Anza Borrego Dessert, Salton Sea and Palm Springs

Anza-Borrego Dessert; east side of San Diego
After my hanging around San Diego within whole tuesday, I couldn't stand it any more and decided to go out. Two of my friends were chased by this plan successfully and we began a short but long day trip.
Our tour started from Anza-Borrego Dessert. The spanish term Anza-Borrego means goat since there have been goats living on this dessert mountains. Guess what we did on this dessert? We cooked (Shin) Ramen at there. Wierd?! No, you can't immagine how it's delicious!

Salton Sea; east side of Anza-Borrego Dessert
There is the biggest lake of California right next to the Dessert. The scene of this giant lake is beautiful and fascinating but you couldn't imagine this; smelly everywhere. It seems like there's nowhere outgoing water from the lake but lots of incoming to it. Don't stay at one place to much. It must become smelly, later.





Salton City; one of cities by the Salton Sea
There're couple of small towns along with the Salton Sea. Salton City is one of them. Not like the name, it was just a small town.
We were suprise when we came to a grocery store over there. The owner of the store is Korean. I felt Korean living will is strong, again. ^^





Sunset scene near Salton Sea
This beautiful clouds were caught accidently. The nature is wonderful even when you're in dessert.










Palm Springs
Our final destination was Palm Springs; A spring on dessert.
We've had giant burgers as dinner with beer (buds; they don't have microbrewary) and walked a little. Downtown streets were beautiful and crowded since it's holiday season.







Cute Palm Springs downtown.








Temecula
As usual, we've stopped by Temucula by nature's calling and I found a cute restaurant over there. This must be stopping point, next time. ^^

Big Bear - starting season

I and Xin's couple went up to Big Bear mountain last saturday.

B-day dinner

December fifth is my birthday. Since everyone's busy these season (final season), I couldn't have good celebration with my friend in school.
This time, I invited few friends of mine who have spent most of time together at schoool and their friends.








Jessica & Xin are a lovely couple. They will be perfect match to each other. Kevin is graphics designer from Chico, northern California. It's nice to see you. He seems cool guy.










Irene is the first chinese (not really ^^) girl I've known. I thought she's a gf of Xin since he brought her to our study group. She proved herself smart. Many time, she lead our group and shed light to us when we're in dark. Even though she's from Santa Barbara, she's grown up in San Diego before (and now). So, we can say, she's true San Diegan. ^_*






Gene likes to say "little ...." but both he and Sarah (Gene's wife) are tall. This hot couple is Mrs & Mr Lockett. Just married! No kidding!! (And I've sung in the marrage)

Thanksgiving at Sarah's house, Orange County

Samantha and Xin play ping-pong. The chinese guy has no mercy on a petit girl.











Gene & Sarah couple poses on the t-day table.
Sarah's sister Paula (?)










Xin, Jessica couple and Chester on the T-day table.

Thanksgiving eve - Beer & Poker

On thanksgiving eve, couple of friends visited my house and celebrated the start of holiday. (Dr Chae, Jungjoon, Danny, Jayhyuk from left to right in picture)
Dr Chae hasn't come down to San Diego so often. It was long time ago to see him. Three of these guys except Dan have no girl friend and the fact encourages me to make one before them. ^^ Especially before Jay. hehe.


Hunki and Chaeman are good guys. They always laugh like angels (^^) and are nice to ppl. I didn't meet Hunki so much time. One of the main reason is that he usually studies hard and there's not so many chance for him to appear on this kind of drink-and-dance meeting. ;)
Chaeman always brings bottles of nice beer. He's studying gerentology and beer, seriously. ;)

Our main goal to meet the night was to play poker. See! There're only two small white chips in front of me. Do you know what this means? Yes, exactly right what you're thinking about.
During the game, I lost all my bucks and Dan became winner.
Dan, we should have nice dinner, soon. Actually, Waynne the black guy seemed to earn some in the beginning, but the final winner was Dan. I learned what a nice gambler does. ^^

Short trip to Japan

My short japanese trip started from downtown Tokyo, Ueno where my friend Seungchul lives at. He said this area is famous for lots of Korean people's living. One strange thing is I couldn't find many Korean stores around here. Only few of them could be found. Japan has biggest Korean immigrants in the world, but the unique history of immigration of Koreans makes its situation quite different from any other country. Korean peoples are spread all over Japan, now. This makes them hard to be found in Japan. We are not even distinguished from Japanese.

From when I arrived at Japan, it was rainy all day. The rainy night of Tokyo was clean but cold while I still remembered nice blue sky of Korea. Lots of people passed right hand side (Japan is left-passing country) and also lots of people smoked on the street. Heavy smokers and drunken people were crowded in the night of Tokyo. I and my friend went a traditional fish market in downtown Tokyo and we're merged into crowd over there. Fresh fish and shouting people were impressive scene on that.

