Trip to Mecca Pt. 2

This is the second part of my long awaited Mecca post. After the KitchenAid Factory tour, we took an unplanned trip to a grist mill. This is Bear's Mill, that still grinds its own flour and corn and locally run. It is very idyllic and pretty, with a river running through it.

There was a broken wagon outside and some pumpkins with fallen leaves.
Here's the stream, pictured in color and in black and white.
The inside of the mill was also a museum, with old machinery and informative labels about the mill and the equipment. Here is a little mouse hole with a metal mouse.
Here are some old fashioned scales.
Here are some old bicycles.
Here are some of the old chutes that transports the grain down the mill.

Here is one of the large stones used to grind the grains.

After stocking up on some local flour and grains, we ended up in a Mennonite Coffee shop, pictured here. They actually had some really good food!
At last, here is my new KitchenAid mixer, sitting in it's new home. I've already used it twice so far, and it's going to get used more this holiday season!
Have a Happy Thanksgiving! I'm going to get back to studying now.

Trip to Mecca (also known as: the KitchenAid Experience) Pt. 1

I had an amazing Fall day today with two lovely ladies, Francesca and Jennifer in Greenville, OH. Jennifer and I had been planning to go to the KitchenAid Factory in Greenville for the last couple of months and we our plans finally came to fruition. As my friends know, I've been coveting a KitchenAid stand mixer for awhile because I've been baking a lot more in the recent years. While my baking is amateur at best, I've been slowly improving and I know that the KitchenAid will make my life easier.

We started the day bright and early as we were on the road by 9:30AM. It was a beautiful crisp day and we started the nearly two hour drive to Columbus. Jennifer had made delicious cinnamon buns and I had eaten one in the car on the way there. When we arrived in Greenville, we stopped at the Maid-Rite Drive In for an early lunch . They are known for two things, their loose meat sandwiches (made of 100% ground beef) that tastes sort of like a hamburger, it was very delicious and their gum wall outside. I took a picture of the gum wall outside. It was gross and strangely fascinating.
After the lunch stop, we went to the KitchenAid Factory to take their 1PM tour. We were a little early so we paid for our tour and went to the store that was downtown and came back (more on the store later). I took pictures of the street sign that says KitchenAid Way leading to the factory.
We couldn't take any pictures in the actual factory, but we could take pictures of the lobby/display area. Here's a picture of the first KitchenAid stand mixer that the guy made in his garage in a couple of days in 1919. The first mixer weighed 65 lbs!
This mixer was made for the firehouses that served in the 9/11 attacks and only 100 were made.
The tour lasted an hour led by our wonderful tour guide, Sharon. We learned a lot about KitchenAid, it's history and the mechanics. There is only one KitchenAid factory in the world and they have a projected goal of 1.78 million stand mixers to manufacture this year. It's a lot of KitchenAid mixers. They have made 65 different colors, with white being the most popular. They also make all the international mixers at the factory in Greenville. Here's a picture of us after the tour and we were so overwhelmed with information!
After the tour, it was back into town to the KitchenAid experience store. It was pretty amazing since they had a lot of KitchenAid products in one place. They also had a little museum downstairs of the history of KitchenAid. I geeked out a little bit because Julia Child's actual mixer was there! I took a picture of it and she even signed it.
Here's a picture of some of the older mixer colors that you don't see anymore.
This one is from the 1950s with the ice cream attachment.
The 1920s one that weighed over 60 lbs.
Here's part of the store with Francesca taking a picture of us.
And here are our purchases! We each bought a mixer, with Jennifer going professional with the bestest and largest mixer there was.
Then the trip takes a little interesting turn because we ended up at a grist mill! More in the next post.

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.

Singapore and Malaysia

Greetings!

My parents and I decided to go to Malaysia and Singapore because we've never been and our Japan plan fell through. So first off, here is a picture of one of the world's tallest towers, the Petronas Tower in Malaysia. It was kind of disappointing since we couldn't go up to the top of the towers because there wasn't an observatory there. However, there was a mall in the bottom of the towers. The one redeeming quality was the most amazing bakery in the mall. It's called Rotiboy and it had one of the best buns I've ever had. Here's a picture of a old Portuguese Fort and church, one of the few sites in Malaysia.
Surprisingly, there is a identical Iwo Jima Memorial to the one in Washington D.C. in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Here's a picture of my parents with the mounted guard outside the Palace of the Malaysian king in Kuala Lumpur.
Here's a picture of some parliamentary buildings in Kuala Lumpur.
We were only in Malaysia for two days so we didn't get to see much. Then we were off to neighboring city-country Singapore, which is also known for its strict laws. Here's a picture of the merlion in Singapore. For some reason there are a lot of them around Singapore.
We took a night cruise around the harbour and here are some of the buildings.
The main reason my parents wanted to go to Singapore was because of the Universal Studios. Here's my mom with Charlie Chaplin.
Finally, we went to a Singapore beach and we managed to catch the sunset and took a pretty family picture.
Well that's all for Singapore and Malaysia. All in all, I wouldn't return to Singapore because most of the sights revolve around shopping malls and everything was really expensive. The Universal Studios was tiny and most of the rides were closed. It wasn't that much fun. I would return to Malaysia because there's a lot of things that I would still want to see.

All in all, my Asian trek was very productive. I'll spend the next post(s) summing up the trip so stay tuned.

Xi'an and the Terra Cotta Army

Hello!

I have always wanted to see the Terra Cotta Army because I'm just an all around anthropology geek. So my parents, aunt, uncle, and I joined a tour to go to Xi'an. There were only two things that I wanted to do in Xi'an: see the Terra Cotta Soldiers and eat the dumpling banquet. Little did I know, there was actually a lot to see in Xi'an.

According to our tour guide, there were actually a lot more foreign tourists that come and visit Xi'an, so the government thought to take advantage of it by building a large cultural center pictured below to explain and show off the Chinese sites. It was pretty impressive. We went on a really rainy day so there wasn't that many people there.
Xi'an also has a leaning temple. I took a picture of it but according to our tour guide, it used to lean a lot more before they fixed it.
Finally, we got to see the Terra Cotta Army. It was amazing because it's huge. I never thought that there were that many figures. They are nowhere close to unearthing all of the figures and they think that they will be excavating for another decade or more. Here are some horses in the pits.
All the figures do have different expressions and they are dressed differently to signify rank and position.
Here's another smaller pit.


This is the famous chariot with horses but this was a replica because the real one was in Shanghai for the Expo.
Xi'an has many temples and here is a pretty large one.
We also managed to have an elaborate dumpling dinner at De Fa Chang.
Our hotel had a large art piece in the back of the famous Chinese emperor, which I can't remember the name of right now.
It was pretty rainy when we went to Xi'an so we didn't get to go up Hua Shan (Hua Mountain) a very famous scenic landmark in China. So we took a picture at the base of the mountain.
That's it for all the Xi'an sights. All in all, it was a pretty fabulous trip. We actually went to Xi'an with Hong Thai travel agency and while we were there, we heard about the hostage situation in the Philippines. The scary thing was that were were looking to go there with the same travel agency. Luckily, we didn't. So next up is Singapore and Malaysia!