FM and UB were having lunch. As it’s a buffet, each of them is trying out and enjoying the food they got. Below is an interesting conversation occurred during the lunch.

FM: Um… the egg taste rare, have you tried yours?

UB: Let me try. Hmm… it’s kinda rare, it doesn’t taste like regular egg.

FM: Yes, not only the taste, but its texture doesn’t feel like egg too.

UB: You’re right. It gave a rubber like feeling. Maybe the preservative makes them this way.

FM: They have Teriyaki chicken wing here.

(FM starts to eat the chicken wing bit by bit)

UB: Don’t worry about the ‘wing,’ it’s preserved very well so it won’t get spoil easily ……

(FM is thinking: Oh, in order to keep the wing eatable, they put in a lot of preservative into the chicken wing? So, it’s very bad for health then. )

FM: So they put a lot of preservative into the wing?

UB: Oh, no, no, no… I’m talking about your ring, not wing!

Last year, dad brought some mooncakes back from Hong Kong. This year, due to new restriction on bringing mooncakes, dad didn’t bring any of them back. Hence, no mooncake for this year. Tonight, we eat out as a celebration for the Mid-Autumn Festival. When we arrived at Mandarin House, Gary already arrived. Mom is the first one who saw Gary, and I wondered how she knows that’s Gary as she didn’t see him before. When I looked over, Gary is standing, so I guess it’s pretty obvious.   Gary introduced himself and I introduced my family to him. Gary is very nervous and it shows, hence mom asked me to told Gary to relax. As we are talking in Chinese, some of the waitress went over to chat with us a bit. The dinner goes pretty well, there are some conversation between Gary and my parents. However, most of the time, we talked about different things in Cantonese. Mom always wonder if Gary get bore, but Gary said he is not. The only thing that we are disappointed with is food, they are not good and mom said we probably won’t come back to this restaurant again.

This morning I was looking over the conference program for the 2009 ILF Annual Conference, the committee is looking for interesting program and see if the presenter will be interested in presenting at our 2010 ILF District 1 Annual Conference. I found one related to tagging and online catalog, which the committee also interested in, hence I sent off an email to the presenter and see if he will be interested. This afternoon, I got a phone call. Obviously, this person doesn’t know me, as she has difficult in pronouncing my name. Anyway, she said she attended a conference program I presented back in April and she asked if I will be interested in presenting it at the conference that she is organizing. Woo, this is the first time I’m invited to talk in a conference that I didn’t submit a proposal to. It is kind of interesting that I asked a presenter to present a program for us in the morning, and then I was asked by someone whether I will be interested in presenting for a program in the afternoon.

Today is first day of class and enrollment for this Fall equate to 106.99% when compares with Fall 2008. While I didn’t think there will be any impact on me, I'm wrong. When I got there today, all of the parking lots are full, no parking spot was available. Luckily, I found one after circling for a few minutes. Gary said parking situation at the beginning of the semester is always terrible, I doubt when he mentioned that to me a day or two ago. But now, I need to admit that’s true. Guess I didn’t recognize that in the past as I’m always stay inside the library, so I don’t know what’s happening around the campus!

I logged into MSN after I done with dinner. Right after I logged in, I got a message from Lucky. Just when I wondering whether Lucky have any news for his baby, he said he got a sad news for me. Lucky told me that Feng passed away.  When I first heard about it, I can’t believe it. Feng is so young and doesn’t he just graduated from his PhD? Lucky said he talked to him 3 days ago, but now he passed away. I guess Lucky is as surprised by the news as I am, so he didn’t know how to response to it. The only thing he knows is Feng died due to health problem suddenly. Health problem? As I remembered, Feng played soccer and exercise a lot. I called up two friends after that and let them know about the sad news. Feng is a very nice person, we BBQ, we party, and he also helped me out too. I feel sad for losing Feng as my friend, but I will miss him. I hope he will rest in peace and may God bless his family and friends.

