a common mistake. DC and Washington state are not the same Afterward, Vicky spent some time shopping on Champs Elysees while I just people watched and got some interesting street photo. From there we marched on toward Arc De Triomphe. It was pretty funny, we could not find the tunnel to get across to the arc, but when we finally do get there, there was a 30-40 minutes line… however no waiting with museum pass .. yeah!!! The steps going up to the top of the arc was long but worth it. The view on top was great!!! The Louvre also had a long line, but with the museum pass… no line!!! yeah!!! Once again, people every where especially all the famous paintings and exhibits. After the Louvre, it was time for dinner. We bought some things at the super marche next to the hotel, however, I thought it was a good idea to get some cheap French Chinese food. Well, it was not cheap and the food was not good at all… another learning experience. So Tomorrow.. is new years eve… and my last day in Paris.
So today started off pretty late, I guess I am pretty tired from all the long nights from previous days, but it is the beginning of a new week and the beginning of my last week in France. Today started with my panic attempts to access the internet to finish my work timesheet. With all this traveling, I forgot that I still need to fill out a vacation time card for work. So, I ended up at the local McDonald trying to use their free internet to VPN back to our office to complete my time card. Yes for some reason our internet did not work in our hotel. Amazingly, right after finishing my time card, we discovered that there is an Air France Office nearby. We’ve been here for a few days and there is an Air France office just right next to where we were staying, AMAZING!! Since we have not gotten our luggage yet, we decided to go and see if they can help us. After around 20 minutes of waiting and talking to the reps, we got our new hotel address updated in their system, and found out that they have found one of our luggage and maybe delivering it today. Woo hoo!! With that wonderful news, we help our friends drag their luggages across Paris to our new hotel. Our new hotel is a bit nicer, it even have an RFID key for opening room doors. How cool huh? However, the location of the new hotel is a bit farther than the previous location, but it is still very close to the metro. Once we all checked in, we decided to go for another city bicycle ride around Paris. Oh, I just love riding bikes around Paris!!! This time, we rode to the Picasa museum and the Victor Hugo’s House. Unfortunately the Picasa Museum is closed until 2012 and all other museums are closed for Monday!!! 
We parked our bikes and stopped for lunch at the Cafe Hugo. Yumm Yumm… Beef and Carrots!!
Victor Hugo’s House.
 After a short break we decide to get another bike and ride to Pompidou center. However, I ended up getting a bad bike and unable to return it properly so I was not able to check out another bike. My friends ended up pushing their bikes along the side walk all the way to the pumpadu center.
 sorry guys…
More stairs!!! This is one of my favorite stairs shots.
After a short visit around the Pompidou center, I got a new bike (paid another 3 euros) and rode to the islands to have some ice cream with my friends at the Berthillon ice cream shop. Yummy!!! They have, supposedly, the best ice cream in Paris. So on a cold winter day, we were having ice cream.
Xavier making Hot Chocolate!!
The shops on this street have some really interesting things.
A night view of Notre Dame de Paris, as we walked toward the near by Metro Station.
For dinner, we went to a small wine shop near Bercy. So, tonight I learned that you can not call red wines smooth, you have to describe the wine as fruity or not so fruity… so many things to learn about drinking wine.
Sausages and beans.
Duck breast salad.
After our wonderful dinner, Xavier took us to a night stroll near the France National Library.
and more “stairs” pictures
 
After we finally returned to our new hotel, half of our luggage was waiting for us!!! YEAH!!!! However, the other 1/2, my half is still missing!!!… so far I have travelled in the same clothe for 7 days. Oh don’t worry, I do wash them nightly
. Tomorrow: Versailles
It is Sunday today, not much going on, so I will just start with some of today’s highlights. First, Bastille market!!! It’s amazingly cool, it is like the French Market in New Orleans or the Taiwanese open air market in Taiwan. It’s pretty awesome with all the fresh food and goods. It really makes me want to buy some food and cook. Unfortunately we do not have a kitchen
Look!!! it’s actually a fish bowl with gold fish on his head!!!
Churros … freshly made… much better than Costco churros!!!
Lunch … French McDee’s. uh.. they are actually not very good.
 After lunch, took the metro to met up with our friends Xavier (aka French guy) and Huey. From there we took the RER (the regional rail) to a French outdoor outlet. Since my luggage hasn’t arrived yet, I decided to get a new shirt while I am here. I bought a nice purpose dress shirt with french cuffs and chinese knot cufflinks!!!
Afterward, since we were so close to Disney Land Paris, we decide to visit the Disney Village. From the short visit there, I get the feeling, Disney Land is more like American Land, everything there is about the American and Disney culture.
Bam!!!
 After our short visit at the Disney village, we decided to head back to Paris for dinner. When we returned to our hotel, we walked out to the beautiful street of Paris and found Leon’s. It is a restaurant that serves mussels. What we did not know is, Sunday night is all you can eat mussel night!!!… Yep after 3 rounds of mussels, I was super super full… so good … so yummy!!!
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