the Planets - NPR

Today, while driving to work, I tuned into my favourite radio station: NPR, my local station is KQED-FM 88.5. The current show was "Talk of the Nations: Science Friday": A Sightseeing Tour of the Solar System with guest Andrew Fraknoi, where he addressed the hypothetical question of where in the Solar system would you want to go for a tour?

They also referred to the NASA photo gallery site for *fantastic* pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

I know that I am nerdy, because I find this show really interesting, I will post a part of the transcript here in a few hours.... stay tuned!

Okey, I just downloaded the audio stream for last Friday's show, and here are some of the notes I'd taken:

Where would you like to go for a vacation this summer? How about somewhere in the Solar system? (Ground rule: money is of no object; no worry about safety)

- Planet Venus: lava tube about a mile wide,

- Mars - tallest mountain on Mars, Mt. Olympus, 3 times the height of Mt. Everest, big enough to cover the state of Washington

- "take a walk in the rings of Saturn", Prof. suggested using a bumper car instead to leap amongst the pieces of ice.

- Pluto: odd cousin you don't want to invite to Thanksgiving dinner, the only planet which human spacecraft so far has not reached to take photos.

- Submarine on Europa - very intriguing world. Europa is an ice-covered moon of Saturn, where there are a huge ocean of water under the cover of ice. Most likely to have life forms (??)

- Titan: very cold, Saturn's moon. Methane exists there in the 3 natural forms, vapor, liquid, and solid states.

- Lagrange Point - beautiful view of Earth, the most beautiful planet.

- NASA has taken amazing pictures from the space station, Google "photo journal" and NASA for beautiful images.

Tangrams

Since we are on the topic of puzzles, I have been really addicted to a new form of Sudoku, called Samurai Sudoku. Basically it's 5 Sudoku linked together to create a bigger and more complicated puzzle. I did several of these recently, and it's quite fun, not to mention it's a time sink.

Last year around my bday, a friend gave me a 365 calendar version of the Tangram. I had been pretty diligent about doing it, but today I cleaned up my desk a bit, and noticed the date was stuck on Mar 11! gosh, I have 3+ months of Tangram to catch up on!! "Gon bate!" in Japanese. gotta work hard every morning now, 2 Tangram puzzles per day will set me back on track.

Souza quote

"Dance as though no one is watching
Love as though you've never been hurt
Sing as though no one can hear you
Live as though heaven is on earth."
~ Souza quote

fish puzzle

Catcher in the Rye

"Catcher in the Rye" is my latest reading material. While going through my childhood "treasure chest", I actually found a copy of this book, apparently it's supposed to be a part of my HS English class reading, but maybe we changed our curriculum that semester so we never got to it. So now I have 2 copies of this book on-hand, how ironic, that God indeed speaks to one via all channels of communication, be it honest opinion from a friend, or sincere advice, or in this case, revelation through the reading of a book.

Books are very powerful entities, I am serious to say that people's lives have been changed by books. Literacy, which is taken for granted today used to be a special skill in the old times. People who can read can learn from other people's ideas published via books. We've all heard of stories of people who have discovered their life's meaning and purpose through some books, and I am not talking about monks only. Even recently, one of my close co-workers told me the other day that a certain book "enlightened" him when he read it in college, he follows the value and principles stated in the book, and it has opened his eyes to the world. (No, it's not the Bible, and he's Indian, but it's not the Buddist books either, it's Ann Ryan's Fountain Head).

Personally, I just spend 2 hours finishing reading another little short story "book". It's a notebook I found in my childhood "treasure chest". It's my notebook from 5th grade, and it's a short story I've read once, was so touched, that I literary HAND COPIED the whole story into that notebook. The story is called "the eyes of the Blue Whale", it's about the purity of one's soul. This is from over at least 15 years ago, and it's all in Chinese. Can you believe the amount of time and effort I invested into keeping a copy of this story for myself? (going through other items, I realized that I had so much free time during my childhood to day-dream and wonder, and wander... there were a lot of personal projects, drawings, sketches, diaries and stories, books from years and years ago... it's indeed a "treasure chest" )

So back to "Catcher in the Rye", what's the significance of:
- the red hunting cap
- ducks in the pond of Central park?
- he kept on mentioning Jane, the girl that went to the same summer school before, he has a crush on her? then why did he even bother with the other girls whom he'd already considered "stupid and unworthy"?

smorgasbord

-- An interesting word I just learned from the Geographic magazine article today:

Main Entry: smor·gas·bord
Pronunciation: 'smor-g&s-"bord
Function: noun
Etymology: Swedish smörgåsbord, from smörgås open sandwich + bord table

1 : a luncheon or supper buffet offering a variety of foods and dishes (as hors d'oeuvres, hot and cold meats, smoked and pickled fish, cheeses, salads, and relishes)
2 : an often large heterogeneous mixture : MELANGE

C'est la vie

I just heard some news through the grapevine about an old high school classmate of mine. (I will make the long story short to get to the point)

W. was a sweet girl back in HS, she sat next to me in AP American History. I heard that she got married, and recently delivered a baby. 3 months after the baby was born, the doctors find out that her child has some kind of birth defect, mentally. I was so shocked when I heard that, having known someone whose family went through a similiar situation, I can slightly comprehend the difficulty.

The problem put tremendous pressure on her marriage and career, she had to quit her job to take care of the baby full time, and luckily, her family is deeply pious so they have found comfort in the Lord. But my friend said that she's even afraid to call W., "because what should I say? it's just awkward"...

I felt terrible for W., because she seemed to have it all, career, family, now a new baby. But life is not always a straight road, it reminds me of a message I heard recently. That there will be suffering in life, not everything will unfold the way we planned it to be. We mortals don't have everything under our control. We need to be mentally prepared for the "uncertainties" and know that not to have a sense of "entitlement", because all the good things coming our way, they are not guaranteed.

Everything is indeed in God's hand, what we can do is learn to appreciate every day that He has given us, and live our lives counting his blessings.

FWD: THE RIGHT HANDS

THE RIGHT HANDS (thx for forwarding this to me =)

A basketball in my hands is worth about $19.
A basketball in Michael Jordan's hands is worth about $33 million.
It depends whose hands it's in.

A baseball in my hands is worth about $6.
A baseball in Alex Rodriguez's hands is worth $25 million.
It depends whose hands it's in.

A tennis racket is useless in my hands.
A tennis racket in Roger Federer's hands usually means a Wimbledon title.
It depends whose hands it's in.

A rod in my hands will keep away a wild animal.
A rod in Moses' hands will part the mighty sea.
It depends whose hands it's in.

A sling shot in my hands is a kid's toy.
A sling shot in David's hand is a mighty weapon.
It depends whose hands it's in.

Two fish and five loaves of bread in my hands is a couple of fish sandwiches.
Two fish and five loaves of bread in God's hands will feed thousands.
It depends whose hands it's in.

Nails in my hands might produce a birdhouse.
Nails in Jesus Christ's hands will produce salvation for the entire world.
It depends whose hands it's in.

As you see now it depends whose hands it's in.

So put your concerns, your worries, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your families and your relationships in God's hands because...

It depends whose hands it's in.

-- Author Unknown

adorable sign