This afternoon is the first time I chair a virtual meeting for the ILF District 1 Conference Planning Committee. Everyone signed in ok and there is no technical issue. I ran through the agenda item by item. After discussion of each item, we voted on a decision if needed. The meeting went smoothly and it lasted for 1.5 hours. Unlike face-to-face meeting, I have more chance to voice out my opinion or suggestion. Also, I’m able to cut back unnecessary and out of topic discussion which usually waste time. Personally, I felt virtual meeting is more effective than face-to-face meeting. However, most of the committee members prefer in-person contact, so we will have in-person meeting next month.

South Haven is at the northwestern side of South Bend, it took 1 hour and 15 minutes to drive over there. The first impression it gave me is a small town. The Thirsty Perch is a nice restaurant and their oyster and fishes are great. The fishes are very well cook and it’s very tender. The sail boat tour is packed and everyone is excited about the tour. Before the tour started, the crew introduced the history of the sail boat. The boat is pretty stable until it gets into the lake, it’s quite bumpy as the wind is strong. A few times during the tour, the crew members asked the passenger to help pulling the ropes in order to release and fasten the sail. Except the bumpy moment, the sailing is nice. In addition to the tour sail boat, there are a lot different type of boats in the Michigan Maritime Museum. There is a beach at South Haven, the sand looks very fine and nice, but the quality of water is not as good. Due to the nice weather, there are a lot of people swimming and tanning at the beach. South Haven is great for vacation, it gives me a clam feeling and I don't want to leave when I need to depart.

Ying called me this morning, she told me she won’t be able to have dinner with me tonight. The session this afternoon didn’t provide any new information, so it didn’t help much. After the session, I went to Chinatown for dinner. Tonight, I have hot pot, it’s all you can eat for $9.99. There were a lot of choices and I just picked a few of them, like pork blood, wanton, fish tofu, sliced beef, sliced fish etc. The food is good and I plan to bring my family to try it out next time when we go to Chinatown.

I registered for two breakfast events this morning, one at 7am and the other one at 7:30am. Gary and I planned to go for the one at 7:30am. Since we thought that we probably will be late if we take the ALA shuttle bus, we decided to take train. On the train, we checked the schedule again, and we recognized that we headed to the wrong location! Instead of heading back, we got off at the Chinatown station and walked over to the convention center. When we finally arrived at the event, we were 15 minutes late. However, it seems many registrants were not there yet. The breakfast was good, but not as good as the one we have yesterday. After the breakfast, I went to the exhibit, it’s less crowded than yesterday. On the way to one of my morning sessions, I saw Ying. We chatted a bit and took photos, we probably will have dinner together tomorrow night.

When I’m picking up box lunch from the OCLC luncheon, I heard someone called me. When I looked over, it’s Lucas. This reminded me that we met the same way at last year’s ALA Annual, the only difference is the location, and it was at a MacDonald.  Lucas and his wife are doing well, they brought her daughter back to HK last year.

I arrived at the CALA board meeting 45 minutes after the scheduled time. While I’m expecting many of the items on the agenda is being discussed, the board members is discussing item 5 when I arrived there. The meeting ended at 9:30am. After the meeting, I went to Navy Pier for the firework. I didn’t watch the firework right at Navy Pier, but at the shore area which is 20 minutes from the Navy Pier. The firework is great, but since I didn’t have dinner yet, I felt hungry. After going back to the hotel, I ate up the almond cake that I brought yesterday.

After having lunch at Chinatown, I went to Adler Planetarium. Parking at Museum Campus is $19/day, it’s pretty cheap when considering it’s in Chicago. I brought ticket which permits me to watch two shows. Since the shows won’t start in two hours, I visit different exhibits. The Adler Planetarium is much bigger than the Hong Kong Space Museum, and there are many interesting facts about the space. The first show is not as interesting as the second one, which is about night scenery of Chicago and different stars. When waiting for the second show, I saw a bride in a wedding dress. I guess they will have their wedding reception in the Adler Planetarium. When I left, I saw the wedding party is preparing their wedding ceremony right outside the Adler Planetarium.

