Hiking and Biking all day!

I went hiking again today, this time with a friend from the dorm called Daniel. The two of us left the dorm at 8:20am, brought our bikes on the Caltrain and biked along Embarcadero (a really scenic road along the SF coast) to Pier 41 where we took a ferry to Angel Island (off the San Fran coast). We reached the island at about 10:20am, hiked on a hiking trail, went all the way to the top of the island and enjoyed the spectacular view while having a very simple lunch (2 slices of bread, 3 eggs and a banana for me; Daniel had a banana, a cup of granola, an orange and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich). After that we hiked back, went down another trail (which was really steep) to try to see this old missile silo, realized we couldn't see it and climbed all the way back up (*pengz*). Then we took our time to hike back through the undergrowth and got back to the ferry with a comfortable 15 mins to spare.

When we got back to SF we decided to bike further along Embarcadero, then spontaneously decided to try to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a REALLY HARD bike ride to get to the bridge, a LOT of steep uphill slopes. But when we got to the Golden Gate it was so worth it, the view was simply spectacular. :) We biked across the entire bridge, took some photos and biked back, met some other Stanford dorm friends for dinner near Union Square then took the Caltrain back. I just got back at about 10:15pm... I've been out for 14 hours!! Dead tired. XP

If you'd like to see the full range of photos I took, check out the album below:

San Francisco: Angel Island and Golden Gate Bridge

Otherwise, here's some of the highlights (although there are really too many beautiful shots to put here):


Biking along Embarcadero, we passed under the Bay Bridge (not to be confused with the Golden Gate Bridge):

Taken from a path parallel to Embarcadero (the road's to the left but kinda blocked by the grass, the coast is to the right)

We got a spectacular view of San Fran from the ferry (that's Daniel in the picture):

Our view of San Fran from the top of Angel Island (it was kinda foggy but it's still a really cool picture. You can even see some of the main roads as vertical lines across the city, especially on the right of the city):

Our view of Tiburon, just north of San Francisco (a small and very pretty city with what looks like a lot of nice houses and a LOT of private boats moored):

Our view of the Golden Gate, with a bit of fog just creeping in from the right:

Daniel and I at the Golden Gate after we'd biked across it (whoo hoo! Talk about feeling triumphant man...) :

And finally, one of the spectacular views taken from the Golden Gate Bridge itself near the opposite end of the bridge from San Francisco:


Even looking at the photos now I'm quite in awe of the beauty God's put into this world. And I'm pretty sure I don't know the half of it.

Hope you enjoyed the photos! Do try and look at the album if you have the time. I'm gonna try to upload Daniel's photos too when I get them from him.

Dinner

I said I was going to have dinner. Here's proof. Haha. It really was quite good. The main highlight to me was the curry chicken which was pretty good, plus the Naan and rice. The yellow gooey stuff is Mango Chutney. The meatloaf wasn't bad too.



This picture, incidentally, was inspired by Adrian "Robert" Chung who suggested to me a couple of times last quarter that I should take pictures of the yummy food. Haha.

I'm done!!!

Finished my last final yesterday morning at 11am, handed in a music assignment straight after that (it's an analysis of the first movement of a Piano Sonata, for those in the know) and THAT'S IT FOR WINTER QUARTER! HALLELUJAH!! :)

Some more good news:

The music take-home final was pretty ok, I'm expecting to do well. My overall music grade will come from both the lecture (i.e. the midterms and final) and section. I received back the music assignment today (my TA marks really fast! And he wrote a lot of comments all over too. Amaxing.) - got an A+ for it!! And my section grade was written on it too, also an A+!

Also, the IHUM final went better than expected. There were 4 sections; the first two sections were fill-in-the-blank questions and identification of places on a map, and each section only required us to answer 10 out of the 15 questions. So it turned out quite well 'cos I didn't have to do those that I wasn't very sure about, I'm expecting full marks or close to full marks for that. The next two sections were essays (3 short essays and one long one) which I didn't feel too badly about but we'll see how it goes. After the final my Teaching Fellow was outside and he returned my 2nd paper to me - I got an A-!! So far IHUM's going even better than last quarter's with an A- for both papers (last quarter I got an A- for my first paper and B/B- for my second).

