A week after coming back from HK, still jetlagged, but oxegen is upon us.

Oxegen is a 3 day music festival (www.oxegen.ie) that takes place literally in the middle of nowhere in Ireland :) Luckily by the time I get tickets, camping tickets are already sold out. I said lucky because I would have gone for camping tickets thinking it'll be great fun. But with the weather and all the drunken teenagers, I am not so sure.

I didn't take Friday off for the festival, so we only went for saturday and sunday. Daytripping from Dublin each day.

For me, it's always fun to see crowds. Big crowds of people having fun. In this case though, I have to say it wasn't as enjoyable as I imagined, as we are talking about drunken teenagers here, coupled with the rain that comes and go, making the whole place a mud-fest. Honestly, if there weren't bands that I really wanted to see the next day, I wouldn't have bothered to come back.

Overall though, really enjoyed the music. I particularly liked Stereophonics and the Raconteurs, and the swell season (the guy and girl from the movie once). Amy winehouse drew an amazing crowd that stretches over the whole area, which was fun. There are many other big names too.

So, good festival, bad crowd. Bumbershoot in Seattle is much, much more civilized. Wonder if I'll get to go this year (actually possible at this point. We'll see)

Some pictures. more will be uploaded to the album

Pictures from fred's birthday dinner

Grit's vegetarian dish. how cute

All of us

This is what they give for the coffees. It's sugar and stirrer all in one. How cute!

Now everyone take pictures with the flowers.

Dessert (I think this is grit's also). How cute!

I have pictures from the trip, but too many to organize at the moment. So I'll leave this one as a placeholder for now.

So many good memories from this trip...

So I have a trip to Hong Kong late June. But why fly to Hong Kong directly when you can stop by Italy along the way right? So that's what I did.

I went by Venice (the veneto region to be exact) to join up with a friend who was there for a week for a study course. Our originally plan was to rent a car to go around the region, stopping at places like Padua, Verona, etc.

But when my friend picked me up from the venice airport, he told me he might have already visited those places already because he has been visiting places with other schoolmates during his stay. So we're like, let's go to Florence! It's only a few hours drive from venice to Florence. So that night we drove all the way to florence, checked into a hotel there, and spend the next day in tuscany.

I am quite lazy to take pictures these days. Especially when I am with others who are taking pictures already. And pictures really doesn't do it justice anyway. The few pictures I took finally was on the way to montepulciano. It's amazing how many places we covered in one day San Gimignano, down to Siena, and then all the way to montepulciano. My friend has gotten a condensed tuscany tour...

Soul Festival at Merrion park around end of May

Maritime festival the week after - we got a really big group together to check out the maritime festival. Weather was great that day and seems like the whole town is out. Hard to organize with such a big group (I think we had 10+ people) and the crowd. But it was a good day. though I only took a couple picture.

Went to Howth the week after. Allegedly there is a festival there, but we went there probably too late, or couldn't find where the festival is. But we did go to the fish market right before it closes. And I got this salmon that even with my non-existent cooking skill turned out to be soooo good.

Have been living in Dublin for almost two years at that point, but still haven't travel around Ireland much. Galway, especially, has been a place I keep meaning to go to, but haven't had a chance to go. It's on the west coast of Ireland, while Dublin is on the east coast. Well, when the choice is going to Paris or Barcelona, it's hard to say no to them. :)

So one friday in May, while I was walking to the office in the morning. I suddenly realized I am free that whole weekend! So why not go to galway? That was it. I went into the office and booked my bus ticket for that night, and hostel for the weekend, and off I go to the bus station after work.

I did a bit of a research and the connemara daytrip from galway seems to be worth a try. It's a bus tour for a full day, which suits me well. I was just looking to be away and spend sometime somewhere. Connemara area sounds beautiful and I was not disappointed at all. This place has the scenery that you see in postcards for ireland...

Here are some pictures. But look at more pictures from the Photo Album!

Sheep everywhere!

