[35-Days Trip 2010] Day 02 _ Architecture Day (continued)

Experience Music Project|Science Fiction Museum by Frank Gehry
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8499133@N02/sets/72157625006172471/
There was a joke about how Gehry crinkled aluminum foil unwrapped from a turkey and spirit popped right out of it. If that story were true, this building must come up after he took "something", just like those rock stars once took before getting into that mood. It can be concluded in only one simple word - "high", really really "high". Later, a local tour guide told us that this whole building is a broken guitar if you look down from Space Needle.
As mentioned earlier, I didn't have that chance to look down, but I did look up...

Seattle Central Library by Rem Koolhaas
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8499133@N02/sets/72157625130901232/
In my mind, its strange profile used to make as much sense as that "big pair of pant" made in Beijing,  until the moment I climbed over the hill along Harrison St, having the entire building right in front of me. For a moment if we agree there should be "one right answer" to each site, then, "This is it."
Among tons of dramatic interior scenes, here are two of my favorite, with me happily involved

Freeway Park by Lawrence Halprin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8499133@N02/sets/72157625159599354/
I love city with variations in topography, and those designs, which sparkle the unique local topo, are my best loves.
Unlike the other famous sights I had seen in this so-called "Architecture Day", I basically knew nothing about this place heard from a friend, neither design nor designer. But after I located it through google satellite view, I knew, I'll love this place. A park over an interstate highway, immediately became a must-see in my list.
Well, I didn't get a nice welcome when I took my first shot. It was supposed to be a lonely back profile melted in shadow and layers of  straight concrete lines. Who knows the guy turned around at the second I pushed the shutter, cursing and threatening words broke out right after. I have to admit this is probably the most scary moment of my entire trip - downtown Seattle surrounded by high-rise and bright daylight.

Don't get me wrong. Little panic couldn't drive me away from this interesting place I was about to explore. Landings set in different elevations just helped hiding me away from him and my fear during the rest of my walkthrough.
Anyway, highly recommend!

[35-Days Trip 2010] Day 02 _ Architecture Day

There are always days in my trip, when architecture makes the theme. It helps to get rid of my guilty when I file them as job related expense for tax, ok, that's a joke. It feels really good to be in the middle of  those images from magazines and around by details alive. Besides, I get to catch my own moments, which keeps my feeling of being part of the space. Here's one of those "architecture day".

Olympic Sculpture Park by Weiss/Manfredi
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8499133@N02/sets/72157625006196931/show/
It's a place with lots of "elements" - pavillion, plaza, train, high way, hill, water, empty land, busy intersection... and people. Sometimes, I felt them all, layers overlapped. Then, they're all gone, just me, in a corner away from all.

Space Needle
I didn't know this iconic tower was built for 1962 World's fair until the day I was there. And soon I would find out I was basically making a World's fair tour across centuries and continents, but let's leave this topic for later.

Anyway, I knew Space Needle from TV series "Dark Angel" and "Grey's Anotomy", especially the first one. Its main character Max, an emotional genetically enhanced super-soldier, loved climbing to the very top of this abandoned TV tower at night, spending her sleepless night by overlooking the whole post-apocalyptic Seattle attacked by electromagnetic pulse weapon. This scene matches the idea of "Googie architecture" in a nostalgic way.
I didn't take the observation deck tour because locals told me the city skyline isn't impressive without Space Needle. I bought a Lego model with saved money instead.

(to be continued)

[35-Days Trip 2010] Day 01 _ Seattle, I'm coming...

[I planed this trip for a long time, because I believe a thoughtful detailed plan helps make the trip without regret.]

Recession force people dig deeper for better deal, meanwhile UA just started accepting mileage in exchange of one-way ticket instead of round-trip only. So, with only 5 bucks processing fee, I'm so proud to be able to fly from NYC to Seattle, but, only 2-stops ticket left by the time I booked. Not bad, after all, this is the first day of my 35-days trip, several hours more shouldn't be a problem, I thought.

Everything went smoothly. Greyhound bus - Newark - Denver, by the time I landed on Spokane, SE Washington state, I was almost 40 minutes ahead of schedule and all happy in picturing the famous Crab Pot before cruise tonight.  

When there's no sign of boarding 30 mins before departure, my first doubt was my watch. Yes, I adjusted it twice, Denver and after. It turned out that the flight was delayed. Apparently, I had been checking on the "arrival" board for more than an hour, it just happened that there was a flight with similar number arriving at same time, and, I was not even waiting on the right gate. Lucky me, it's a small airport, the right gate is just nearby.

Would I run out of luck for the day after that? Because, after another 45 minutes, a small jet landed, with its communication system "possibly" down. "Not mechanical system", the lady with airline still carried hope for everyone, from where I could see, no more than 30 passengers.

Kids were running with dogs (every 10 persons bring more than 1 dog on this flight), families were planning weekend breaks in big city like Seattle or San Francisco (per conversations overheard during waiting). Until I noticed an old couple from Pennsylvania trying to cancel a reservation for tonight on the phone, I seemed to be the only one flying all the way from east coast and somehow, stuck in this unknown town.  How about my reservation? $42 prepaid/non-refund cruise, last round for the day, my first arrangement of the entire trip, was departing in less than 3.5 hours, and it says "arrive 20 minutes prior to departure".

Soon, it was confirmed that our flight got cancelled and the earliest alternate I could catch was at 3:40pm. Horizon Airline, never heard, but it didn't bother me at all. I got my hope back, if I could be in Sea-Tac airport at 3:40+00:59. The 3G data signal I required from T-mobile this morning hadn't shown up on my phone yet (later I knew it's a simple setting), and this airport has no wifi ("what a surprise"). I started calling a friend in Seattle, tried to figure out how long it'd take to downtown from airport by train, and how much, in the worst case, by taxi. No answer and not even voicemail box transfer...

