Planeswalker

一般来说,看起来越正常的人,总有点不正常的事情.
但是,我最近发现接触的事情都是不正常的.
这实在是太要人崩溃了.
我觉得我应该好好的忏悔一下行事的方式!

The last travel, and the one which is only for traveling, is the trip to the Changbai Mt. For people living in the northeast, it is a legendary mountain. For the Tianchi, also for the massive underground rivers and ginseng inside.

Before I went to the mountain, I went to Dandong first for stupid rules in the train system. It is also on the boarder of China and North Korea. Someone said the contrast on the border is very clear in the night. Because North Korea doesn’t have enough power to light in the night, so it is like black and white.

On the way to the Changbai Mt I met a couple of locals on the train. They are very hospitable. They even invite me for the lunch on the arriving day. Anyway the ones ran the businesses there are not so kind.

On the mountain there were cold and snow. It is like always. The Tianchi (Heaven Lake) is just a pile of frozen ice with a lot of snow covering the top.

You can hardly see any plants there. It is tundra.

After that one of us is sick immediately. So I have to visit most of the rest places with sunnymonkey alone. And what we saw most… is snow. There are snows everywhere. If you die in the snow, no one will discover you.

And the underground river.

Frozen waterfalls.

Hot springs. Some birds will wash themselves in the hot spring!

And the frozen tunnel. It is under the snow.

Outside the tunnel… you can see how thick the snow is.

The larger waterfall, also frozen.

We are on the way to the underground forest, which grows after the eruption of the volcano movement.

Who knows what are the red spots?

The underground forest. It is in the valley. But the snow was heavy, so no good photos.

After that sunnymonkey and purplesnow left for the airport. But I still spent some time around. Like the lumber mill.

Also some time inside a pine forest. It is a special kind of pinus sylvestris.

This is the end of my travel in winter. And it is the end of the series. I am hoping I can get some more in the summer.

The way back to Shenyang is hard. The planes delayed a lot. So I stayed one night at the Beijing airport. And the plane back to Shenyang will stop once in the middle. In a very small airport with single lane.

This “carefully slide” sign is interesting.

And traditional chinese things on the plane, quite localized.

I didn’t stay home for long. sunnymonkey in the second week. We went to the cast museum.

 

There were no one there except us… it is lucky that’s in the day.

I thought I met a lot of these things when I was little. But not too much now. There are no such kind of things in the city of Shenyang now.

MIT and Harvard are the very places you need to visit in Boston. It is my base of staying in the US. Although I found that I still unfamiliar with it at last. In the middle of the Harvard bridge there is painted “Half way to hell”, where the hell is MIT. You can google this by yourself.

MIT is a typical engineer school. There are liquid nitrogen bottles everywhere. Not to mention the accelerator, nuclear reactor and the wind tunnel not far from my office.

I was astonished that there is a painting about the “Blind Men and Elephant” story. For you want to check it out, it should be on the way to the Hayden Library.

Harvard, it is said to be. And some others say it isn’t. But who cares? Only his foot matters.

MIT Museum is an interesting place, with a lot of weird art works and non-art works.

Stata Center more serves as a landmark in MIT.

And inside are nerds…

They also have other weird buildings like the green building. I really can’t appreciate the designer.

Harvard looks much nicer, especially in the fall.

From the main street, I often go to the Royal East, for supper.

The view form my office is like this. Anyway, it is far away…

I stayed there for most of the time, but I didn’t take much photos about it. It is hard to say something about Boston, because I live here but not a traveler.

This is the sign around the first place I lived. It is called Jaimaca Plain. It is not Jaimaca, but a district of high crime rate, by crime I mean gunshot. So when I saw the sign, I felt quite cold.

The second place I live is actually on the border of Somerville and Cambridge. Yes, I never lived in Boston.

 

The last residence of mine is far in the Porter Square, even further than Harvard. In the winter, there are a lot of snow.

This is the harbor of Boston.

Boston is an old city. If compared to Beijing, it is really old. Because what we do in China is rebuild after destroy, but here you need to report to the government if you want to change the color of your house.

The acorn street often appear on the postcards of Boston. Anyway it is not so good at the end of the fall.

I also went to the Cleveland Circle at that time. It will cost you about one hour on the green line. There is a reservoir there. It is nice when the weather is nice. But somewhat cold in the fall.

The Quincy Market is the place for traditional Boston foods. Actually, a lot of Italian foods. And there are a lot of interesting things near thanksgiving. But I didn’t have much time on it.

The MIT/Kendall station is an old one. As the subway system was built before 1900, and the Kendall station is one among the first 3 stations. The figures on the wall is the history of MIT.

On the street you can see what you can see in a normal American city. Like the “fancy” westunion.

At the North End you can have a lot of restaurants of Italians. Anyway it is expensive. And you need to wait for a long time (we waited 2 hours!). I always wonder why Americans like to wait outside of the bars for hours? Even in China people don’t like to wait in a queue, even it is something “necessary”. Maybe they just don’t have choices.