Kylemore Abbey

Now back in Galway. Nice town. I like it. Probably won't live there (Dublin is always a small enough city...) But I do like it. I tell people my impression of Galway... It's like Dublin... but... nice. :)

Of course there is a nice church in Galway

And Swans!

Have to say though, after the tour on saturday, and since I already have a look around Galway the rest of the time, I do feel a bit bored going around by myself. The city is very nice, and there are so much more to do. I could always take another tour somewhere else, and I still really want to go to the Aran Islands outside Galway at some point. But I felt like going back to Dublin and just took a morning bus back sunday. That's flexible travelling. :)

Joined up with my friend Ben in London and we went to Liverpool for the weekend back in April. We both sort of shown up without knowing anything about liverpool. It's good to hang out with Ben on a trip like this. We just sort of meet up and have a relaxing weekend away from where we were (Dublin/London). It's not exactly "travelling" as in sightseeing, though we did see sights. We were just there to spend the weekend, and wander around in general.

First is Albert Dock, which is this dock refit into a tourism centre...

Liverpool waterfront and buildings in the area:

Then we went over to the liverpool football stadium. We were going to join a tour, but the tour for the day was sold out. We ended up getting ticket for the next day, but still spent some time in their museum:

And gift shop:

There seems to be a duck tour for every seaside town. Never taken one before, even though there is one at Seattle, Dublin and... Liverpool. The one in Dublin has a Viking theme. The one in Liverpool is... THE YELLOW DUCK-MARINE. GENIUS!

The Cavern club - must visit for Beattles fans. (not a huge fan myself... but it's the beattles!)

Beattles souvenir shop everywhere of course

Checked out some museums...

Now THIS is a work of ART:

This too. Who doesn't love lego?

This is a cool shopping "centre" we happen to walk in along the street:

Some church and cathedrals. European cities always have impressive cathedrals

Chinatown! Should have tried chinese food there...

But we did get some very good food that night. One of the better french restaurants I've been to... and we just happen to discover it, along the street.

Now the next day, went back to the football stadium for the tour... you get to see the players changing room, where they come out to play, where they take interviews, and of course, the stadium itself. Interesting stuff. But to be honest, I can't get as excited about it as other football fans/kids. Ben and I were just sort of silently moving along the crowd while the others were apparently extremely excited... oooh this is the place where legends were created... oooh Gerard's jersey... ooohhh :)

Some pictures from my birthday dinner back in April. There is a mix of my friends and coworkers. We went to a chinese restaurant so I can order what I like to eat and have 16 people share with me :) We ended up having two full tables and I just order double for each dish. Great dinner. It's not quite Hong Kong, but there is enjoyable cantonese food in dublin.

Thanks to everyone who shows up. It's funny looking at these photos now, only a few months later, but some of them are no longer staying in Dublin (Audrey! Miss you! Thanks for the um, very irish gifts. And coworkers from Beijing). Some are about to leave (Ben and family... will miss you guys). I wonder how many in the picture will be still here a year from now... such is life in dublin...

Tunrs out I haven't posted anything for about 4 months! That's a long time...

I am doing fine, but there wasn't much time to spend on blogging but the fact is, the longer I have stopped, the harder it is to keep up as more and more photos piles up. Good thing is, I am back. :)

These pictures were taken back in april. I had a free day in Dublin and had an idea of taking pictures along the way when I was going about town doing my saturday routine - which mostly consist of walking around checking out various things.

Remeber the anti-chinese protests and the resulting pro-chinese demonstrations back in April? This was the first thing I saw when I came downstairs to o'connell st.

Usually I walk along temple bar. There is the used book market

The buskers

And the farmers market

From the market square I'll hop into my favorite cinema (maybe in the world). The IFI (www.ifi.ie)

The confirmist was playing (old italian movie), I bought a ticket for a later show and move on. Now I am going to show you the gym I go to in Temple Bar

Yes that was the entrance to the gym. Fancy stuff.

