Getting Political

I've never been a terribly political person but from time to time, I've been known to be interested in politics, so when the President of the United States shows up on my campus, I had to go. How often can you hear the President speak? I wasn't going to get to hear him any other time.

I went to the political rally on my campus that was sponsored by the Democratic Party and stood out on the Oval for four hours. There was some logistical issues, but it was a pretty decent rally. I went with my friends Cat and Ally. There were 35,000 people total that made it to the rally and the message was pretty positive, please vote every election day. I have to say that I'm guilty of not voting every election, because I don't have time and I didn't educate myself on the candidates. I'm really going to try to vote this coming election day.

The rally included the senator, congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy, the mayor Michael Coleman, and the governor Ted Strickland. Also included into the mix, musical guest John Legend. Here's a picture of him now.

The First Lady introduced President Obama, but I couldn't get a good picture of her. There were just too many people there. I managed to get excellent pictures of the President. I have to say that he is an excellent public speaker and he made the wait worth it.
After going to the rally, I feel grateful that I'm an American and I have so many rights that I probably wouldn't have had if my parents didn't leave Hong Kong. But there's so much more that America needs to do, we need to have an universal health care system and a better education system where everyone can get a quality education instead of being taught to a standardized exam. So, I conclude this blog by saying, I think we still have a lot to do and I will try to vote in two weeks to do my part.

Taking a Study Break...

I'm unofficially taking a study break right now so that I can update my blog. As promised, the pictures from the last post were a wall at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Kuala Lumpar, Malayasia, where the soldiers from the statue do not look Malaysian at all! The goldish picture is from the roof tiles at a temple in Xian and the last picture is of a really old warped tree trunk in the courtyard of the temple at Xian.

That's it for now, I'm going back to studying for my exam.

Back in the C-bus

It's been exactly a month since I stepped off the Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong in New York's JFK airport. I've finally settled into my groove here in Columbus after battling food poisoning and other various ailments related to bug bites. It's week two/three of the quarter and I think I finally know what I'm doing. Now I'm focused on working on my dissertation and figuring out what all those crazy numbers mean! Hopefully, I will be done with it by the end of this school year and I will have earned the title 'Doctor' (which I'm making my cousin use to address me in the future).

In some ways, this summer seems so surreal to me, like it never really happened. I'm dying to go back to see the friends I've made and also to travel more. I have definitely been bitten by the travel bug and I need to get out of Columbus so I can travel to my heart's content. I'm also wanting to finish school so I can put roots down somewhere and start a real life. It would also be nice to have family to stop asking me when I will finish school and get married and have children. Once I'm done they will just push the white picket fence idea on me and I don't think they realize that I might not want that. It's the traditional Chinese family thing. My parents don't do this, but family friends do. Chinese guilt, is it worse than Jewish guilt? Who knows.

I don't want to just keep musing away, I think I'm going to post some pretty pictures from my travels to my future blog posts. Today, we'll play guess the abstract picture and for the next blog post, I'll post the answers.