We went to the N.C. State Fairgrounds on Saturday for two of Courtney’s favorite things: cats and books. There was a cat show at the fairgrounds, and the Wake County Book Fair was there as well. At the cat show, we wanted to shark every kitten that was there, while at the book show, we wanted to gobble up every travel book. The only difference was we could actually afford the latter.

Incredibly, the line to the book fair went from the entrance to around the building. Once we got inside, we saw what the fuss was about. This was a ginormous book sale, and it actually had a lot of relatively recent books instead of just dusty old novels from the 1970s. We looked around for a little bit but soon converged on and stayed at the travel books section, where we loaded up on Rick Steves’ guides to various European destinations and as many of the Eyewitness Travel books as we could find.

Here are some pictures from the day:

I also got a chance to play around with the camera on the new iPod Touch I got for my birthday. Here’s a short video clip of the judging at the cat show:

Coconut Curry Crabs and Razor Clams from John Zhu on Vimeo.

Here’s a clip of the show. There’s a lot of talking at the beginning of the clip. Skip to about the 2:30 mark and the excitement starts.

Playing with sharp objects, wanton slaughter, ground littered with the slain corpses of your enemies, and one of the good guys getting a knife in the back (which, by the way, wasn’t in the novel). Now THIS is theme-park entertainment. Of course, if they did something like this at a family theme park in the U.S., somebody would probably lose their mind over it and cry about the “inappropriate” violence. It’s just another one of those reminders from daily life about how different cultures have different levels of tolerance for various vices, whether it be violence, sex, drugs, or rock & roll.

Also, apparently Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden isn’t the only place where you can watch this scene acted out. Here’s a clip of a different show in Hangzhou, a much higher-quality production than the show in Henan:

Here’s that same scene from the TV series based on the novel. Skip to the 3-minute mark. It’s in Chinese, but as you can probably guess from the previous two clips, you don’t really need to speak the language to know what’s going on in the scene. Warning for the faint of heart: Heads literally roll in this one.

We also took some video of the snow, including a couple clips of our cats tentatively venturing to the edge of the snow:

A clip of our yard covered in snow and a giant icicle that formed on our gutter:

On the last day of our Christmas stay in New England, we braved the damp weather and hopped on the subway into Boston to visit the Museum of Science. Since it was just a couple days after Christmas, the place was packed. There were munchkins running around everywhere you turned, followed by their parents trying to keep up. One of the reasons we went was because Courtney wanted to see the special Harry Potter props and costumes exhibit. There were so many people there that, by the time we got to the museum just after noon, the earliest available admittance to that exhibit was 5:25 p.m. Having so much time to kill before then, we went for some lunch at a nearby mall — and got caught in the rain en route — before heading back to see the other parts of the museum.

As an amateur photographer, I was quickly drawn to the view through the wall of glass in the back of the lobby. Since the museum actually sits elevated on top of the Charles River, the giant window offers a magnificent view of the river — which was partially frozen at the time — and part of the Boston skyline in the distance, set against a cloudy sky tinted crimson by the setting sun. As if this didn’t already strike you as a picture-worthy view, the edges of the window panes even frame the scene nicely for you. If you visit the museum, be sure to turn away from the exhibits for a while and take in this beautiful view.

The museum has a large collection of exhibits on a wide range of sciences. Its main intended audience is obviously kids, as one can tell from the exhibits and shows, but there are some interesting stuff here for adults as well. We watched one of the shows — a 15-minute live presentation about electricity. The presenter talked for a while and gave some interesting facts about electricity, but as she herself admitted aloud, the audience didn’t come to listen to her talk; they came to watch lightning bolts. The show didn’t disappoint on that account, as the giant Van de Graaff generator were powered up and let loose one lightning bolt after another, complemented by small tesla coils on both sides of the stage. A clip of the show:

See my YouTube channel for more clips from the Museum of Science.

