Nights in Seoul

Drinking on Monday night.

Danny suggested to drink on Monday and we gathered at Gordon Biersch, Mission Valley. Gordon Biersch is one of fine local beer brewery restaurants in San Diego area. Even better, we could have free beer until happy hour! Here's Greg, Danny, Chester(me) and those guys' coworker. (sorry. I forget his name.)
Danny will have marriage the next weekend at Korea and I'll be there too. Although I never said before, I envy him. /.\ Hey Dan! Your good time passed away. You should be jealous on my brilliant single life!!

Mountain, Desert and Lake

• Laguna mountain
  

On the top of the Laguna mountain , I could see desert view over couple of hills. Since here's highest land (6.3k ft) around San Diego, strong wind and low temperature made me quite chilly



The lonely observatory stands with the clear blue sky as background. Usually, no people stays and keeps this facility. I always wonder if someone operates it.

• Anza Borrego desert
  

After mountains, Julian, valley, there starts Anza Borrego desert. The cactus flowers' season starts at March or April. It's a miracle we can see this beautiful little flower in desert.





Surely, lots of cactus live there. Snake's lair also scares people since you can find it everywhere around.



Red colored little flowers were shaked too much by the wind. It was hard to take those guys.



I like this cute little flower. This color lets me recall the scene of forsythia in Korea. I've passed roads with blossom of forsythia at every day of Spring to get school.


The other side of desert is still dried and dead looked. My friends recommended me to travel a desert on winter rather than summer. It's easily emagined why.


Some vine flowers sticked and lived together. Even in a desert, living thing tends to get together to survive.

• Salton Sea
  

I've finally arrived at the Salton Sea. It was hot. It was dried. I was dusty. But there still is a huge lake.



Salton Sea is the biggest lake of California. It stays there because rivers and streams flow until it. There's no way out. So, tthis large amount of water just stays there. One may imagine how water gets salty under this hot circumstance.
A post stands in water. The white material around this post is salt. Can you see how this water is salty?



The place around Salton Sea is supposed to be dead environment but, surprisingly, you can find certain live animals on site.



Furthermore, there is little community of human. Salton Sea area has couple of small towns which are called as "city". No yellow brick road. No city hall. But there's still city.


Lonely posts are along the beach and it's time to go back to home.

Checkeri (End Class Party)

Traditionally, Korean people celebrate the end of a class by party with rice cake. Due to the end of the Design Pattern study group, we've had a 'kinda' checkeri. There's two guests - Sarah & Jay-hyuk and we missed Danny, this night.
Great job, guys! See you next meeting!!!

Cloudy sky of San Diego

Most of time, the sky of San Diego has nothing but clear blue and bright sun. These days are more like my home country's sky line. These cloudy sky was just before the rain started. Isn't it strange? Rain clouds make the whole scene different from usual days. Rare view in San Diego.

Tennis

Recently, I started playing tennis with my friend Xin who recently moved to Qualcomm located next to my work. One good side is we have nice tennis court in our complex. Our offices are part of San Diego Tech Center complex and it provides fitniss center, pool, raquet ball courts and tennis courts. San Diego's nice weather also helps us to play tennis perfectly even in this winter season.

Shiny & snowy San Diego

San Diego is an interesting place with every climate at the same time. Last afternoon I experienced two quite different things; Strong sunshine on the beach and snowfall on the mountain. Those places are located at just less than an hour distance to each other!

The first place is Mt Soledad memorial park closed to La Jolla beach. The strong sunshine made me closing my eyes and I couldn't take any picture of myself. ;)








Meanwhile, the freeway I-8 was closing at the east area of San Diego county by heavy snow and icy road which I've checked out at the same afternoon.








Far east of San Diego area is desert where people are still struggling with rainy day driving..
It's wierd but funny San Diego...

Match Point

Last weekend, I've watched the Match Point which is directed by Woody Allen but filmed on London, not on Manhattan. This movie is not so experimental one nor hard to catch up unlikely the other Woody's but you can say the conclusion of story differs quitely from traditions. (It's definitely not the type of Hollywood Ending)
It seems like to show the dark side of a human being as contrasted with the other side in the beginning. By the way, I found the story doesn't go the way I'd predict based on traditional stories like that. Instead, it concludes something which could happen in our real world. "The devil is not always punished" In spite of the tragic episode in the middle of it, the movie finishes kinda happy ending for our hero and it satisfied me as Woody Allen's way.

On the other side, the actors and actresses are doing good performance. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers did a hard job to show two different side of a human. His performance lets me recall Dostoyevsky's works like the Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov while amazing but poor innocent roled Emily Mortimer keeps acting cute. Personaly, I'm not quite attracted by Scarlett Johansson but her acting was perfect as a unstable and aggressive character.

Since Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is not so popular actor for me and I've tried to find his filmography. He's acted little role back to 1996 in Michael Collins! Michael Collins was my favorite one with In the name of the father concerning Ireland and that is interesting to me. ^^

If you like something different, I'd like to encourage you to watch this one.

Fun time on Big Bear mountain

Flying Chester & Yonghee
We've started jumping since last season but it's still not easy. The problem is "not to be scared". How to do that? Just practice & practice. But it's still funny doing this with same leveled buddy.


Yonghee
He's my snowboarding partner since last year. He's majoring Chemistry in SDSU and a looking good guy with cute cheeks. Hey girl looking at here! Why don't you try your luck to have date with him! He's still a single. If you know me, I'll just help you. ^^




Chester & Yonghee in front of Big Bear Lake (top of mountain)
On the top of the mountain, we've breathed big and started rushing downhill. We need this to survive a hard life~





Jayhyuk (Joey) in front of the lake (middle of slope)
A always happy guy. Don't look at him! look at the beautiful lake behind him. ^^






Gray squirrel on big bear ski resort ^^
Such a resident of big bear resort. There are gray quirrels everywhere.






Irene, Xin, Yonghee from the left at the bottom of Snow Summit ski resort.
We've went up to the mountain again after one week. This time, Irene and Xin joined us. I've had no idea about Irene's snowboarding before. That's good chance to have fun with more people!!




Yonghee tried table and look at his posing! Awesome!