And thirdly, Econ final yesterday went pretty well too. We were given 3 hours but it was way more than necessary. Some people started walking out after 1-1.5 hours. I stayed till 2.5 hours, took my time with the paper. Overall I found it relatively easy, except for one 20 mark section (the paper's graded out of 150 marks) which was entirely on readings that were assigned but were never discussed in class so I didn't realize that they'd be tested. I managed to answer two of those questions - one of them the Prof has mentioned before in lecture, the other I kinda guessed. Haha. So we'll see how that goes but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who didn't do well in that section.

So that's it! Good news so far. :) Had a really fun day yesterday; after lunch 5 of us rented a car (we got a free upgrade to a huge Ford Explorer cos they'd run out of small cars) and drove to Pacifica which is north of Stanford along the coast to hike through a 4-mile trail. It was pretty fun though it was tiring. Great views:

From the carpark (or parking lot, as the Americans say):

About 20 or so minutes into the hike (still very much at the bottom of the hill):

About 5-10 mins after the previous picture:

And the clincher: gorgeous view of the hills and the ocean off the west coast of the you-ess-off-eei from the (almost) top of the hill:


After the hike we went to the nearby beach to just hang around. The two girls went to wade in the water - they said it was really cold. The beach was amazing - fantastic waves crashing onto the beach and all. After that we went back to Stanford cos the other two guys wanted to go back, but the remaining three of us wanted to go check out Half-Moon Bay so we dropped the two guys at Stanford and drove to Half-Moon Bay.

Several things: Firstly, I was the only 21-year-old amongst the three of us so I did all the driving (no complaints there!). This SUV was definitely the largest vehicle I've ever driven. We didn't take any photos of the car but I managed to find a couple of pictures online:

It's hard to tell the exact size but the top of the front headlight is probably pretty close to my chest

The interior (it looked like this but without the screen in the middle):


Second: Half-Moon Bay is really fantastic. It's probably as nice as if not nicer than Pacifica. It's name probably comes from the fact that it's a C-shaped bay. Really nice soft sand, waves crashing over each other and onto the beach, and a LOT of seagulls gathered in huge patches waiting for fish to come in with the tide (apparently). 2 of us decided to run through the flocks and get them to fly up - it was quite a sight. Don't have pictures of it now, they're in a friend's camera. Will put them up when I get them from her. :)

Third: Half Moon Bay is a really quaint, cute, well-maintained little town. We drove along the coastal road and also through their downtown. It was quite nice.

Fourth: The drive was awesome. To get there we took the freeway (expressway in Singaporean terms) from Stanford and then got off onto a small highway, the kind that's just one lane in each direction. It was really nice, winding through forested area at a leisurely pace. On our way back we didn't feel hungry yet so we took our time to drive through highway 35 a.k.a. Skyline Boulevard, a really scenic, twisty highway that winds through the tops of the hills. It was really cool to be driving through forested area, having a really great view of the coast and of the entire west bay area at the same time. We passed by a lot of houses too. Wonder what it's like to live there. I'd like to go back sometime and drive those roads with a sportier car. *grinz*

So that was my day yesterday. At night De Wen, Adeline and I went over to Ai Lin's place to watch a DVD. We watched The Sum of All Fears - it's really confusing. haha. But it was an interesting watch. I got back at like 12:45am. Went to bed close to 2am. Had SUCH a good sleep. haha.

So that's it. Today (Thursday) has been pretty relaxing. Not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Saturday I'll probably join Adeline to go look at cars - she's thinking of buying a (new) Honda Civic. Then Sunday till next Saturday I'm off to Hawaii with the Mendicants. whee...

I'm just looking forward to relaxing these few days, and in Hawaii too. I quite enjoyed not doing much today - went out for a while to get my music assignment, check my P.O. Box and then bought a Mocha and just sat outside the Coffee House drinking it and watching the world go by. A friend happened to pass by so we chatted for a while. Now it's dinner time so I should probably go eat soon. :)

Word of the season: Authenticity

Somehow my weak glance
Has overwhelmed You
Somehow my weak love
Has stolen away Your heart
(x2)

Though I'm dark
You say I am beautiful
Though I'm poor
You say I am lovely
(x2)

(song by Misty Edwards)

"... that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height - to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge;..."
- Ephesians 3:17-19

Spring is here!

It's SO warm right now. Today I went to class in a t-shirt, bermudas and sandals and I didn't feel cold at all. I even felt hot at parts of the day. While biking.

