On a rare break from work, I escaped to Northern California for a quick vacation. The primary mission was to relax, of course, but I was also motivated to practice landscape photography. Despite some fairly in-depth research and planning, I was quickly humbled by Mother Nature. Landscape photography is definitely not easy, and uncooperative weather doesn’t help for sure. So I missed a bunch of shots I had envisioned, but this was a great learning experience.

Here’s a few photos. Rocks and water were the theme of this trip, evidently. Hope all is well! Work hard, stay positive, be brave.

Creek downstream of Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite National Park

Pacific Coast Highway. The road was so dreamy smooth

Classic Rodeo Beach view of Golden Gate Bridge. Shortly after this and for the entire next day, fog completely swallowed the bridge

Small road-side waterfall in Yosemite National Park

Closest I’ll likely ever come to rock climbing

Creek in front of the legendary Valley View, Yosemite

Lower Yosemite Falls, Yosemite. Very refreshing to bask in the mist, especially on a hot day

Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite. No mere mist here; stand here for 30 seconds and you’ll be soaked head to toe. My camera was drenched but survived

Refreshingly delicious air of Estes Park in Colorado, on the way into Rocky Mountain National Park

Anyway, that’s just a preamble to say I’ve been quite busy and one of the first casualties was this site, obviously. A lot has changed since I last posted. Got my first smartphone with a data plan (Nexus 4!!), moved into my new house, became wiser, stronger, faster. Lots and lots of material to chew on for ProtocolSnow.com. Unfortunately, I don’t have a ghost writer so updates will come when they come. I don’t know if I’ll ever resume a regular posting schedule, but I’ll do what I can. Following my Twitter account is probably the best way to keep up with what I’m into, thanks to the low commitment of a tweet vs. full blog posts. That’s the sad reality!

Sunrise at Monument Valley, Arizona from The View hotel

I’ve only recently had the chance to edit my roadtrip photos from June 2012(!) and sent them to my parents, so here’s a few more photos to whet the appetite. More to come, hopefully soon!

Long-lost family members meet at US Air Force National Museum in Dayton, Ohio

Mystical shades of Antelope Canyon, Arizona

Catching the sunset in Arches National Park, Utah

Grand Canyon, Arizona

View of Bellagio Fountains from my hotel room balcony in Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas

Las Vegas traffic

What a wonderful, peaceful end to the roadtrip. I can watch the Bellagio Fountains forever

Luckily, after starting off with an arduous schedule and the most difficult rotations in my residency, I finally have a light month and can breathe a little. This weekend I went to the 626 Night Market with much anticipation. Modeled after the famous night markets in Taiwan and other Asian countries, the appropriately named 626 Night Market is held in San Gabriel Valley, which boasts the largest Taiwanese-American population in the USA.

Some of my fondest travel memories involve Taiwan night markets: late nights wandering crowded streets lined with loud neon signs, delicious aromas wafting through the air, snacking on comfort food while shopping for cheap cute gifts to bring home. 626 Night Market seeks to replicate that experience stateside. They fall short because clearly the atmosphere here is quite different and more akin to a county fair. But while there are definitely improvements that can be made, particularly with organization and service, I’m glad this event exists and hope it can become a regular fixture for our community.

This weekend’s 626 Night Market is actually the 3rd attempt by the organizers. The first was April 2012 in the streets of Pasadena and was largely criticized as disastrous and poorly planned, with suffocating crowds and limited parking. The second event seemed marginally better, but finally this weekend’s event was moved to a new location in the middle of the Santa Anita racetrack and spread over two days.

I decided to go in the afternoon at opening hour and successfully beat the crowds. Judging from the online feedback I’ve seen, the majority agree that the new location is a much better choice with substantially more parking spaces and more room to walk around in the market. Parking, however, was a steep $7 ($4 if you arrived in the first hour like I did).

Even with the relatively fewer people in the afternoon compared to nighttime, the long waits for food was disappointing. The event organizers did their part by providing a better location, but the vendors really need to step it up. Judging from the booth signage, most of the vendors have established restaurants, but many didn’t appear to have much experience working in the outdoors with more limited resources. I’ve seen enough episodes of Top Chef to realize it’s an entirely different beast. Especially at the popular booths, the staff struggled to keep up with orders and service was frantic and disorganized. I should not have to wait 20 minutes after placing my order to get some food. I can only imagine it got worse as the real crowds arrived for the night.

