PAX Part III: Happy Randomness

In the indie game booths, there was a postcard challenge thing where you were supposed to go around and  do different things at different booths. The first one was to take a bunch of blocks and make something. I made a face! And then when I went back, because it was the end of PAX, they let me keep one of the awesome foam squishy blocks! HUZZAH!

PAX Part II: Fun Booths

So, there are a LOT of people at PAX and a lot of random things to see. We all know about the booth babe grannies who handed out cookies (they were really good, by the way):

PAX Part I: Costumes

So I went to the Penny Arcade Expo this year and it was a lot of fun. Going to PAX was a bit impromptu -- which really made it better for me, I think. :)

Anyway, like any convention/expo there were costumes galore. I LOVE costumes... or at least people in them. Some were professional, some were fan-based. They were all fun and awesome.

First of all, there were lots of zombie costumes. There was the disco zombie from plants vs zombies dancing out front:

Miscellaneous Seattle Adventures!

Oh, my! It's been an entire month since I last posted here. I guess getting back into the swing of school has been a bit crazy. Anyway, it's about time I write about my adventures in Seattle!

I went to Seattle the weekend before school started and I had a blast. I'll post a bunch of random things about PAX but first, my Miscellaneous Seattle Adventures!

The first day, I wandered the streets of my future home city on my own. I wanted to find the trees covered with knitting in Occidental Park. Unfortunately, the knittings were gone when I got there (Alas! I was a week or two too late.) Instead I wandered over to Pioneer Square where I saw people playing giant chess:

The next day, Ahmet and I returned to the area because I wanted to see the waterfall park. It turned out to be a tiny space built by UPS for some anniversary of their founding. It was cute, free, and very waterfall-y. Ahmet thought it made a great place to read:

The High Line

A few years ago, I was stumbling on the internet and came across a fantastic architectural design idea: take an old railway and turn it into a park! I looked at the renderings and drawing and imagined how lovely a space like that would be. Little did I know that space exists now in New York City.

When I visited the city, MG told me I must go to the High Line because it was a very Hao-like place. ED and I met her there on Sunday evening after our trip to find the little red lighthouse. Walking up some stairs onto the High Line made me feel like I was being transported into a different NYC -- a more environmentally friendly futuristic idealized city where greenery and construction were perfectly integrated:

Donuts!

Everybody loves donuts! Well, at least most non-health freak people I know. :P

When I was in NYC, MG took me to the most amazing donut place! It's called Doughnut Plant:

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

I like strange adventures, and this one I had was one of the more interesting.

One of my best friends took a children's book class in college and was assigned to read The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward. This friend of mine grew up in New Jersey and crossed the George Washington Bridge every time she went into New York City. She read the book but refused to believe the light house actually existed.

When she moved to the city after college, she wanted to figure out if the children's book was inspired by fact. She found the Little Red Lighthouse.

When I went to visit, E.D. told me her story about the book and the lighthouse. She wanted to take me to the lighthouse. I agreed on one condition: we would go read the book first.

Ikea Ferry

I love IKEA. It's one of the best places to get random cheap stuff. I love it so much I try to go there every chance I get. Unfortunately, I live in St. Louis -- a tragic city that is desperately in need of an IKEA. So... when I went to visit friends in NYC, I secretly  hoped we would get to go to IKEA. I was in luck. My friend needed a new bed and asked me if I wanted to go wit her.

There are multiple IKEAs in the NYC area. My friend, MG, lives on Manhattan. She told me there's a ferry from the piers to IKEA Brooklyn and we would take the ferry.

An IKEA FERRY? Who has ever heard of such a thing?! We walked to the docks and I managed to snap some pictures of the boats there. MG really liked this little tug boat:

Look how small it is compared to the neighboring boats!

We walked towards Pier 11 and waited for the ferry. I really liked these wooden columns bound together with metal wires. I also really liked the view from the docks.

The ride over was pleasant too. We saw cranes that reminded us of giraffes:

a Snapple plant:

the Statue of Liberty in the distance:

more tugboats:

and a fantastic view of the city:

We ended up eating dinner there and then shopping until it closed. During dinner, I saw a bunch of school buses. I'm not sure why, but it made me excited and I had to take a picture:

I told MG that she needs to take the Ikea Ferry at least every month. :)  She agreed.

<3
Hao

Details

I went to NYC last weekend and visited two of my friends and saw three more. It was awesome and wonderful.  At the end of my journey, I took the A line from the natural history museum stop to 125 to catch a bus that would take me to laguardia. As I was waiting for my subway train to come, I noticed lots of details about the station I liked.

NYC subway stations are often filled with cool details like this. Usually, I didn't bother taking pictures, but this little guy made me take out my camera so I could capture him for my cat loving friends:

Isn't he adorable?

PIE-venture!

I have a friend who LOVES pie. And I really do mean LOVE pie. Recently, he heard from his mother that there is an amazing pie place about 40 minutes outside of St Louis with good country food and famous, travel network worthy pie.

With much gusto, my friend gathered many of us on a pie-venture. We drove for 40  minutes and arrived at a dinky little town called Kimmswick, Missouri. The pie place was definitely the largest structure in the area. And it was painted blue -- rather appropriate since it was called the Blue Owl:

Chicago (Part II)

My friend was free on Saturday for most of the day, so we wandered the city together. We went shopping, and Pengu made some friends outside a random store:

Chicago (Part I)

I decided to drive to Chicago to visit my friend who lives there and watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at midnight. :) We stayed up until 4 am hanging out that night. Then, the next morning, I got up and went exploring downtown.

Chicago is a super expensive city, but otherwise it's cute. I have a friend in St. Louis who is from there and hates it.

Anyway, I like sculptures, so I decided to stalked down the Miro sculpture. When I found it, I was all happy inside. It was really tall:

I really liked how it has patches of color.

Seattle Adventures

So as I said in the previous post, I spent a weekend in Seattle. I LOVE that city.

The colors are beautiful in the fall. I just can't get over how vibrant the reds and yellows and oranges are. I usually don't like orange as a color, but I think beautiful fall foliage is something I'll just have to make an exception for. :)

My friend lives in Redmond, which is a suburb. His apartment is right next to this pond. Isn't it pretty? I'm actually rather jealous. :)

China Day 1: British Pavilion

Day 1 in China was day 1 at the world expo. I took pictures, but the camera card broke. I will try to recover them, but no guarantees.

Anyway, one of the main reasons I wanted to go the world expo so badly is the Seed Cathedral at the UK Pavilion. It's a building made from acrylic tubes with seeds embedded in them. Conceptually, it sounded amazing, but I wanted to see it in real life. One of those "great concept, but will it execute properly?" sort of thing.

I went to see it and it was amazing! It actually exceeded my expectations! (the pictures are from day 2, but I also went day 1, so I'm posting as day 1)

First, here's a closeup of the tubes:

Getting to China and Day 0

Getting to China was stressful. I did make it safely and not too late. However, I was supposed to fly United Airlines then AA from Chicago. My UA flight was delayed enough such that I knew I would miss my AA flight. I ended up flying Delta to Detroit and then to Shanghai. Unfortunately, UA was incompetent and did not get my luggage to Delta and my check in luggage ended up in Chicago and not Detroit. :(

When I arrived, it was already 7. My cousin, his wife, and I went to a little place to eat. It was only reasonably tasty, but I took pictures anyway.

The first thing we got was soup. I got quail and longyan soup. When I say quail, I mean quail. I had an entire little bird in the bowl -- including the beak! You can see the thighs in the picture fairly clearly.