Best movie of this summer

And the winner is... 500 days of Summer. One of the reasons I love this movie is because it's the anti-thesis of cheesy Hollywood romantic comedy (i.e: The ugly truth, its trailer looks formulaic). 500 days is not black/white, happy/unhappy ending. The movie feels genuine, and upbeat in the end. I can't help but love the little sketches and drawings in the movie. Because of the cinematography, even the looks of the characters (Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt) turned into something like cartoon characters. Gordon-Levitt's character is a bona fide preppy guy, whom you can tell is from the East coast upon glance. I thought Deschanel's outfits seemed a bit odd in contrast to NYC's background, but it's odd in a good, unique sense. And who knows, maybe Deschanel brought back the retro trend, because she looks so refreshing and radiant in that style. One of my favorite scenes was the little dance by Gordon-Levitt with ppl in the background dancing along. Classic.

Speaking of dancing and ppl dancing in the background, I came across this Jazz-hip hop band on the Colbert Report. Just love the rhythm! Like Colbert was saying, they might be the next biggest thing from Sweden since IKEA.

White Pine Trail

Recently, my mom got a break from work, so I took her to White Pine trail since she has never been there before, and it's one of my favorite. That place is awesome, after hiking there I've had better sleep and more energy.












It took a while for us to capture this close-up of the little squirrel getting water from the plant. But it was worth it. :) The little guy was thirsty!

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."---Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction"---Tolstoy

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."---Tolstoy

I like Tolstoy's quotes.  He is amazing in summing up lots of statements into one simple, insightful sentence.  I love quotes that are like that, they convey thoughts and ideas that I cannot arrange into elegant, coherent sentences myself.

     I finally received the Berlitz Advanced French package that I ordered from Amazon in my mailbox.  And when I got home and started listening to the dialogues, my Mom suddenly interrupted by asking about Obama's health care plan, which's still under scrutiny in Congress.  She said how it's ridiculous that so many politicians in congress oppose the idea of government-run health care program, and I had to explain to her about lobbists who influence politicians to vote against such reform measures.  Then she said how she would like to live in a country where there's universal health care, like Europe or Canada.  So funny that she came up with the idea of living in Europe when I was trying to sharpen my French....