Food variety was pretty good and included the usual noodle and rice dishes, stinky tofu, barbequed meats, boba tea drinks, Taiwanese snacks, and other staples. If only the legendary Hot Star fried chicken from Shilin Night Market was here… A handful of popular food trucks also showed up, including the famous Kogi BBQ with their Korean street tacos (which I finally tried for the first time after hearing so much about them; they were sadly underwhelming).

I smirked when I saw the stinky tofu booth was located at the very edge of the market. They had brisk business though, and, to their credit, were speedy in fulfilling orders. Favorite food of the day was BBQ squid! The total wait for that was an unfortunate 30 minutes.

I also came across a favorite candy from my childhood: dragon’s beard! It’s made with very fine strands of hand-pulled sugar that dissolve on your tongue. Sadly, this may be a dying art and it seems to be impossible to find these freshly made around here… until now. I personally haven’t seen this since the mid-1990s. Running into this chef was notable enough that I got his business card. Seems that he only recently started his business in SoCal, you can find more information here about dragon’s beard and his address.

The merchandise booths didn’t have anything particularly interesting. I was amused by somebody selling bootleg K-pop posters and DVDs. $10 for a copied MBC broadcast of a Psy concert? I respect the hustle though… To make this night market more authentic, we just need more people selling boxes of $1 VCDs.

Overall I was underwhelmed by the experience, but perhaps I had my expectations set too high and obviously it’s not fair to compare to the well-established Asia night markets. The good news is that the organizers have been taking feedback to heart and each iteration is an improvement. Hopefully the 626 Night Market becomes a more regular occurrence, as opposed to every three months, which will help staff streamline their operations. Judging by the crowds, clearly the demand is there, and I’m grateful that this event exists to bring out the community and to run into friends. I look forward to next time!

But it’s also exciting. And no matter what, I will learn so, so much. And hey, at least I’m not doing surgery!

The past couple months have been a whirlwind. Shopping for an apartment, then a house. Graduating from medical school. Selling most of my possessions, then setting off on an indescribably amazing mega roadtrip across the USA back home to California (3,812 miles and 11 days in total), leaving my past in the rearview mirror and driving to my future.

Approach to Monument Valley, Utah

I have so many photos and videos from the trip I want to share, but with free time being a premium luxury, I will have to trickle them out as I slowly sort through them. In the meantime, please enjoy a small selection. Hopefully intern year won’t be as bad as they say, but if I’m ever in the pits of despair, may the memories of these incredible sights give me strength.

Milky Way arm from Bryce Canyon

Antelope Canyon, Arizona

San Juan Mountains, Colorado

Moki Dugway, Utah

After making a wish, you can draw in the pupil for one eye. This alerts Daruma to your wish and motivates him to help you so that he can regain full sight, symbolically reaching enlightenment. You can draw in the second pupil only after you’ve achieved your goal or your wish has come true.

A couple weeks ago, 4th year medical students participated in Match Day. At 12 PM EST, all the students across the country opened envelopes that revealed where they would be going for residency. That moment is the culmination of years of school and a long application / interview season. I had applied to be an internal medicine resident and interviewed at 20 hospitals across the country, including an unbelievable stretch of 5 interviews in 5 straight days in 3 different states. I can guarantee nobody else did something like that because it was a combination of extremely lucky scheduling and pure desperation on my part to squeeze in as many interviews as possible.

Ultimately, I matched into my #2 choice out of 24 programs, and I am heading back to California!! I graduate from medical school in 2 months and will be taking a 3,000+ mile, 11 day roadtrip driving across the country back home to Los Angeles.

It was not easy and I am very lucky and grateful for the opportunity. If I had known how difficult it would be to return to CA either for medical school or residency, I very possibly would have went to either UC Berkeley or UCLA for college instead of fleeing the state. But the reason I left in the first place was for those supposed “life experiences” being in a different part of the USA. If I could re-live my life, it’s hard to say what I would choose to do…

But at last, my Daruma now has achieved enlightenment.

After nearly 20 years of not building Lego, I developed a sudden itch when I randomly came across Lego’s Ultimate Collector’s Series (UCS). These are large, elaborate Lego sets targeted towards young adults and resemble models more than toys. Unsurprisingly, they’re also expensive but are true collectibles. After selling a UCS set retail for a couple years, Lego retires it forever and the value skyrockets on the flourishing aftermarket. The most famous example is the UCS Star Wars Millennium Falcon, which was retired in 2009 and is now worth $2,000+ from a MSRP of $500.

