Bryce Canyon National Park

On my way from Panguitch to Bryce Canyon, I got really excited when I first saw Red Canyon. You can see why: red rocks everywhere!

This lady rode a motorcycle. Her family were on their motorcycle vacation. Turned out that she and her husband visited China almost 30 years ago! She'd be really surprised to see the new China if she were gonna go now!


Till I got to the Sunset Point of Bryce Canyon National Park (oh I skipped the Sunrise Point on the way in), I realized that this was the real excitement of the day. My first sight of Bryce Canyon:
Hoodoos everywhere!


Sentinel (I think it might be the skinny pointy hoodoo on the upper left corner)
Thors Hammer
Navajo Loop Trail
flora

fauna. Ignore what's hanging on his behind. He is attempted by food. Bad tourists!
Two Bridges
The clouds that caught us in the afternoon

It must be really difficult to grow in this place!
This must be Wall Street:
Now we need to go up! Navajo Loop has 167m elevation change.
Looking down. Hmm, apparently I didn't align my lens hood correctly.
Hoodoos
More hoodoos
Lucky lunch
The (white) alligator! (on top)
Grottos
Bryce Amphitheater seen from Bryce Point: left
middle
right. Yes, it's a hell of a place to lose a cow! (Mr. Ebenezer Bryce's answer to what he thought about the canyon.)
Now the power of my Tamron 18-250mm lens. Here is the wide angle. There is a road crew working on the trail on the lower right corner. But can you tell?
Here is the telephoto. What are they doing with all these boxes?
Picturesque. Down there lies the little town Tropic, where Mr. Ebenezer Bryce used to live.
Silent City


Yovimpa Point, very close to Rainbow Point. It's raining out there, but no rainbow.
Young branch on a pine tree on Bristlecone Loop Trail. I must have missed the 1600-year-old pine!

Agua Canyon. The hoodoo on the left looks like a person's profile.
Natural Bridge
Deer at twilight
Thus ends my visit to the beautiful Bryce Canyon National Park.

Happiness is Contagious

See today's APOD.

My favorite clip is the one from India :)

Troubadour, you are ahead of APOD!

Zion National Park

I will not try to attempt to write another travelogue, since I haven't even finished either of the previous two before I embarked on the third trip. What you'll see is a series of photos accompanied with minimum text. I hope you enjoy them. However, I know one thing is sadly true: the real scenery is 100% more impressive than any of my photos.

Now here is my 4hr visit to Zion National Park in high summer!

The entrance to the valley.

The trail is the Virgin River.

The Three Patriarchs.

An Arch in the making.

The Power of Flowing Water.

Checkerboard Mesa.


Next time I'd like to hike Angel's Landing.

家园

秘鲁第九天——印加古道（4） 马丘皮丘 第二部分

前记：非常抱歉，自两个月前发表《马丘皮丘 第一部分》后，我居然都没有写游记。现在发以前就写好的部分。我，是会接着写的。

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马丘皮丘居民区 Residential Sector

太阳神庙

石门。
可惜逛来逛去，我错过了从这里照马丘皮丘的机会。少了一个经典啊。

马丘皮丘的流浪狗。它有一条腿瘸了。

太阳神庙往东望。

一层一层的梯田。

石床。这里是Royal Palace吗？
看来我的游记还是得及时写。

这里是采石场。Ruben给我们解释，马丘皮丘用的石材都是就地取材，人们先在石头上凿几个眼儿，再砸进去干燥的树枝，倒上水，就等着树枝吸了水后把巨石给撑开吧。古人可真聪明啊！
这块石头有着南天十字的形状，其实它代表的就是南天十字。十字的顶端指的是正南方。V用她的高级指南针一测，不差一分一毫。古人真让我敬佩！

马丘皮丘从年轻山峰处看起来像一只展翅的大雕。我没爬那么高，这个局部凑合着看看了。右边是头，翅膀靠近我们，所以这个大雕是上下颠倒的。
说着说着，大雕（Andes Condor)真的出现了！Ruben说，在马丘皮丘看见大雕是很难得的一件事情。看来我们的运气不错！大雕翱翔在印加古道之上。图片左上角就是太阳门。

我的最好的一张大雕图。这种大雕展翼可达九尺！

年轻山峰入口处的神石。从左往右看像是一条鱼；从右往左看像是一只豚鼠。
年轻山峰。我选择了不去爬这个山峰，因为一则我很累了，二则当天很热，三则听说路很艰险，我怕摔下来，就不值了。

你知道这是什么？

就是这种动物(viscacha)的粪便！

紧跟汉语发展潮流

网络时代，语言发展日新月异。我最近算是被雷到了。好歹这个雷比较形象，我没费多大劲就猜出这个新用意了。不过在更强大的囧字面前，我就一筹莫展，都不知道这个字怎么念。这个字很生僻啊，我读了这么多年的书（理科），都没见过这个字啊。我还以为这是网民新造的字，今天才明白，原来这真是一个汉字呢，有《新华字典》为证： http://xh.5156edu.com/html2/j09.html

