memorial day weekend

As you could probably tell by the dearth of posts, yours truly was away from all things digitalia (excepting my camera) this weekend -- I went down to LBI (Long Beach Island for all you non-NJ-ers) with two of my friends and we whiled away our time on the beach near her house. And I made mac'n cheese for them with oven-toasted bread and salad!

And since I, unlike Francis, do not have a photo blog, I've decided simply to post some shots from this weekend here.


This was a hippie van we encountered in the conservative town of Beach Haven, LBI. I was one of three asians in the whole place and everyone seemed to have Bush bumper stickers pasted onto their vehicles. Thank god for some good old-fashioned hippies though. Check out these bumper stickers:

Mmm -- I can't think of much else to remark on besides the fact that there were many many mini-golf places everywhere and that I've never seen so many useless gift shops in my life.

I did find one interesting shop -- it was an ethnically-themed one with heavy, expensive, hand-blown bead necklaces and the heady smell of hashish all about. In there, I had my first stimulating conversation (with a stranger) in ages. One of the shopowners approached me as I was attempting to photograph a beautiful glass vase and asked me what type of camera I was using. That led into an elaborate sales pitch on my part (I do love this digital camera) followed by a few hearty laughs making me realize how much I miss New York and college in general. Good and spontaneous conversations are hard to come by.

The vase:
The beach behind Nicole's house,


Some random events: I had my first soy nuggets at a place called 'The Chicken or the Egg' and they were fairly close to tasting like real nuggets.


Also, a lifetime of public education has not endowed us (my friends and I) with knowledge of the heavens. We lay one night on the beach, gazing up at the night sky, and the only constellation we could identify, with certainty, was the Big Dipper. Granted, there were lights streaming from the beach town towards the sky but we couldn't even find Orion's Belt. Or the North Star. But we did sight two shooting stars and what we (after much heated debate) concluded was definitely not a planet but instead a satellite because nothing should be that f-ing bright.