greetings from tennessee! i just arrived yesterday. even though there's 3-hr jetlag, but due to the tiredness, i went to bed at midnight--eastern time.

yesterday, i had a 3-hr hang over in chicago's o'hare airport. they renamed some terminals and did some decoration to the airport, so it looks pretty neat. i used to dislike this airport, because there's no where to sit and no where to find a plug. but now, at least i could find some plug, even though i have to fight for it with some other people.

  Chicago O'Hare International Airport

so i got here and slept well. the cats are both so cute--still. and i'm a little surprised that calie still remembers me. i will going on a hike with them again tomorrow. and i ate a lot of food today! they were all great. especially the dessert. gosh, all my diet plan are gone...

sweat bread, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, chesscake, etc.

i love the south! they have sooooooooooo many great food!

better write something today.

these days, the sunset is pretty early, so by 5pm, it is dark as midnight outside. usually, i stay in the cube 'til 6, but ever after the daylight saving, i sorta want to go back before 5.

the debugging process? yeah, it's going. but as you know, writing the code and fix it for a certain length of input/output is no problem, but to increase the efficiency and apply large input to it as well is not easy. i've been working on this for almost 2 weeks. feel like hopeless.

Tuesday, to finally execute xj's birthday plan--she took prelim on Monday and that's why we didn't do this earlier--we went to eat shabushabu.

everyone's tired, but we had a great time.

as of today, California continues having a great weather. i thought last morning when i woke up, i heard the video talking about raining around anaheim (where disneyland is), but it didn't come. and then i had a dream last night, about going to disney yesterday, but it rained at night. gosh...maybe i'm too tired.

network is not working this weekend, so won't be online 'til Monday night.

went to the Japanese supermarket today and finally tried "real" ramen...well, suppose to be real.

it's kinda salty. after that, we went to south coast plaza, and we were looking for water like crazy......anyway, the decoration of south coast looks pretty and it really feels like Christmas. here's the picture:

i can't believe it's friday tomorrow, meaning another week is gone! gosh, time goes so fast, oh! and for this year's thanksgiving, not surprisingly, i will go to Knoxville. people in Knoxville, you don't have to feel lonely, 'cuz i'll be there. people in Irvine, sorry about leaving all of you. i'll miss you all, but i will be back on Dec.1.

yeah! thanksgiving! yeah! turkey! yeah! another week gone through my fingers w/o me noticing it! great...

i went to watch changeling on Saturday. we were planning to watch some horror movie, but since there's no good horror movies--all of them look stupid--and everything else did not attract us, we decide to watch changeling.

i watched the trailers before i went. it felt alright and since it's based on a true story, i believed it to be good. also, it was angelina jolie's movie and she's a mother in it. so i was actually pretty looking forward to it.

it was all good, besides, i didn't know when they raise the movie ticket price, or it's just orange county. anyway, of a scale from 0 to 10, i would give this movie a 9, and also, i probably will recommend this to a friend. sounds like i'm doing a survey, huh? anyway, took off that point because it was kinda sad.

tomorrow is veteran's day, we got a day off. yeah! but it's already week 7, soon, i'll have thanks giving and then one more week of class, then final, then i'm back home again! people said i went back to china way too often. yeah, over all, all my families are there...oh well.

can't believe it's week 6 already. oh my gosh......time goes so fast.

yeah, last week was Halloween, but i didn't get a chance to put up the picture i took. there were a lot of maniac people on campus. i've seen bunny lady, pirates, maid, nun, anime cosplay on campus. my roommate dressed up as victim and her boyfriend dressed up as criminal. yeah...

as i went to my cube after class, i saw this guy. he stood out among everybody. and this character is the last one on earth i would think someone could actually dressed as. so he's the only one i took picture with.

yeah, junk food lead and representative. i mean...why...why mcdonald's...even burger king is better than that...

anyway, yesterday, i just finished my first part of the program. 1st phase of debug is done. haray! but that's not enough, so long way to go.

btw, since now we switched to daylight saving, the sunrise is pretty early, but sunset was like 5pm. :(  i don't like walking in the dark...

it's xj's birthday today, in China's timezone though. but still, just to find us a reason to be lazy and not cook dinner tonight, we went to an italian restaurant. it's a little pity that we couldn't ask more people--it's an instant decision, but we had fun.

the restaurant, named buca, itself is really hard to find. it was in market place--the most complicated outlet who can ever imagine and the worst design i've ever seen speak of the signs to show direction. it was all the same here and there for almost 10 blocks! building same colored and street decorations for each block are also the same. we circled around one of the plazas and saw a sign. at the beginning, we couldn't see the entire name but just the "B", which is the 1st character. then we finally saw it while we couldn't turn left and had to do a u-turn.

anyway, there's about 10 minutes of wandering around of that place, but we get to it finally. it was not bad. when the waitress lead us to the table, we passed the kitchen, met the chef and saw one table in the kitchen. yes, you have to go through the kitchen to get to your tables or leave the restaurant.

there are many pictures hanging on the wall, and they are pretty italian style, cutely decorated and awesome. also, the food is delicious. the most interesting thing is, in the middle of sphagetti, our waitress brought a can of canned pepper onto the table. it was pretty large, while we were thinking what that was for. the brought our pizza.

i used to remember the last time i ate authentic italian pizza, i was in italy. one night, we all decide to ventured the real pizza instead of some fake chinese food--i went there with travel agency and they arranged us to some chinese restaurant whose food tastes like trash. it turned out that america has the best pizza speak of flavor, but the old man who made pizza and has a warm smile made up the credit for his pizza.

anyway, i assume the pizza in this restaurant is not real authentic, but it was good. we ate many and for sure, destroyed our diet plan again. it is really a unplaned wonderful decision we've made, which would satisfy our laziness.

but, over all, you know, it's just an excuse for not cooking.