Last weekend I went to Lake Tahoe with Barnabas (Singaporean friend who works in SF) Pearline and Clarissa (Singaporean friends at Stanford) - we drove up Fri night, stayed overnight at a motel and went skiing/snowboarding on saturday. It was the warmest skiing/snowboarding I've ever done. Did my fair share of falling... overall it was pretty fun though the morning was much more fun than the afternoon cos' the snow got more icy and clumpy in the afternoon. Still it was good.

Check out some photos:

Barney and Clarissa lookin' really stylo:


Me and Pearline (Pearline didn't know she was in the picture... haha...)


A very happy Pearline at the end of the day:


Me, tired:


And my favorite picture of the day - Barney:


And for those of you who're wondering, 'what the heck, doesn't he have exams soon??' the answer's yes I do, but I just had 2 midterms and a paper due within the first 2 days of last week which completely tired me out and sucked away all my motivation for doing any studying. So Saturday's snowboarding was a good release for me. Now (as in today, Monday) I'm starting to get back into the swing of studying again. Kinda. :P

So I think I may not be updating this blog until my finals are over which is sometime next week (around wed or so). After that I'll be going to Hawaii (yay!) with The Mendicants - it's our 'Spring Tour' although we don't actually have a lot of gigs there. We're probably gonna be singing at least a bit (I really hope we do!! If not it totally defeats the purpose of a Spring Tour) plus we'll be doing some filming for videos for our Spring Quarter Concert. A friend of mine from Chi Alpha is going back home to Maui (one of the islands in Hawaii) so I might try to visit her too if our trip gets boring. She also offered to take us around if we do go to Maui (we'll be staying in Honolulu, which is on another island, for most of the time). So I hope we do get to explore! It'll be so much fun hanging out with a friend who's actually from the place and can take us around.

So... till next time! Which will probably be before Hawaii. Hopefully. Ciao~!

STUDY BREAK!

IHUM paper due tomorrow. 1800 - 2400 words, approx 6-8 pages double-spaced. I'm at 2200 words right now but I still have to come up with a good ending conclusion and vet my entire paper through at least once. I don't feel like this paper is very power packed or anything, just that it's got a lot of details in it which is why I've managed to pull it to 2200 words already. Well, praise God for helping me to finish it in time!

So I'm taking a short 10 mins study break to update this. A friend from Singapore, James, stayed over the past few nights in my room - he slept on a foam mattress on the floor in my tiny room. Actually I know him because his sister is a good friend of mine (xmmp don't you start getting farni ideas) from piano school, I've known her probably for 10 years now if not more - I only met James when he came to visit Stanford on Thursday. He's a real nice guy, I'm glad we could get along pretty well. He's also pretty independent - he actually went to crash a couple of classes and explore San Francisco by himself while I was doing other stuff - I was quite impressed. He'd already been in the US for about 2 weeks looking at a few universities. He seems to like Stanford. ;)


That's James on Saturday night using my computer to figure out where to go in San Fran and writing down all the details like where to go, bus routes and times etc. I hope he doesn't mind my using his photo on my publicly accessible blog. :)

Both of us were also very blessed that Ai Lin let me use her car while she was in LA with Shaowei for a prophetic conference (I say "both of us" 'cos that meant that I could drive him around and show him stuff). Overall we had a pretty good time together. The weather was simply gorgeous on Saturday and Sunday - almost like summer actually. I could actually walk around in the daytime in a t-shirt and jeans, without a jacket. It's a really sudden change in weather from the previous week... Looks like Spring's coming back soon! I hope. If it starts getting cold and rainy again then the weather's really getting schizophrenic. So he was very blessed to come this particular weekend. He said he had a fantastic time using my bike to cycle around campus, it's really pretty, and he even discovered stuff I didn't know about like a stable that we apparently have relatively near my dorm. :P Anyway he left this morning (Monday). I must say I'm quite thankful he made my weekend quite fun!

On a separate note (do mi so...), I just got a new set of speakers! Ordered them from Amazon.com about 2.5-3 weeks ago and they came last wed, just before James came. They were a pretty good deal, especially because there's a $50 mail-in rebate from Creative, plus I had $35 in Amazon.com vouchers from taking part in a couple of communications experiments on campus, plus shipping was free, so in the end I only paid $35 for them. Check them out! -

Box in a box:


After unpacking:


And after set-up (subwoofer's at the bottom of the pic):


Overall I'm pretty happy with the sound. I've heard better, but not from PC speakers. They're relatively clear and the subwoofer adds a significant amount of depth to the songs I play. =)

Ok I think it's been more than 10 mins. Back to my paper. God bless!