Timeout for CK
Have not contributed any new postings due to my eye injury from last week's racquetball game.
But I did spend some good times resting at home and just enjoyed my music collection with my Sony MP3...will try to catch up as soon as I get better.
Awesome Brothers' Tours
Calvin & Ricky by Lincoln Park
It is interesting that my best friend's coming indeed offered me new excitment in Chicago - we toured together and explored so much more about the Windy City. I enjoyed the following highlights the most:
1) Music night at Kingston Mines, the Chicago's BLUES center/capital of BLUES
That was a great night, we spent hours listening and dancing with live performance from Eddie Shaw, the great blues artist. I even had his autograph on the CD I bought; and he told us he was in Hong Kong last year and got stuck on the Peak Tram there!
2) Bike Tour alongside Lake Michigan
Well, it was freezing cold, with our hands frozen and turned purple; nonetheless, that was a great bike ride. I think Chicago got me in love with it after that. It is so beautiful to bike and seeing the beaches and skylines on my side. I cannot wait till the welknown architectural tour (boat ride) in about 2 weeks when the spring/summer arrives...
3) Millenium Parks and Magnificient Mile/Michigan Avenue
I have to admit, my roommate and I headed down to Millenium Park and had a walk on Michigan; I did enjoy checking out the gorgeous architecture of the city. However, with this time exploring with Ricky, I found the Park and the Magnificient Mile even more attractive than I ever thought they were. I told myself and my girlfriend, I think I owe Chicago an even better praise - it is a great city!
4) Museum of Science and Industry
Being quoted as the best museum in town, we loved the museum even we had only limited time of visit in it. I enjoyed the OMNIMAX show on Greek culture, the exhibition of the German U-boat 505 (name for submarines back in WWII): they put the original and entire submarine from WWII in the museum! Besides, the Museum Campus close-by was also a great place to have nice shots of the city's nightview and lakeview.
Really wanna thanks Ricky for getting me back on track - exploring and experiencing Chicago!
Bike Chicago along Lakefront
Brother Reunion
I am delighted to receive Mr. Yeung Jr., my best friend from college in Chicago! It is great to have him visiting me during my stay here - we talked so much to catch up and share new views on various matters.
Also, we had a great St. Patrick's Day experience last night - I had my first green beer in life and of course I dressed in the Irish color!
Hey my best friend is in town!
I am delighted to receive Mr. Yeung Jr., my best friend from college in Chicago! It is great to have him visiting me during my stay here - we talked so much to catch up and share new views on various matters.
Also, we had a great St. Patrick's Day experience last night - I had my first green beer in life and of course I dressed in the Irish color!
They Dyed the River!
Irish Chicago River
One week before St. Patrick's Day, a day people would all dressed in green for the rich Irish tradition, the Chicago city has a great tradition of dyeing the Chicago River into the Irish color, as well!
Today, I headed to downtown Chicago and eye-witnessed the dyeing process; it was a great day, a little cold with the windchill but well that was pretty much the warmest day in months and the atmosphere was great - everybody there dressed in green or like me, at least having something green in their hand. (note: of course, as a Chinese, I have to hold my laugh when I see people wearing "green hat/cap")
Happy St. Patty's Day!!!
The Windy City
I have been residing in Chicago, Chi-town or the Windy City for about a little over 2 months now, I guess it is the time for me to pick up some observations I have for it:
1) What about downtown?
Chicago, the City itself has about 2.8 million inhabitants. (versus the 9 million people living in the metro area, or Chicagoland if you will) The downtown area to me, is really divided into two rings. The inner circle is the welknown Chicago Loop in which the skyscrappers like Sears Tower, commercial areas, museum and theatre districts locate. There are mostly office buildings and sighseeing spots; where the outter circle, which extends just outside the busy O'Hare International Airport, is the residential area. Just like New York City, or Boston, it has quite some nice neighborhood for good restaurants in the city. However, one major difference as compared to NYC will be - the downtown area is so quiet during weekends and after hours, sometimes it could even be deadly silent...
2) Enthnic Compositions
Well, Chicago belongs to the Midwestern area, one might think it would be all Caucasians; it is not necessarily true. Indeed, Chicago has a lot of famous minority groups - Irish and Polish are famous, not to mention the Hispanic and Italian communities (just like th town I live in!), Korea Town, Greek Town and Chinatown! On our apartment building, one will actually understand more of people's conversations if you speak Eastern European languages instead of English or Spanish! Likewise, you can find a variety of enthnic cuisines in the city, though not as convenient as in NYC - you ought to drive to the restaurant more often!
3) Chicago Pizzas
If you have been to Chicago and NYC both, you will recognize the major difference with the pizzas in the two cities - the New York style is always with huge slices; versus the Chicago-style pizzas are thin-crust (great size and yummy for me!) and deep dish (a lot of cheese!!!). Then there is this competition for the best pizzeria in town - Gino East vs. Giodano's...
4) The Commute in the "city"
Well, Chicago has a great metro system - the L train/subway with many colored lines running basically from the suburb or various neighborhoods into the Loop. However, people would normally own a car and drive to work. However, for certain reason the commute between the suburbs and the downtown area is not fun at all; a lot of time, people have to spend about an hour or more to go to work or get back to their homes in rush hours. We lived right off from the inter-state, man, it is horrible to look at the lines everyday...
5) Entertainment/Advertising
Being the second largest TV market and top advertising and entertainment market in the US, Chicago has a lot of innovations in terms of the way companies promote their products and services, to name a few, plentiful outdoor advertisements, TV display on escalators and painting companies' logos on the roof of buildings, etc. If you visit the downtown area, you will see a lot of towers with media companies, as well. Of course, not to mention that Chicago is famous for its arts, architecture and music!
Lastly, I do have a disclaimer here though, the ones listed are really some key findings for someone who actually live in Norridge, the northwest suburb, but not the actual downtown area. I could possibly add in more, or even amend some of the captioned descriptions about the city.
Second MDA Road-trip
It is hard to believe: I was browsing through my video collection I took during my stay in the United States. There was one DIY movie I had back to a year ago, when I an my co-workers were heading up Shelton, CT for a visit to one of our sister companies there. First of all, we did look quite different, if not a lot. Then, we were having quite some fun indeed, on the car-pooling itself.
So, here we are, we had our second road trip to our vender in a town named Burlington up in the state of Wisconsin (btw, adding one more to the number of states I had been to). We did not have the girls with us this time, but only my two roommates/colleagues, well, one spiritually with us for most of the time cause he was sleeping =P
The visit to the print shop was very much eye-opening - so neat and environmental-friendly operations in the "factory" and there were a lot of computerized machines there and everything from gluing and binding to creating the aluminium sheets/films, to 4-color printing procedures, all looked fabulous! It was also stunning to me to see so few employees they have there, given the volume of materials they have to print and the amount of machinery that they operate.