I fell in love with the UCS Star Wars Imperial Shuttle, one of the iconic spacecraft from Star Wars. It retails for $260 and will likely be retired next year. Very expensive, but I justified it because of its strong value in the used market and appreciation in the future. So I can easily get my money back if I want to sell it, or even make money if I’m willing to wait a couple years.

Look how amazing it looks! And I finally have my very first Lego set, all these years later!

This is a monster of a set with 2,503 pieces and FOUR booklets with step by step instructions. Building Lego according to instructions is a very foreign concept to me, since as a kid, everything I made was free-form and only limited by my imagination.

First step was to sort all the big pieces for more efficient building, rather than having to hunt for specific pieces in a mountain of Lego. I kept small pieces in their plastic bags until I needed them so I wouldn’t lose any.

Creating a lumberyard of Lego. But that’s just a glamour shot for the camera because once I start building…

… it’s time to get dirty. I wanted to keep my instruction booklets in mint condition in case I sell the set later, so I downloaded the PDF instructions from Lego’s website. Watching Top Gear on my second monitor for double the entertainment.

12 hours of building later, I’m finally done! Construction was not that challenging, even for a Lego novice like myself, although there were a couple times when I realized I messed up and had to backtrack. The Imperial Shuttle is a magnificent model worthy of being a centerpiece for my entertainment center. This photo doesn’t convey how immense the Shuttle is, standing nearly 3 feet tall. The box is gigantic also.

The Shuttle incorporates some neat engineering with gears so that the wings can be folded up and down. This is the landing position with wings up. Doesn’t look as awesome as full deployed mode though!

Time for a photoshoot out in the Endor forest.

So much swagger.

I have been following Jeremy Lin since the record-breaking 2009-2010 Harvard season — my brother is a student at Harvard University and as a Taiwanese-American myself, I read many Taiwanese blogs that jumped on Jeremy early — but I in my wildest expectations did not see this level of a breakout performance coming.

Writers have been scrambling to discover new unique angles to cover Jeremy Lin, so by now he has been dissected fairly thoroughly and videos from his past are all over the place.

I recently came across a couple interesting videos that nobody in the Western media has seen yet. Even before the Jeremy craze, I regularly browse through Youtube Taiwan to stay on top of news and funny videos from Taiwan. A Taiwanese celebrity was visiting New York a few weeks ago for vacation and happened to sit courtside at Jeremy Lin’s very first game at Madison Square Garden on January 31st. In that game, he was still an unknown player and only played garbage time, the last few minutes when the score is so lopsided that the game is essentially over and all the star players have already sat down.

Jeremy Lin’s first game at Madison Square Garden, before the Linsanity
This first video shows courtside footage of Jeremy’s first game at MSG, filmed by the celebrity. In 5 minutes, he scores 4 points and has 4 assists. What’s also interesting is the celebrity’s discussion with his wife. Chen Chien-chou (陳建州) is a former professional basketball player in Taiwan and shows a lot of insight talking about Jeremy’s game, how he would fit in well with Coach D’Antoni’s system, and how he just needs one good chance to prove himself.

Talking to Jeremy Lin post-game in lounge
Second video shows the celebrity visiting Jeremy Lin after the game in the New York Knicks players’ family lounge. He also chats to Tyson Chandler and Carmelo Anthony briefly to ask what they think about Jeremy. Jeremy’s parents are also here.

One last video for the road: a couple of Taiwan news reporters demonstrate the Jeremy Lin / Landry Fields handshake. I crack up every time I watch this.

Chinese New Year was still a few days away, but Vegas was already getting ready for the Year of the Dragon. CNY is one of the biggest money-making holidays for Vegas, thanks to Asian tourists flooding into the city. Not surprisingly, Vegas rolls out the welcome mat for them. It was cool seeing Chinese New Year decorations all over the high-end casinos and shopping malls. I spent most of my trip in the center of the Strip, so I only took photos of the CityCenter complex (Aria, Cosmopolitan, Crystals) and Bellagio.

Aria, the main casino of the CityCenter megacenter, went all-out with decorations. A giant banner that is impossible to miss was pasted over the main entrance to greet visitors. Two Chinese chimera statues stand guard outside the entrance.

Humongous paper dragon in the main lobby, flying under an army of lanterns.

Buddha statue surrounded by bamboo. His belly is gleaming gold after countless rubs for good luck.

Dragon structure outside a couple restaurants.

