CK Link - Theatre of Dreams for Calvin

San Francisco's world famous Golden Gate Bridge

posted by CalvinCK @ 2:48 PM 0 comments

San Francisco Trip

Returning from a great biking, walking and public transporting San Francisco tour, I feel fulfilled it has been quite a long time since I did a similar kind of weekend trip. Most of all, as most people commented, SF is a city with a lot character and it is just simply attractive!

The best thing i like about the city is the combination of great views of the followings:
- Mountains/slopes
- Ocean/Bayview
- Houses on hills
- Parks/greens

My several bike ride from downtown San Francisco to beaches, via some Fort Mason, Golde Gate Bride to Sausalito was the greatest among the highlights of the weekend travel. It is hard for one to image such a hilly city (just like HK Island back home!), there are so many people riding around. They must be pretty healthy with all these daily exercises! Although, to be frank, the Golden Gate Bridge itself might not be as impressive as Tsing Ma Bridge back home, I love the surroundings of the bridge, and that is exact what made it even more charming.

Then, of course it is all about the food there. With some recommendations from my companion - Lonely Planet USA, I picked a seafood dinner, Cantonese Dim Sum and Japanese meal for these 2 days. Forgetting about the English language, you will almost feel like you are in China or Japan, with the gigantic Chinatown, Japantown & the majority of Asians in the city.

Again, it is incomparable to NYC due to my final work location selection and different criteria; but in terms of most favourite city to visit, I think I am persuaded that SF is taking the first spot on my list now, as the city I like the most in the US so far. (I still like Boston a lot...)

There is also one thing about visiting SF - I don't just like it because I feel like home, however, it makes me miss home, especially when I am flying home in about 3 weeks...

posted by CalvinCK @ 2:43 PM 0 comments

First Road Trip in the Golden State

Not the best day to travel, in terms of the weather - it was a rainy and a little chilly day for us to do our road trip to Santa Barbara. However, I like it because that marked my beginning of some exploring here on the West Coast finally! It should also serve as a warm-up tour for my long-expected San Francisco trip coming up.

The downtown area was smaller than I thought of - it has actually no highrise at all (given that it is a pretty famous location in California, after SF, LA and San Diego). But as described in my Lonely Planet USA, the mountain, the ocean with the red-roof houses did make up a gorgeous view for the town. Another part of our tours today was visiting my second UC campus. UC Santa Barbara was a little far from the downtown and the entire campus resides on a peninsula shape. For certain reason, it was very much deadly quiet today when we were there. It could well be attributed to the bad weather today, or might be a sunday...but I do find out some interesting things there:
- A frisby golf playing field, in which I never saw one before
- The number of bikes in the campus we saw today was unbelievable; it looks like most people ride their bikes instead of driving there.
- Although the campus definitely is different from my home university HKUST, it did remind me very much of our campus back home (the oceanview, the beach/pier, hilly landscape with green grass, and the university center area, etc)
- It does has some Asian student population versus I saw very few in the city of Santa Barbara itself (esp. given that its a Californian city!)

posted by CalvinCK @ 9:53 PM 0 comments

"Da Vinci Code"

The long awaited movie finally premiered today in the US, even though I have already read the book before, I still love the movie so much. I think the director Ron Howard did a great job for putting the key pieces from the original book written by Dan Brown together in the theatrical version. The movie was about 2.5 hours but me and friends did not think it was long at all; and you felt like you still want more out of it indeed.

For me, I think I will give it a 8.5 rate out of a 10-point scale at the least. (in my opinion, that was also another nice piece from Tom Hanks!)

posted by CalvinCK @ 3:14 AM 1 comments

Great Integration to LA Life

Nothing is better than moving in a new city and had someone who knows the places around and showed you all sorts of things. we had a great buddy and co-workers who came in town these days and he also volunteered to drive us around and with these, we defintely had a great integration into the city of angels!

I also had my most intensed roller coasters experience last weekend, too. My roommates and I got some free tickets from work to go to Magic Mountain LA and even though there were quite some lines for the games; we managed to get on a couple of them - that was exciting and it has been a long time since I did so much on roller coasters, too.

Other exciting things about life in LA so far include:
1) Seeing celebrities in restaurants and on the roads
2) Having the chance to visit the Motion Pictures studios - indeed, I am going to Paramount Pictures tomorrow!
3) There are way too many choices, esp. for the ethnic food and restaurant within walking or 5-10 mins driving distance. (I am spending more money eating out and have not really cooked once at home yet)
4) The weather is pretty nice - not cold and not hot, it has been about 15-20 these days which is very comfortable in fact.

posted by CalvinCK @ 1:14 AM 1 comments

First week living in West Coast

A view of Hollywood Hills from our Office

This week has been quite a week and glad that finally I can put down my first message since I came to Los Angeles. Between settling in the new apartment and office in Hollywood, and going sightseeing and bar hopping with our cor-worker from New York City, not to mention tasting different ethnic food. I think I have very good first impression to Los Angeles and California, even though New York is still my choice for the final job location. Some of the good things I and my roommates found out about our new life here include:

1) Our townhouse apartment is smaller but it is nicely furnished and we even have a backyard that we can do grilling and exercises, etc.

2) There are plenty of restaurants around and we can pick from different cuisines, especially we have so many Japanese sushi and restaurants around our home, in which I am very delighted!

3) The office location is right in Hollywood and the business is so interesting! We even share a great office building with the Corporate office of House of Blues, and there are a lot of studios and media companies around.

4) A great disscovery - The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, a great chain and we also have one down on first floor at our office building on Sunset Boulevard.

5) I love the lanscape here - mountains, water and gorgeous looking houses, etc. The driving experience is so different (though the traffic congestion could be a headache sometimes).

6) Weather here is great now - around 15-22 degree mostly now, which is really really comfortable; plus, the humidity is pretty low in my opinion.

7) The Santa Monica area is awesome; we went to the 3rd Street Promenade tonight and it was a great spot to hang out. One thing happened which was really interesting I saw: there was a guy who claimed he would give out US$250,000 for someone who can give empirical evidence to prove evolution (he believes in God who creates the world and us, of course) - so literally, he was debating with multiple people on the street. That was quite an experience.

8) There are so many celebrity kind of people. One night we went down to a bar at our office, it turned out our bartender actually filmed in various commercials. Maybe there are a lot of people come over to Hollywood and just looking for their acting career!

posted by CalvinCK @ 3:21 AM 3 comments