Two stories from my trip
1/12/20 Happy 2020! I am finally back to work after a lengthy and challenging maternity leave. I found many things in academia are changing, and I am just like a fresh graduated graduate student, having nothing in my hands but some ambition. Cheers to those who have always supported me! Thinking of your smiling faces, I feel full of energies. I am still figuring out what I want to do for my work and life.
We were at the top of the rock of Gibraltar. There were quite a few bad-ass-looking monkeys sat on the rocks and stared at us. A group of tourists were taking pictures. Suddenly, a muscular monkey dashed over the crowds and directly ran towards my mom who were standing at the back of the crowd. The monkey tried to grab my mom’s orange bag. My mom and the monkey started to fight and the bag was broken at the handle. The monkey then digged into her bag and robbed a banana. Everything happened so quick within seconds. Nobody was able to react fast enough to help her. My dad walked out of the bathroom and heard the story. He said with a serious expression “why don’t you guard your bag properly” Oh, my poor mom! I patted her shoulder and laughed so hard.
Another story happened in Lisbon. We were taking this “tuk tuk” back from a tourist cite. The driver was super enthusiastic and nice. He asked for a very cheap price and introduced interesting buildings along our way. Then suddenly, in the middle of 5-lane high-wayish road, his “tuk tuk” started to make weird noises and finally broken down (we must be too heavy to break his tuk tuk). It was scary as we stopped at a blind spot of a curvy road where the traffic is 60 miles per hour. We carried our stuffs passing 5 lanes of busy traffic and finally reached the other side of the road like some action movie. We also helped the driver to move to the safe spot. Then I just realized that we were in the middle of nowhere with a pair of panic parents. Luckily, one taxi stopped. Although it is too small to fit all of us, the driver walked out of his taxi and tried to help us find another bigger taxi … I met a few more nice people later on and it makes me really fall in love with Lisbon.
Life in East and West Villages (4) : Dear Evan Hanson
11/17 Nov and Dec are full of trips, momentum and excitement! Safe travels!
One day, I randomly selected a broadway show, called Dear Evan Hanson. It turns out to be one of my favorite. Wow, the whole theatre was sobbing. People must feel that their stories are on stage.
The teenage boy Evan Hansen fell from a tree. He said it was an accident. But it turns out that when he almost fell from a tree, and he felt nobody was there, so he gave away. Life is hard, sometimes, you need some people coming up running.
Another emotional point is the relationship of Evan with his mom and his two fathers. Evan’s father left when he was a few years old and never shown up. Here is what happened that day:
“When your dad came by, before going away
A U-Haul truck in the driveway
The day it was suddenly real.
I told you not to come outside
But you saw that truck
And you smiled so wide
A real live truck in your driveway
We let you sit behind the wheel
……
That night, I tucked you into bed
I will never forget how you sat up and said
“Is there another truck coming to our driveway?
A truck that will take mommy away”
Kids are innocent, and they give you all that trust. It is so natural to put them ahead of yourself.
Evan then gets close to his friend’s father. Here describes a touching moment how a father teaches him things that he never get a chance to learn. It doesn’t matter whether it is biological. They are discussing how to break in a baseball glove:
The Boring Exhibitions (1)
10/27 Once people told me “you know, you those idealism, people get rid of them at their age 13 …” “what’s wrong with them?” haha, I am never afraid of being alone. Luckily, I am never alone thanks to my wonderful companions 🙂 😀
It’s getting grey, dark and chill as the winter approaches. SO we will need some color! Enjoy the first exhibition at cafe B-612, inspired by Elon Musk, haha. Can I serve you a cup of bourbon, cocktail or wine :D? OH, of course, we will need some music, shall we do preservation hall jazz or Tchaikovsky?! Tchaikovsky’s music is splendid like firework. This is the one I am recently playing, called June (here is another version I like better, also a version of an interesting collaboration) It’s so gentle and melting heart — I feel sometimes I cannot hold it, hmm!
Halloween is around the corner. There are lots of festivities and parties going on the coming week. Woo, it is a good time to show off the darkness of people. The below is a self-portrait done by me using pencil and charcoal. That said, don’t let me fool you by my fancy dresses and innocent smiles. I ~ indeed ~ look ~ like ~ this ~ at ~ night~ booooooo
Have you survived from the above? haha. I often wonder if I upload this picture to ok-cupid, what types of people will contact me 😀 … Charcoal is messy but super fun. For example, drawing this ball is like playing Qigong. You’ll have to keep drawing circles till you see the three dimension shape growing out of this paper. I think that artists need special high-tech glasses to help them see the lights.
I did not upload much of my serious paintings before. But I have done some. My favorite media for serious painting is oil. You never need to be afraid of making mistakes in oil paintings, as you can always correct them by adding another layers. Oil paintings can create a lot of textures as you wish. However, oil paintings are expensive to make. The canvas, the paint, the frames …. they are all expensive. Some people believe that the fume is poisonous. Note that acrylic and oil they are so different in my opinion. The following pictures are drawn from the fruits I bought from the super market 🙂
Watercolor is relax and casual. You can put down a lot of water with color. Then you can use hand, tissues, sponge, brush to create effects. I always amazed by how much layers of the same colors we can create, e.g., for the sky, the landscape and the trees.