Delicious-looking chocolate dragon outside the Jean Philippe patisserie in Aria.

Banners everywhere.

Dragon in Crystals, the luxury shopping mall in CityCenter

Cosmopolitan is the newest property in Vegas, opening just over a year ago. It is the final piece to the $9 billion CityCenter megacomplex. No Chinese New Year decorations were found inside, but here are a few photos anyway since it was my first time visiting Cosmopolitan.

The centerpiece of Cosmopolitan is a three-story lounge / bar surrounded by a giant “chandelier”. Very impressive and pretty.

Cosmopolitan felt like a very girly boutique hotel to me. Doesn’t help that there’s high heel imagery all over the resort.

Bellagio’s main entrance with a couple lion statues on guard.

Front desk decked out with banners and lanterns.

The Bellagio conservatory is famous for its seasonal displays and holiday commemorations.

Performer playing drums and a Chinese lute.

I didn’t know people actually used iPads for taking photos and videos. The camera is terrible and on par with the one in iPod touch. But as they say, the best camera is the one you have with you…

Two dragons fighting for a mythical pearl.

Dragons, dragons, and more dragons!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Ultrabooks are ultrathin, light-weight laptops running mobile versions of the newest generation Intel CPUs with targeted prices of sub-$1000. Apple’s MacBook Air would technically fit into this product category, although it is not officially designated as an ultrabook. Acer and ASUS released their first ultrabooks just a couple weeks ago, and Lenovo and Toshiba are next in line. I have been admiring the ASUS Zenbook ever since its announcement, and now that I finally have it in my hands, I am delighted that it does not disappoint.

First, a run-down of its specs. The ASUS Zenbook comes in 11″ and 13″ flavors with a few options for storage capacity and CPU. I decided to go with the 13″ base model as I have played with the 11″ MacBook Air before and felt more comfortable with a larger screen.

– Intel Core i5 2557-M “Sandy Bridge” CPU
– 1600 x 900 resolution 13.3″ screen (very unique to have such a high resolution on a 13″)
– 4 GB RAM
– 128 GB SATA III solid state drive
– USB 3.0
– 0.71″ (1.8 cm) at thickest point
– 2.86 pounds
– Up to 7 hours battery life with 2 second instant-on resume
– $1,099

You can probably guess that this laptop is a direct competitor to the MacBook Air (some might call it a copy). Not only is it $200 cheaper compared to the equivalent MBA, this Zenbook also has a higher resolution screen and USB 3.0. The Macbook Air is a well-engineered product and clearly influential on the Zenbook’s design. In a classy gesture, ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih fittingly gave Steve Jobs a moment of silence during his recent Zenbook press event.

Photos don’t do the Zenbook justice. It is a marvelous product to gawk at and hold in person. Constructed with an aluminum unibody frame with aluminum keyboard and an ultrathin profile, the Zenbook makes a striking first impression. The brushed metal texture is not as gaudy as may appear in photos and feels more elegant than ostentatious.

The performance matches up to the gorgeous looks. This is a fast machine. I recently upgraded to a new desktop computer, which the Zenbook is not quite as powerful as, but this laptop definitely smokes my old desktop and likely would impress you if you have not bought a new computer in the past year. For benchmarks and lots of graphs, head over to AnAndTech.

I cannot underestimate how impressive the 2 second instant-on feature is and how it changes the way I use a laptop. Thanks to its speedy solid state drive, I do not hesitate to put the laptop to sleep whenever I have to step away, even for a minute. Then when I need to use it again, I just flip open the lid and I’m back in business, nearly instantaneously. This can stretch out the 7 hour battery life quite a while and make the battery last at least a full work-day without charging. Obviously you can put any laptop to sleep, but I frequently loathe to do so when I have to wait for the laptop to wake up. With instant-on and no moving parts thanks to the SSD, I treat the Zenbook almost like it’s a tablet.

In fact, it practically is as thin as a tablet. Here is the Zenbook compared to the iPad 1.

Compared to my Lenovo Thinkpad T60

Compared to my ASUS EEE PC Netbook. I still remember the days when I was so impressed by how light and portable the EEE netbooks were. The 13″ Zenbook is not in the same class thanks to its 3″ larger screen, but boy the 11″ Zenbook would humiliate the netbook.

The package comes with a surprisingly nice case made out of ballistic nylon with a leather flap and soft interior. It is sufficiently professional looking that I will proudly be using it on a series of business trips over the next few months.