Another highlight of the day was the tamarins exhibit. The museum has three cotton-topped tamarins on display, and we spent half an hour in front of their Plexiglass enclosure oohing and aahing with the other visitors at how cute these critters were. I spent much of the time trying to get a good shot of them, no easy task since they were constantly on the move, jumping from one branch to another. Interesting piece of insignificance: The tree in the exhibit is fake, but the branches are real.

A few other exhibits that piqued my interest:

• The exhibit about the evolution of computing. You know how you always joke about how a … umm … classic computer model should be a museum piece? Well, here, they actually are. Right there in the glass case was an Apple II, complete with the giant disk drive and the monitor display that’s basically a black-and-white TV set. There was also a modem unit from the 1970s where you had to literally dial another computer with a rotary phone, listen for the connection tone, and then hang up the handset. I wonder if we’ll be seeing an iMac or a Dell in that exhibit in 30 years.
• There was a small display about things that people collect, and right in the middle of it was a set of PEZ dispensers in the likenesses of the characters from the original Star Trek series. The funny thing is that it’s not like those are hard to find. In fact, we found a bunch of these sets on sale for $20 at World Market earlier this year.
• Ever wonder what a deer smells like? How about black bears? Or a moose? You can find out at the animal panoramas at the museum, where each display comes with a “smell” button. Push it and sniff, and you’ll catch a whiff of that animal’s scent. Basically every scent had a woodsy hint to it, and I suspect they probably toned down the animals’ actual scent so as not to stink up the area. Alas, there was no skunk exhibit.

As much as I love science, I must admit: There was definitely an air of nerdiness in the museum, not in a bad way, just in a slightly comical fashion. For instance, in the section titled Mathematica (enough said), there was a pretty cool giant timeline of the history of math on the back wall, culminating in a “Wall of Fame” of mathematicians. In another part of the museum, we wandered into a small stage designed to look like a cute little old neighborhood. It turned out to be a recorded presentation, and we decided to take a seat, rest a bit, and listen. The presentation is basically a recorded voice telling a story — a story about the narrator’s quest to figure out the age of a big tree in the neighborhood. The nerdiness spikes when the narrator decided to ask a scientist friend — Flori — for help, and from there it basically sounded like Flori became a lot more enthusiastic about the project than the narrator. I never found out how the story ended, as we got up and walked out midway through.

Finally, 5:25 p.m. rolled around, and we headed to the Harry Potter exhibit, joining a throng of other people with the same admittance time. The line moved slowly, in part because some people were spending extra time at each display and listening to the audio tour they purchased. The exhibit included many costumes, sets, and props from the movies. My impression of it all is that it’s probably pretty cool for Harry Potter enthusiasts (which I’m not). Too predictably, however, the tour ended in a Harry  Potter-themed gift shop, where they were selling plastic magic wands for $45 (and the stand on which it sits is another $20). Talk about highway robbery!

Watch out. Courtney got me a Flip Ultra HD video camera for Christmas. I’ve been playing with it during our holiday trip up North, and so far I’ve been pretty happy with it. The camera turns on very quickly. Just hit the power button and you’re ready to aim and shoot in about two seconds. The microphone on the front of the camera does ok picking up the voice of the person holding the camera and whoever you point it at, but if you point it away from the speaker, you’ll have a hard time hearing him/her, and it doesn’t do well at all when there’s a howling wind blowing. The picture quality looks good on the camera, but appears a bit choppy on the computer screen. However, once you upload it to YouTube, it’s fine, and that’s all I really wanted this camera for anyway. I love the small size and light weight, as it slips easily into the front pocket of my DSLR bag, so I can carry it around with my photo camera while traveling and quickly switch to shooting some video without having lug another bag around.

Now that I have a new toy, I’ve started a YouTube channel specifically for clips I post to this blog. I think it’s going to be mostly travel clips, starting with the one below, which I shot with the Flip while our plane was descending into a snow-covered Philadelphia. The channel might also feature various clips I stumble upon on YouTube. Keep in mind that I’ve just started playing around with videography, so I’m in the constantly learning and highly experimental stage, and you get to suffer through the results.