Why do all the fish markets have red light? Is it good for freshness of their goods? You can also find english letters in their tag if you look at it carefully. Japan looks like more cultural diverse society than Korea. I could easily find foriegn people like westerns, Indians, Chineses and Koreans on any street of Tokyo. In other reason, this trip to Japan was not a real tour. I meant to see my grandpa but he was having trouble with his wife who's not my real grandma. The old lady was dying on bed at hospital and I couldn't have any happy feeling to travel Japan while it happened. I had to admit I couldn't help him since I couldn't even find a way back home in Japan. For that reason, I only slept one night at grandpa's home, Yokohama and returned to my friend Seungchul's house.
Near Seungchul's house, I got a chance to have the "famous" Japanese ramen. Although the restaurant was not so clean, taste of it was really good and quantity was satisfactory. I had prejudice to japanese restaurant that they always serve small food in expensive price but it's changed this time. If you want to criticize certain culture, you should dive into it deeply.
The last course of this trip was Akihabara which has been famous for lots of electronics stores. Unfortunately, I got there too late and most of stores closed soon. I bought a little keychain with a functionality of discharging static electricity. Now, I regret I didn't buy more than one of it. ^^;;

During daytime Tokyo was full of bikes parked on passenger road. The actuall width of the road is enough to pass people but lots of bikes parked on one side of the road make passengers uncomfortable. In additional to this, bicycles also run through the passenger road, not the main road. It's impossible to talk with my friend while I was walking on the street since a bike rings behind me soon.
Japan has the biggest car manufacture, Toyota, in the world, but the gas price in Japan is the highest all over the world. This makes paradox that the richest people in the world are not affordable to have a car and they have no choice but riding bike on the street.

Vacation on Fall

I've got a vacation within last two weeks and couldn't still be recovered from it, now. First few days, I spent most of time to prepare VISA interview which has been on US Embassy at Seoul. There're couple of official doc's that I needed to visit different government offices to get them. (waste of time!) As a result, I got new VISA stamped and returned to the States, safely.

My kind friends waited for me that dates and we met on a nice bar located at Myoung-dong. I found myself is the only single among these but they're not changed a lot even after married life. It's always good to have unchanged friends on somewhere. We've drunken a lot and missed the last train of subway but were happy, anyway.

One sad news was that Seonghwan's injured on his knee, seriously. His knee muscle has actually been operated and he've waited for its recovering couple of weeks. Poor guy! I didn't agree with his idea which he'll keep enjoying snowboarding on this winter but it's understandable. How have we loved snowboarding even after Jeongyoon! I just wanna say him, "Plz, plz, be careful!"
This picture was taken at Coffee bean near Gangnam subway station. The smaller guy is Seonghwan and the tall guy is Jeongho. Jeongho is really tall and looks tough but he's kind and soft guy. (He even loves pets!)

Joonhyung is still struggling with hard life. He's trying everything but it seems not easy for him to feed himself and his family. I like his bright smile although he has this suffer. Now he has a small office to provide fixing service for some special sewing machine. I've envied his beautiful singing voice and wanted to hear it again but he just denied singing. I don't know why. Back to 1990's, it was good time to sing together on some bars as a guest singer. I hope we'll have a chance to do that, again.

Another pleasure of this holiday was to see my family. All of my two sisters now have babies. The little cute one in the picture with my parents is my nephew, the youngest sister's baby. He's one year old. It means he wasn't when I was in Korea last time (two years ago). Can you believe it? Since all of my family members are really busy, it was hard to make a time to have a short trip out of city. Fortunately, we can have one day off and went Nami island on the north han river(book han gang) near Choonchun city. Frankly, I didn't like my sister's idea to go there, but the beautiful colors of nature made me comfortable. I couldn't resist to say it's really nice time to be there with my family I love. Half colored leaves were spread like a fire and wide grass provided us to take a deep rest from busy life.
I've liked to be on river side park when I've lived in Seoul. That peaceful scene and mild wind have always made me comfort. It was also a my favorite date-course. ^^ Actually, the river side park is the best on spring time. Lots of small flowers blossom and good smell is givien out everywhere. Just walking around there's good while secrete couples' talking.

Doohwan is one of old but young friends. He played cello when I was in an amatuer orchestra, RACE. He's working for a big credit card company of Korea in Youi island, now. In Korea, I've been in more western restaurants and coffee shops than Korean traditional restaurants. It seems like a trend that young peoples prefer western style place to meet friends. Same thing happened in Japan. You can find lots of Starbucks, Coffee beans, McDonalds and Outback Steak houses in both countries. Anyway, Doohwan also prepares business school in Korea. Every graduate school in Korea requires TOEFL score, now. Things are changing, everytime. Good luck friend!