Family Circle

From the start to the end, I knew that this would be a great day to remember. Everybody got great results, and everyone went home with a new spring in their step. It was the CMEA Band Festival 2009.4.25, a record day for my fellow band-mates and the school.

The bands of the East Bay Section were to be critiqued in many categories by three judges. The judge would give every band some comments, score them, and give them an overall grade. The best was Superior, then Excellent, Good, Fair, Needs Improvement, respectively. The best bands, who got Superiors from all the judges, received a “Unanimous Superior”. Often, school bands came back without the honor of the US. But this year, it was different for our whole school.

Go Band! Go Craziness! Go… after winning the “Unanimous Superior” rating

When I first got to the Festival, someone who had performed yesterday from the 8th grade band at our school came up to the 6th grade band and started screaming that they had gotten a Unanimous Superior. It was great news for us, that one of our bands had gotten this high score.

We listened to our 7th grade band play, and they did great. We knew they would all do good. Then during the break time, the scoreboard announced that they too had gotten a Unanimous Superior, which was awesome. Now, it was up to us to finish the streak as the last band of our school playing.

During warm-up, our conductor, Mrs. Zigas-Brown, gave us some pep talk and explained the procedures of the performance. She told us not to get our senses muddled by the scores, and just to do our best. Then we practiced a few bars of the music and were ready to go.

Being on the stage was a lot different than looking at the people on stage was my first thought as I went to get to my normal seat. Once on the stage, the darkened audience looked completely black, the lights almost boiled us alive, and the seats were all so big. Mrs. ZB got us started with the music, but after a couple of squeaks and wrong notes, she started seeing red. But she got better as the music progressed quite uneventfully after that.

When we finished off the pieces, everybody was nervous as some others took our picture. Once everyone finished, we ran off to see our scores.

It was a record-breaker. Never in Mrs. ZB’s career had she gotten three US’s in one CMEA festival. Everyone bought Superior medals and US pins. And every single person from our school that day walked off with a jingling on their chest from the medals.

My shiny Sax after the concert.

Me, My Dad, and My “Unanimous Superior” Badge!

I am right now in the process of writing Chapter 8 for Dawn of the Lizard Warrior. Once again, sorry for the delay, I have been very busy. click here

After a long dark night, a glimpse of twilight finally breaks through along the horizon. You can feel the hope and good-will in the fresh air, leaving the fears and depression aside (hopefully leaving them behind).

It is a day of witnessing history, a day to be remembered, a day of starting a new generation. Going forward with bravery and humility.

We spent a week during New Year time in Reno/Tahoe/Truckee area, went skiing everyday. Emily is a very fast skier that David has hard time to catch up her. Junyu can ski any green lines too.

Emily took her ski lesson at Boreal. She learned very fast, and pass one level every day. She can now run down “steep” green line quite well.

It was a sunny day to hit the slope.

Yet another day, it was snow-storm with wild wind howling the mountains. It felt like in Alaska or North Pole, and the sandy snow seemed to cut through our faces. This photo shows a snow-storm is just starting to come in. But we still continued to ski for that day, and it felt very special. We had to put “chain” to drive down Mt. Rose.

Everyone, except David and Yuhua, on this photo was beginners. After a couple of days, everyone can ski down the green lines easily.

After 4.5 year study at UC Berkeley/UCSF, Junyu graduated from her Ph.D program in Bioengineering, officially on Dec 19, 2008.

For Thanksgiving, our friends and family went to a resort in Windsor (near Santa Rosa) for a couple days. We visited the Charles M. Schulz, marveled at the Sonoma Coast Beach, one of the deadliest in USA, and hiked around the Russian River.Here are some pics:

Our Family at lake side along a trail

My Sister & I by the River

The Kids on the Hike

What’s That?

Reflection II

The Bridge to Our secret Island

Finally at the Beach! Lots of birds play with people.

Be Careful, It’s dangerous! The waves at Bodega Bay.

At the Peanuts Charles M. Schulz Museum

Look At That!

This picture was made completely of small pictures from Snoopy comic books, all pieced together! Tens of thousands pieces!

I entered in the CACC (Chinese American Cooperation Council) Chinese school first annual Speech Contest. I performed this speech in front of the Chinese teachers, and I got a 3rd place. The thing that really brought me down was the time. It had to be from 3 min. to 4 min., but I was so excited and nervous that I started to speak quite quickly and got a 2 min. 40 sec. But I still did a wonderful job in writing with some help from my parents, in my opinion.

我参加了CACC 中文学校的演讲比赛。我在老师前面读了我的演讲，拿了三等奖。 最大的问题就是时间。 本来演讲要是从三分钟到四分钟的， 但是我很着急， 也终于讲熟了， 我就说了很快，讲了两份四十秒。 ：（ 我还是觉得自己写的很好，当然有我的爸爸妈妈的帮助了。

CLICK THE SMILEY FACE FOR THE SPEECH/恩笑脸看演讲

I apologize for the long delay of Dawn of the Lizard Warrior. I am working on the next chapter and will get it posted ASAP.

Once again, sorry for the hold up.

click here for a powerpoint

While hurricanes wipe across American eastern states every year, the Tsunami hits the Wall Street right now is truly once-in-a-century, or the first time ever in American history. Call it meltdown, collapse, demise, or simply dead, disappearing…
and the latest casualty, Washington Mutual, is among the largest banks in US, and the biggest bank failure in the history ever. Personally, I liked Washington Mutual for its convenience, and free wire transfer which I did just a couple of days ago.

Let’s list the names here, as they will no longer exist in reality, but only in story…
Countrywide, Bear Sterns, Indy Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Washington Mutual…

all big names and once-respected companies, and AIG was among the Dow Jones! Gone with them are sky-high virtual wealth that American once owned. Were they ever the real thing, or just scam?

While people at the Wall Street are in panic like the twin tower is falling, and people in Washington are screaming “too big to fail”, the ordinary people are forced to pay for it, with $700,000,000,000.00 US dollars (Man, count the zeros, we do not see such huge number in daily life). Why the bailout? “You got to save the financial industry!” as they said. We, the ordinary people, are hooked either bailout or not - pick one: this poison or the other poison.

Someone called it: “privatize the profit and socialize the loss”. The crop of so-called financial elites and the greedy American corp executes plotted and directed the real-life drama that eclipsed the Hollywood’s exaggeration.

With the $700000000000.00 on the table again, who will benefit from it? They would not be shy of profiting from it. And after all the mess, they will start over and do it again. And the root cause of problems? who cares?

“Too big to fail?” While some banks disappear, other ones are gulping up - Bank Of American took Countrywide and Merrill Lynch; JP Morgan took Bear Sterns and Washington Mutual. Ain’t we creating even bigger financial giants? The giant that is too big to fail?