So after they gym I was just walking along grafton street, one of the main shopping street in Dublin. Needed to pick up a couple of shirts I remember. And it started to rain, as always..

Afterwards, I needed to pick up some grocery. Now onto my favorite chinese supermarket

Got my shopping done, now I am just going to drop the stuff home before the movie. Along the way I pass by the George's market arcade, there are some interesting shops there...

Across the liffey river back to the "north side" of dublin

Going through the "italian quarter" and stopped by to pick up some stuff from the italian store:

And walk through Henry street (the other main shopping street in dublin) towards where I live. See the millenium spire in front

Now I am home and out again. Still not yet time for movie. Stopping by the book store just to kill time...

I took the middle picture above because I thought those books looks interesting and was going to check them out later on. Incidentally, I ended up picking up a used copy of "The Book Thief" a few months later at the temple bar book market, for a mere 5 euros. It's the book I am reading right now!

Ok, so back across the river to the "south side" - temple bar is south of the river. And looking back at the "north" - o'connell street and the millenium spire.

Ah. IFI, finally. Time for something to eat (I love this cinema) while waiting for the movie.

One last thing to say, the confirmist was an excellent, excellent movie!

Drove through New Mexico today and is in Texas already. Main stop of today was Carlsbad Caverns National Park - which has the biggest underground cave in the world. We took an elevator down 750 feet to the starting point of the self-guided walking tour. It's a 1 mile (1.5 hour walk!) route going through part of the underground cave system. My phone camera doesn't work so well in the dark, so there is no way to take picture that shows the vastness of the cave chambers. But here are some pictures:

Outside the cave:

Some pictures from the road:

Went to Mesa Verde National Park today. I didn't know much about the place before - I saw some pictures and spotted a brochure from the arizona hotel. I thought it'll be interesting to see some ruins, and we swing by colorado for that.

I'd say we got more than we bargained for. It's nice to see snow, and the cliff dwellings are pretty cool. It's actually dated back to 500-1000 AD, a UNESCO site too.

I love taking these panoramic pictures from my phone. With my older cameras I didn't bother as I have to come back to the computer to stitch them together. With my phone the stitching is done right after I took the pictures - I love my phone!

Note the cliff dwelling at the bottom right corner

More dwellings if you can spot them. There are quite a few of them along this cliff

More pictures:

Crossed 2 state lines today. We started from Page, Arizona, where we joined a tour for Antelope Canyon (beautiful place), and went through Monument Valley (spectacular) between arizona and utah, then finally arrives at cortez, colorodo to position ourselves for the Mesa Verde National Park tomorrow.

Some amazing sights from the previous two days -

Grand Canyon:

Antelope Canyon:

Monument Valley:

I think we've hit the motel jackpot. Motel 6 is pretty nice - looks like they just remodeled the place. $2.99 for 24 hours of wireless internet? Yes please. In Europe, that sort of money probably will buy you 2 minutes of internet access.

First day of driving went pretty well. I made it a point not to just rush and drive as far as we can. But that being said we drove about 650 miles today, which place us just inside arizona and we'll probably have around 4 hours drive tomorrow to reach grand canyon.

It's funny I just had a conversation with a friend while I was in seattle, about how we don't like starbucks, and would prefer going to down to earth places like mcdonald's over the elitist starbucks crap. :) But now I am grateful for that evil corporation for colonizing everywhere.

You can count on starbucks now, just as much as your mcdonald's at freeway exits. I do agree that starbucks with their overpriced coffee do provide a much nicer place to recharge and get the much needed caffeine shot. What's more, I even picked up a CD from them, as I don't have any with me on the trip. Well done starbucks.

On the topic of food - we stop by this local diner with a cute little courtyard inside. Good call not to stop for Denny's and IHOP!

Some pictures from the road... we drove from one of the greenest part of california:

Through the mountains:

To pretty much the opposite:

That's it for today! Will see when I can get online again next. Future updates are strictly subject to internet availability.