I am supremely happy with the Zenbook and can’t recommend it highly enough. Gamers looking for a gaming laptop should look elsewhere, but for general users who want a powerful, speedy, ultraportable laptop with beautiful design at a reasonable price, the Zenbook is a magnificent machine.

Of note, there have been some well-publicized glitches with erratic trackpads and wireless strength (which tech blogs have slammed the Zenbook for in reviews), but ASUS has quickly addressed those issues with updates to download from their website. The biggest problem now for interested customers is getting their hands on one. As is the case with many ASUS product launches, supply streams out in a trickle and nobody can buy one anywhere. Head to the ASUS website to find stores that carry it and to find more information about the Zenbook.

In-car camera recorders are very popular in Taiwan to have video evidence of violations and to protect drivers against liability in case of collisions. With the advent of Youtube and these recorders, Taiwan has developed an interesting subculture of citizen traffic cops. Randomly browse through Youtube Taiwan’s most viewed videos in the Auto category and you’ll discover an abundance of videos uploaded by drivers with in-car cameras. Frequently, they’re just sharing their latest recordings of crazy events on the road (this one is a must watch!), but users will help identify license plates of hit-and-runs and submit videos to the police. Particularly popular videos can force the police to take action and make it onto TV news broadcasts. For example, this video was broadcasted a couple days later on national TV.

For my birthday a few months back, my parents bought me this fancy video recorder system by one of the leading Taiwan developers of this tech. It’s called the Hermes MVR 102 by Witness Technology (English site). Some people use their iPhones/Android phones as makeshift dashboard cameras, but this is more sophisticated and can record 4 video inputs simultaneously. The product is a custom rearview mirror (with 2 built-in cameras) that clips onto your pre-existing rearview mirror, with support for 2 additional cameras that can be installed wherever you wish. While an in-car video recorder isn’t as vital for protection in the USA compared to Taiwan, I have been using this device for months and love it.

The best thing about this video system is the convenience. It starts recording automatically whenever I turn on the ignition and never stops recording. Even when the SD card is full, it will instantly overwrite the oldest file so that there’s no interruption in the recording. This means I never have to fiddle with the recorder and most of the time, I even forget it’s there.

Installation was easy too. The system is powered by the cigarette lighter power outlet in the car and clips onto the pre-existing rearview mirror. There’s no awkward attachments hanging from the windshield glass or sitting on the dashboard, which seems to be the standard for similar video recorders. The 2 forward-facing cameras that come mounted onto the device can be adjusted to any direction. Those cameras only account for 2 of the 4 maximum video inputs. If you wish, you can plug in 2 more cameras and set them up wherever you want.

I only have 3 cameras total, one of them facing the rear. Installing this rear camera was a little more tricky. The ideal location is in the trunk above the license plate so the video is clearer and not distorted by glass, but I already have a back-up camera there. So I had to stick the 3rd camera inside the car, mounted to the ceiling with push pins, and hide all the wiring under the car interior panels. Not the best solution but it works. Some people use the 4th camera to film the interior while others install it in the side mirror to film the side of the car (which would probably require professional installation).

An example of someone’s set-up. Here’s also a sample video. There’s a ton of these videos on Youtube Taiwan by people using the Hermes MVR 102, and it’s interesting to see how different people install their cameras.

Once everything was in place, I didn’t need to worry about it and just let it record automatically. Videos are in mpeg-4 format and can be transferred to a computer for archiving. The downside is that the video resolution is only 640 x 480. The Hermes MVR 102 is the 2nd generation of this device and was just released in the past year, so the next model may be a couple years away. I would love to have a HD version of this product, but considering that the current model already costs several hundred dollars, a version with multiple HD cameras is likely currently too expensive for them to produce.

Because of the SD video resolution, I’m somewhat hesitant to recommend this product wholeheartedly. I am not too familiar with competing products, but from what I’ve seen, the ones with a HD camera only support one video input, so it’s not possible to record front, rear, and interior views simultaneously with the same system. Also, they all seem to involve awkward attachments to the windshield or dashboard. So this product is quite unique on the market. I definitely love it and feel extra peace of mind while driving. In fact, whenever I ride in a “normal” car now, it feels strangely naked, like there’s no watchful bubble surrounding the car. This model will do for now, but I can’t wait for a HD version and will upgrade when available.

UPDATE: I found this great post by a Mazda driver in Hong Kong who had his system professionally installed. Lots of nice photos to get a more in-depth look at the cameras and how he had it installed.