I ran across the whole building, re-checkin then blended into the crowd belonging to one and half flight, plus a long waiting list for stand-by passengers (poor them, they won't even get a chance). Past 3:40pm, the scheduled departure time, we got on the plane, a turboprop one though (see previous blog air travel _ flight). And, my friend called back, offering pick me up from the airport!!
No doubt, my luck came back from that point.

The turboprop flied faster than jet today and landed at 4:50pm on Sea-Tac. In the next one and half hour, I was able to meet my friend, browse the great Seattle skyline from highway, check in hostel and run (literally run, due to heavy downtown traffic, car was given up) down the hill to Pier 56. By 6:27pm, Argosy Cruise was right in front of me, shining in Seattle's waterfront.

[Things kept felling out of my plan in the following 34 days. However, instead of bringing regrets, it came with tons of extra fun far beyond words can possibly tell, but I will try, promise :)]

sunrise @ EWR, NJ

sunset @ Seattle, WA

Puget Sound (top)  Union Lake (bottom)

lovely facades and boating community

"hasenpfeffer"

Before the trip series starts, here's something to laugh after a boring day.

I'm having a "language-exchange program" with my German-American coworker. Today, it came the word "hasenpfeffer" (rabbit stew). Not as usual, I failed to find a specific Chinese word to match it. In fact, I don't think we ever cook rabbit this way, not I'm aware of. So I turned to my favorite google for help to get an image.

Here's what popped up as the #1 image search result (don't worry, nothing scary)
http://theshadowcongress.com/sc_files/pics/hasenpfeffer.jpg
What a vivid illustration and it's cute :)

By the way, since it's a common German course, we should see the famous lab-instruction-like recipe http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/hasenpfeffer-rabbit-stew/Detail.aspx as well.

Q's wandering ... in La La Land

Three years ago, I bought myself a Nikon D80 as gift for starting making money in New York (let's forget the dropping-all-the-way US$ just for now please), and a friend bought me a flickr pro as gift for my D80. It didn't take long to pick "Q's wandering..." as my nickname in flickr, because that's exactly how I had been felt for a year, wandering around in this new world, half the earth away from the old one, with lots of "?"s of course, that's me.

Later on, a friend (happened to be the same friend) somehow mentioned the name "la la land". Oh, I just fell in love with its sound immediately, literally, by its "sound" I mean its pronunciation. After looked it up through internet, among all explanations, I kind of like this one - "A place or a state of being out of touch with reality." Ok, this may not be a perfect place to go for living, but regardless of its background in history http://www.answers.com/topic/la-la-land, isn't that somewhere everyone wish to go, once a while?
I do.

Four days ago, I opened this blog, with the same name as in my flickr. This time, I hope this's my la la land, at least, when I'm here, I wish my mind could be in the "state of being out of touch with reality".

*for the record, I like this song :)

air travel _ flight

I decided to start this blog because of a long trip I just had. But God knows how long it's gonna take to have those pics ready for post. And more importantly, bringing travel memory back in details requires "special mood" and all I have now is just post-vacation/travel sleepy mood. Good for me,
names + numbers - feelings = records

> first flight
23-year-old (considered super old for first time fly, and decided to fly or should say travel more to make up)   Shanghai - Hong Kong (still counted as international flight, not bad start)
tiny little nervous before + pretty good feeling after

> longest single flight + biggest airplane

New York (JFK) <-> Seoul (ICN) = 6,910 mi (11,121 km) = 14 hr
(thought Beijing -> New York should be longer, but it turns out = 6,838 mi = 13 hr 30 min, probably coz of different flight routes. guess it may need to compete with Tokyo -> New York as well, too lazy to check this out)

Boeing 747-400 [300+ seats]




> shortest single flight + smallest airplane
Chicago (ORD) <-> Iowa City (CID) = 196 mi (315 km) = 1 hr
Embraer EMB-140 [44 seats] (with 12 passages as my classmates and half empty seats, really felt like our own plane)

> first non-jet/turboprop flight 
Spokane -> Seattle = 224 mi (360 km) = 1 hr 3 min

De Havilland DHC-8-400 Dash 8/8Q [68 seats] 
(didn't win that model plane competition back to elementary school, otherwise, both this record and the first one should be able to backward 13 years...)

> most impressive bird view during flight
of course the gorgeous Manhattan view (day + night)
tip: from LaGuadia airport (not sure about Kennedy) fly domestic heading west, window seat left side both departure and arrival
good weather

> most un-impressive flight
Tokyo -> Beijing
(slept through the whole flight w/o noticing departure and arrival, even missed flight meal. thanks for... let's leave the story for travel series later)

> most flights in shortest timeline
8 flights in 8 days (Mar 5, 2007 ~ Mar 12, 2007)
new york -> chicago  -> iowa city -> chicago -> san paulo -> rio de janeiro -> san paulo -> washington, dc -> new york
  


Enough for today and guess won't be able to break the records for quite a while...

* will have a twin post [~ _ airport] soon, hopefully

open[ING]

Oct 12 Tue, sounds like a good day to get started, at least all with even numbers I prefer.

I've been thinking about getting a little space online to hang out, share teeny tiny thoughts other than my pictures, which I consider to be much better story-teller than myself.
[my very first story about New York /2006]

After struggling with my laziness for years, here I am, stepping right on the zero line. Let's see how this goes...