The hotel I stayed this time didn’t give a good first impression. The room they first send me to haven’t been clean up, so I requested a room change. Luckily, the room is clean and everything seems to work fine.

While I’m expecting there are not many discussion items, there are actually some discussions for different things. There are some moments that the room is silence and I’m not comfortable in handling those yet. After the meeting, I ran some errands, one of them is to get a new ID. Compare with 3.5 years ago, I looked much fatter now and its quiet obvious. On my way back from a meeting, I saw a few people pushing their van on the road. It’s pretty dangerous when considered they are on a highway, but they did make it, their car was off the road a few second after I passed by them. The IC is pretty quiet tonight, most of the questions are directional, asking when the library will be closed, do you have a particular book (probably textbook), information related to bookstore etc. Three minutes before the library close, the phone rang. I picked up the phone and worked with the patron. While I’m trying to help the patron, I felt that the security is very impatient. When I finally hanged up, its 5 minutes past ten, guess the security is kinda mad at me.

Can’t remember exactly when, but my family told me that HK have hand sanitizer in a lot of public place since the outbreak of SARS in 2003. While I did see some people using hand sanitizer on their own over here, I rarely see any in public place. Today, when I’m on the Service Desk, I noticed there is a hand sanitizer installed on one of the walls in the IC. When do they install it? Is it due to the H1N1 disease?

On the way down to IUPUI, we saw 3 deer on our way. There are signs warning people about deer, but I never see one. We arrived at IUPUI just in time, and we got some time for a quick breakfast. Learn something new through different sections today, and talked with two other librarians. Eric seems to like what he is doing at IUPUI and he also started to pick up committee work and doing something for professional development. Emily will need to take a leave soon, as she is going to give birth to a twin! While I’m starting my way back to South Bend, Shirley called me. She will leave for her trip tomorrow, hope she will have fun. I didn’t charge my phone last night, so after a few calls, battery got really low, lucky it lasted till I got back home.

I know that it will happen one day, just don’t know that it will happen that soon. I saw how unhappy and how depressed you are. When we chatted, I felt how important she is to you from our conversation. What a difficult position you are in and why you are in such a position? I just felt hurt when I saw you like this, in a position that you are struggling so hard. Guess I know how you will feel in these few days, waiting for an answer that you don’t have control of. I don’t like waiting to be judged, so just tell me what the result is. Waiting to be judge is just like waiting on a dead row, what a horrible feeling, won’t it be the worst feeling one can have? I want to look for an easy way for you to get out of this mess, because I don’t want to see you suffer anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t be part of your live, then you will be as happy as you have been in the past, you won't get hurt then. I told you what I thought and you said I shouldn’t think this way. In such a difficult time, there is nothing I can do and I can’t even be there for you. Wondering how many people will be able to get unconditional love? If one do have it, how important is it for the two to be able to stay together? You already given me the gift that I’ll never think I will have, so what else can I still ask for? No matter what happened, I wish you all the happiness and be the most happiest person thereafter.

由一開始我就知道依一切終有一日會發生，估唔到件事發生得咁快。我見到你好唔開心同失落個樣，之後同你傾，先發覺來佢對你好重要。究竟係邊個令你處於依一個困局？當我見到你咁難受，我好心痛。依幾日我諗你一定會好難受，要等一個自已冇控制權嘅結果，談何容易？我唔鍾意等決定個感覺，好似等死咁，果種感覺實在恐怖。我真係唔想再見到你難受，於是我就希望幫你諗一些簡單嘅解決方法。如果我從來都冇出現過，你就會生活得好開心，唔會受到傷害。我將我嘅諗法話咗俾你聽，你就話我唔應該咁諗。當你處於依個困局，我唔單只幫唔到你，亦都唔可以係你身邊陪你。究竟有幾多人會得到無條件嘅愛？如果一個人已經得到無條件嘅愛，咁大家可唔可以一齊仲重唔重要？你已經俾咗一份我從來都冇諗過嘅禮物俾我，咁我仲可以想有什麼其他要求？無論結果如何，我都希望你擁有所有嘅快樂，從此以後成為一個最快樂嘅人。