I love Chinese traditional arts. I sometimes review those arts learned in the art class in middle school for my nostalgic
Here are the seaonal displays in my “studio”
Life in East and West Villages (3) : the murals
10/20 In this amazing week, let’s talk about some amazing story! A while ago, I interviewed someone from a school from the east coast. It brought me many memories. On my way to lunch, I was a bit high and looked up into the sky “ah, god, what is the possibility that a person shows up in front of you when you are thinking of them?” AT THAT MOMENT (omg I am not kidding), 100 meters away, a familiar face was moving towards me, and it is my college classmate to whom I never talked since college! I looked at into the sky “hey, you sent a wrong person” haha, and then walked towards her …
I am traveling so this blog post is produced in the hotel lobby. It is funny that I am much more shy to write things in a place where all the people pass and take a look at me :D. The good news is that the murals can talk stories themselves without much of my help 🙂
There are two places in New York where you can find lots and lots of murals. One is located near China town/little Italy (in fact, there is a graffiti park located in the lower east) and the other is located in Bushwick. Bushwick is a cool place in New York. A lot of movies are filmed here. When you walked out of the subway, you probably would say “WOW”.
To paint a mural wall, the artists need to get a permit from the city. The mural wall can be the project of an artist or a group of artists. You can find the artists’ signatures in many murals. I have taken more than 60 pictures of these murals and they are so cheerful! Hope those I selected below also can brighten your week 😀
The Magicland
Once upon a time
I arrived at a place called “the magicland”
Here,
1000 people are learning to do the magic
They copy paste tricks from the textbooks
100 people are half magicians
They create illusions
10 people are good but use a little too much force
They are controlled by the magic
Then,
Very few are true talented magicians
The magicland has two experimental rooms
*Room “magic + naughty” plays how to destroy the magic
“can you still see me?! haha”
Room “magic + insane” plays lose control in magic
“I am flying and I am free falling, yayaya”
* Reading this sentence, I am suddenly convinced why Picasso’s cubism is fun for him
Life in East and West Villages (2) : Fun People @ New York
10/6/19 Hello, trees, clapping till my hands turn red, haha! This semester, I am teaching in this “movie theater”. I like to teach large classes. After each lecture, there are always a line of young faces waiting for asking questions, and I ended up reserving an office hour waiting room to host overflowed students, lol
The other day, I was in a store examining some rainbow soap … smelling it, looking at it back and forth, and having a good time. As I moved on and continued wandering, I found some people were following me. I looked back … I saw that a gay couple was 5 meters away, wispering and pointing at my direction. They saw me turned around and gave me big, blushing and shy smiles. I nodded my head, walked back to that soap, and put it in my shopping bag… It turns out to be a really good soap 😀
The vessel
My landlord was hilarious. Here is how he wrote me a review: “Great guest. She did have difficulty understanding functions in our home, such as the fire alarm, but she was sweet about everything”. Why does it sound like I am a f****** idiot?! Watch out, dear NYC future landlords 😀
I met a musician Marcella in the jazz gallery. She is 20ish, from South America and teaching guitar in NYC. After we met about an hour, she said “hey, <xxx>, ping me next time you are in NYC, I will take you to bike around”. Yo, that’s NYC. People don’t have this intimacy resistant disease. Arriving home, I received her text: “it was nice meeting you, feel free to ask me questions when you are here” “nice meeting you too, btw, your hair and boots look cool. they match.” She sent me a big heart and end with “you are making me a smile.”
I went in an independent book store in a rainy afternoon. Behind the counter is this 20-30ish black girl. She loves my pants. “Hey, your pants look cool” “I bought them in Sweden” “You went there for shopping?” “no, I went there for work. One day, I decided to wear some none-work clothes, so I walked into a store, and walked out with this pair of pants” “good taste” “thank you” “do you want a new t-shirt today?” … Haha, I was examining their rack of book t-shirt at that time.
I met this German expat in Brooklyn. She is in her early 30s. She asked “You come here alone?” “yeah, why not? my husband didn’t want to come. ” “oh, forget about your husband” “haha, yeah” “at least, for a week” “HAHAHA” we both burst into the laughters. Seldom met my kind of people nowadays. She told me that she has lived in London, Berlin and a few other big cities. But none of those are comparable to New York. “you know, people here are so diverse and warm, they will smile at you and chat with you. If you are in the London subways, everybody looks at their phones and want their privacy and distances.”