I noticed this right at the center of Boston. Note, it is the very CENTER of Boston.

And also the city hall of Boston. I thought they should have more arts on that.

This photo around Fenway is more like a modern city, rendering the loneliness of people in the modern city.

I spent an afternoon in the Museum of Fine Arts.

This graffiti on the way to museum is very interesting. Read the letters not so clear: but not my life.

I discovered a board game which is played in Egypt thousands of years ago.

And the aquarium. I had been there twice. Once for visiting. Another for the CSAIL party. The one who designed the aquarium is the one who designed Stata Center.

I wish I could walk on the way…

It is hard to write about New York. New York is a geek city, fully diversified. Beijing is another geek city, which is not diversified at all.

I stayed in New York for several times, totally about two weeks. Each of the time, I lived in different places, and taking different types of transportations. Passing through Grand Central, Times Square, and Penn Station with different people, it is like traveling in a new place each time. When going there, I am always feeling sadness around the corner.

The first time of being in New York is around Columbia one day. Then another day at the millennium hotel in times square. The dorms of Columbia is very old, even before the war. I was shocked to see the prototype of elevators there.

This is from the park near Columbia.

Near the park there is a church, Church of St John the Divine.

Actually I was not shocked by the subway system. It was not so bad as said. But they performance on the subway (like dancing in a moving cart) and the sculptures are good.

On the second day I went to Guggenheim, to “show some respect” for Floyd Wright.

And finally, the times square. I think it is worse than the one with the same name in HK. I also met Reena there.

The second time is a short one, I changed a bus in the Chinatown for Philadelphia. It is like living with a lot of unknown immigrants. I can understand none of them although they are Chinese.

The third time is just before Xmas. I slept in koalawjy’s room, and got blamed by the guard. I went to the Metropolitan Museum this time, with theorist.

And also a nice picture in the night for central park.

The fourth time is for SODA. I really don’t think going in group is a good idea. If it is one or two, I think we can just share experiences. But more is just a waste of energy. But the good point is, I can finally go to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island without paying by myself.

The birds on the island are never afraid of people.

And the days were rainy.

And at the last I went to Museum of Modern Arts, and saw the work by the Demaines.

New York, is not quite a good city, but you should try to spend more time in it if you have time.

After Montreal, we went back to the States. It is a long drive from Montreal to Ithaca, and on the border the stupid americans really cost us some time.

We met ida in the college. This is the museum of Cornell.

This one is the sign, Naked Guy.

Ithaca is a small town in the hills. A nice place to live in. The only bad part is it is too far away from the other places. The only public transportation is to New York.

Because it is winter, even the river is frozen.

Thanks to ida, icando, yongyan. This is the last place that could be counted as travel.

还有高中聚会.

发现唯一的一点是,大概只有我是不变的呢.

然后comic版聚的时候发现人都不认识.而且,我都一个月没有看动画了,看来估计和离开也不远了.

下面没有了.

We drove to Montreal on the best route in Canada, high way 401. Actually yongyan drove and I was just keeping him awake on the way. We were at 120-160, on the highway.

The first astonishing thing in Montreal is that we saw square traffic lights. The red ones are in squares. I guess it is for color blinds, but not sure.

And on the way to Montreal, yongyan made the most profound remarks. “Once you see the world, there is no way to look backward.” This is most suitable remarks for Montreal, and for the travel. If you don’t move forward, you will be in pain. Seldom any one could suffer that, if you already see what the world outside is like. North Americans are happy, but no one else could live like them.

During the days in Montreal, we didn’t spend much time outside. It was toooo cold. A lot of snows. The major views we took are Habitat 67 and McGill.

Habitat 67 is a set of apartments. They didn’t allow us to get into the apartment. It is astonishing they have elevators. And nice lamps.

And you can see the Montreal city from the apartment.

We also went to the St.  Joseph’s Oratory.

It is said the lamp oils there is great cure for leg problems…

They have a very special elevator room inside.

And we took pictures on top of the oratory.

A similar one was taken on the Mont Royal.

There is a organ inside. We attended a hymn, but they didn’t use it too much.

The next day we went to McGill, this is how I feel about McGill…

Well, actually it is not quite McGill looks like. It is just my feeling. McGill is old-fashioned. Like this…

And I noticed an interesting indian style chapel near McGill. A funny one.

At last, I have to say, there are a lot of regrets here. And thanks yongyan for accommodating and transportation.

We spent 1 hour or slightly more in Toronto. Sorry for the dirty photo. I took it in the car. And if you get in the city, you will notice the wind power stations.

We just walked around UToronto. It has a nice campus. Medieval styled.

And some old door.

Castle like student center.

A wall full of Greek. I understand none of them.

And funny carves in the campus.

They must have very good designing professions.

And at last…. I can only thank yongyan for taking me to Toronto.