囧，音为“Jiǒng”，象形。窗口通明。本义:光明。

我觉得这个象形还是很象的。

但是，当我们进入2008年，这个囧字就被赋予了新的象形意义：因为囧的形象像一张人脸：里面的小“八”字被视为眉眼，“口”字被视为嘴巴，所以，囧便被网友们赋予了新的定义———“尴尬”、“无奈”、“真受不了”、“被打败了”等意思。

原来如此啊！

今天我还解了另一个惑。以前常看到“Orz”这个词，而且好像总是和青年偶像小四一起出现，我一直没搞明白是什么意思。原来，这又是一个象形的创造性运用。

“Orz”的本来意义是“失意体前屈”，它代表一个人面向左方、俯跪在地，O代表这个人的头，r代表手和身体，z代表脚。当时，它经常出现在网络电子邮件、IRC聊天室以及即时通讯软件中，被网友们用作表现他们失意或沮丧的心情。

Things

My rice supply was only good for one week now. So I went to Costco. To my bewilderment, I found that jasmine rice, Kokuho Rose rice (红国宝), and basmati rice were all out! And this is after rice rationing at Costco and Sam's Club made news earlier this week. What is going on in this world? In the end, I picked up a bag of 50lb of some kind of American rice. At least there is still supply of that!

Less than 24 hours since I signed up for Facebook, I am now friends with 9 people! Among these 9, two had invited me months ago; I tried to connect with 3 and 2 confirmed; another 5 just learned that I signed up and asked to be my friends!

Wow, no wonder Facebook is so hot! People (including my friends) are on it all the time!

How Camera Lenses Are Made

开眼界了！

Another video:

Boston's Classical Station Online

Recently they've upgraded their player with track information. I like it.

You can listen to Classical music online at www.wcrb.com.

FYI, Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto is quite beautiful to the ear. I did a little google-ing and found out what it has to do with Suicide Squadron. Now I feel better to see it associated with the word "suicide".

Stranger In Paradise

The 1991 BBC documentary Pole to Pole with Michael Palin was an exciting journey for me. The host was quite funny and humorous from the very beginning when he inserted a pole at the North Pole. I just watched the second part where he visited the Soviet Union in the summer of 1991, before it fell apart. It still felt like a strange place when I am watching it 17 years later.

What I want to talk about today is a melody he sang when he visited the famous Tikhvin Cemetery in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), where a high concentration of writers and composers rest in peace. There is of course the most famous Tchaikovsky, but it was the haunting and beautiful melody of "Take my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise" that made me remember the name Alexander Borodin.

Borodin was one of The Five composers in the 19th century that promoted Romantic Nationalism movement in St. Petersburg. He made his living as a notable chemist. Oh wow, a scientist can be a good composer, too!

宠物之死

一早看见L红着眼睛从北屋过来，赶紧关切地询问是怎么回事。原来她的宠物猫咪生病住进了医院，先是有所好转，可是昨晚情况急转直下，她不得不做出让猫咪安乐死的决定。一会儿她就要和她老公一起去宠物医院。她说，“我情愿猫咪自个儿死了，也不愿意由我来做这个决定。”L的猫咪跟着她有将近八年了，这份感情是很难割舍的。

我不由得想起了小时候我养的小鸡们。那时候养鸡的目的有两个，一是吃鸡蛋，二是吃鸡。我给它们喂食，给它们打扫。从毛茸茸的小鸡养起，不足几个月，小鸡们就羽翼丰满了。我的小鸡们每天从三楼的阳台飞到院子里，那场面颇为壮观。我忘了是怎么发现它们这样并不会摔死的。当然，它们回家还是得爬楼梯，飞是飞不上来的。小公鸡们刚开始打鸣时就成了我们的腹中餐。小母鸡们时间长了就成了我的宠物，那时的我没有别的宠物（不对，有一年我养了只蝈蝈，在草编的笼子里活了半年之久，在寒冷的11月死掉了，我伤心了一个礼拜－－题外话）。我给它们垫草在窝里，每天收鸡蛋。我还给它们起了并无创意的名字，什么小黑，双冠，芦花之类的。我想像着如果我有一台照相机，我会给它们拍照，因为我很喜欢它们。可是这个愿望没有实现，因为我直到大学拿了一份不算少的奖学金才买了一台简陋的单反海鸥。那个时候城里已经不许养鸡了，我也没时间了。

母鸡生蛋也有减弱的时候。它们老到不行的时候，我的爸爸妈妈就想把它们变成盘中餐。每次他们都要征求我的同意，因为小鸡是我养的，是我的宠物，虽然那时候我并没有这么清楚的观念。一般都要几次征求意见之后我才能同意。我对我的小鸡说，对不起，我们要分别了，可是当我吃了你的肉，你就转化成我的一部分了。只有这样想，我才可以说服我自己。

现在想起来，我小时的想法是多么的独特啊！我的杀鸡哲学让我相信，我的小鸡们并没有离去，它们真的和我永远在一起。