Manhattan from some Brooklyn beach 
A secret work done at night on the street of Williamsburg
John is in his 50s and I met him in the galleries. He was a very high level manager at a big advertisement company in Canada. Their company assigned him to Manhattan to lead a team, and he then moved with his family in his late 40s. I have heard that advertising is an industry that wears out people fast. He has to manage a group of ill tempered artists who do not like their jobs. Finally, he quits his job and started rethinking what he was real passionate about. Nowadays, he was a curator and help people sell and buy pictures. “I made much less than before, but I am happy every day”. Interacting with people at his age and with his kind of experience, you feel comfortable and well taken care of. I was interested in some artists in the galleries, and he sent me multiple emails with more information than I requested.
Star Party
9/29/19 I have tried so hard to write the live post a while ago that my laptop even was broken down during my writing, lol. So, my dear experts audience, here I am again 😀
The weather was not that great for the stars lately. So I have not managed to see any nebula or galaxies, and I did see ISS (international space station) fly over on top of my head though. It was so bright and fast!
It is a very amazing experience to see so big moon. Craters, mountains …are very clear. Some fun facts about the moon: we only can see the same side of the moon (this effect is called tidal lock); the moon is not completely round; the moon is moving away from the earth at the rate of 4cm per year; the moon had volcanoes but are no longer active, there were asteroids that hit the moon and then the moon rocks (lunar meteorite) landed on the earth. You can touch them in the Adler Planetarium in Chicago (one of them is soccer size, really that big?, and arrived on earth 1000 years ago, found in Southern Morocco in 2007, the earth also has Martian rocks like this). What if one day the moon disappears and is broken into pieces?! This is the book I am reading called Seveneves. Check it out to see if it aligns with what you think 😉
I also saw Jupiter with 3 moons. Jupiter has white and orange colors, but I have not yet seen its great red spot. Jupiter is hot and is called a gas giant. Then there is this Saturn —- I can see its ring! The same brightness as Saturn itself. It quietly lays in the dark space. Can’t describe how touching it is when I saw it! My first thought is that the text book did not cheat us 🙂 The Saturn ring is consisting of icicles with some rocky materials. These particles come in different sizes. It is predicted that the ring can exist only for hundreds of millions of years, then it overlaps with human beings’ existence!
What’s cool about our universe? (a themed party and a casual presentation @ Cafe B-612)
The solar system: the scientists predicted that there are more planets in the solar system than we currently know. Pluto was discovered in 1930s, and its first image was seen in 2015. Pluto is currently called a dwarf planet. To be a planet, it has to have its own clear orbit. Pluto is spinning with many other objects (asteroids?). We have sent the probe to Venus, but it was malfunctioned after x minutes because of the heat. Juno is the probe NASA launched last year for Jupiter and its moons.
The exoplanets: NASA has a team of scientists whose daily life is looking for exoplanets. The exoplanets were confirmed in 1990s. Lately, we found an exoplanet called K2-18b that contains water in its atmosphere. Is this K2-18b habitable for life?!
The universe: as for the origin of the universe, we mostly use the “big bang” theory proposed by Hawking. One of the evidences for the big bang is called the “red shift”; that is, the stars that are more far away from us are more “red”. They are moving faster away from us then the stars located closer. Besides the black holes, there are also the “black matters” in the universe– the scientists are not always able to explain what they observed from what they computed so they believe that there are other things that have gravitational forces in the darkness that affect the orbits, which they called the “black matters”.
Space technologies: The Hubble has sent back many cool space pictures. It is going to retire and off the orbit soon. James Webb Space Telescope will be launched to the orbit in 2021. Very recently, we have put together the first image of the black hole.
The following pictures are taken from the real Gemini module. The Gemini project is before Apollo and exercised the technologies to prepare the moon landing mission. This module is located on top of the rocket and had sent two astronauts safely back to the earth.
I was always very amazed by these units we invented:
New little prince series
9/22/19 this is the story I watched more than 2 months, but I am still not able to walk out of it. I just felt that it is so perfect that nothing can be better. I heard that during the filming period, the actress and the actor were not able to look at each other’s eyes, because doing so, they just ended up crying even off the cameras.
Never afraid of the rain if you have an umbrella:
Chicago Colors
9/1/19 Good morning from Chicago (wink)
Red is for passion and excitement!
Green is
it has wings 
and muscles to protect your freedom!
Blue is just
irregular and random
and full of all sorts of fun
painful one 
moving one 
mysteries one
Black is loyal
aww
Then you can mix them up like this
Or this
Have a good week! Fly to Navy Pier and buy a rainbow cone when you need some colors in your life 😀
One day at home
8/25/19 Hi handsome and beautiful, thank you for waiting!
I found I can play with any ages just fine. Besides hiking with my 70 years old lady friends, yesterday when I was baby sitting, I made this thing (from cardboard box) to ride around. Then I drew an awesome cat on the bottom of this baby’s foot, haha
has wheels 
has doors 
has windows, curtains, carpet and seat
Don’t you think it will be great if this curtain is a projecting screen?! Then I can watch movies gracefully, hmm …
view from my bed