Pink PINK

Back to Berks and stuck in a pink house. Of course the latter was by choice. A fun spring break is necessarily met with a pile of work to do. This included two papers and a midterm to study for. However, the hours of confinement have paid off! I finished 1.5 papers and reviewed all the lectures. As a reward for myself, I went on a nice long walk.



Not too far down the road, I spotted another pink house. I thought it was cute and very much "spring-like", especially with the nice tree in front of it. The weather was absolutely gorgeous--sunny but not hot.


Continuing down the road, I saw these nice pink flowers and thought, "hey! I see a theme here!" So I took a picture of my shoes and bag as well. :)






I walked for a good two hours and passed by several shops. One of which was a flower stand and they had lovely bouquets on display



oh Spring is in the air and so is pink! Admittedly, pink isn't one of my favorite colors but I suppose there is an exception to every rule!


...read on!...

It's a Jungle out there!

I really like my sister melobelo :). And I'm glad that I was able to spend some goood quality time with her over Spring break. We did a lot of things actually--we had mini "sleep overs" and pretended to be sushi (I was the rice and she was the eel); we watched The Princess and the Frog and Ponyo (multiple times); played Wii together. Fun


This is us on our hike to Point Pinole. We actually got lost along the way. Ahh the blind leading the blind. She said that she had gone on the trail several times so we veered from the path that our parents were taking and decided to roam a bit on our own. We ended up completely missing the pier but no worries--we ran into little baby goats. They were cute





The fence was an electric one so Melobelo tried to stay away from it. But she still wanted to pet the goats. Solution? "Here goat-y goat-y. Baaah Baah". She preferred shocking the goats instead of herself. :)Melobelo makes me feel young and carefree inside. I like how she makes me feel really alive and appreciate the moment. Underneath her silliness, she's a wise kiddo.



Now she and the parents are off to NY, scouting Tyra and the JoBro's. Jealous! While I'm back in Berks writing papers and studying. Speaking of which...the financial market is calling!
...read on!...

Spring Sushi

The last time that I recall having sushi was in China over the summer. Not a pleasant experience. And since then, I haven't really been able to even stomach the idea of getting sushi. However, my mom did find a sushi-making class as part of the adult continuing education series at the local community college. It sounded like a lot of fun and a good activity for mom and sister. But...in a tale similar to gift of the magi, only Ni and I were able to go. Nonetheless, it was educational and fun. As an extra bonus, we were able to share it with the rest of the family for a sushi dinner!


Our instructor was a cute Asian American woman and I think my favorite part about her was her spunk! Although the authenticity of the techniques are questionable, she gave us a lot of neat tricks and tips on sushi making like how to cool down sushi rice without using a fan or how to prevent the rice from sticking to the bowl.



These are the products of our class experience. We took that and transformed it into a sushi dinner!

Although there was a class fee, there was hardly any real sushi. One lady in the class was surprised to find out what sushi was!



In our variation, we went ahead and did the sashimi and roasted eel. YUM!


...read on!...

muffin fail!

This week I've been having crazy cravings for something dense, chewy, sweet, bread-y. All in short: muffins or some sort of quick bread. I absolutely love my mom's banana nut bread and zucchini walnut bread. The cinnamon, the cake-iness of first bite, and the taste that comes with aging. So good. We also have a mini loaf baking pan so sometimes we make them into individual loaf servings. Bread-making is usually a summer thing though especially because fruit ripen a lot faster than can be eaten!



So I decided to whip me up a batch of cinnamon pear muffins, recipe curtosy of a mixture of my own and something I spotted on tastespotting. Let's just say that the one of tastespotting, which was just a basic muffin recipe, was probably better. haha

But I think I started off with a pretty good Saturday morning. I made myself a cup of ginger coffee to prepare myself for the paper I'm about to tackle and had a little muffin. It wasn't sweet and actually a little bland save for the ripe pear chunks. Our oven was kind of hyperventilating though because it was kind of dirty so the high temperature just made the dirty bits cook and smoke. So my muffins also had a "smokey" taste to it ;). hehe oh well. I topped it off with some cinnamon sugar so hopefully that will balance it out.

OK! onward paper ho!
...read on!...

Little Treasures

Berkeley is wonderful and full of little surprises. It's so easy to get lost in texts and papers, especially at this time of the semester, that we forget to open our eyes and take note of the special ambiance of this area. Just today when walking from class, I spotted this:
I doubt I would be able to see it anywhere else. And then later on in the day, I couldn't help but feeling, "yes, life is wonderful". Aside from the major panic attacks induced by midterm-paper-article-project-work, our life is pretty carefree. 真的是一身轻！ I don't have to worry about my next meal (granted it might not be the tastiest...at least I have food!), about having a roof over my head, about being safe. At times like that, I realize just how fortunate I am to have these little treasures.


And speaking of which, OPPORTUNITIES are abound! Like this:



I'm taking an erhu (二胡） decal and we had a performance a couple of weeks ago (maybe more now that I think about it!) to celebrate the lunar new year. Our little ensemble wasn't spectacular, but our decal facilitator was! He is an amazing musician and a great teacher. The class is so much fun too!



...read on!...