Yesterday I went to see Cirque du Soleil's Totem with the uni. The venue stated was ATnT park, which is a baseball stadium, but actually the circus top was at an empty site next to it, and much smaller than I expected, which is good, because then no matter where you are sitting, you have a good view of the performance.

I didn't take many pictures, and not good ones even then, so the ones here I got from online.

It was exciting since I've never even seen a circus performance before, and with Cirque du Soleil's reputation, I had pretty high expectations, but it definitely didn't disappoint.
Before the performance started, some of the performers came out to the audience and interacted with them. These 2 are my favourite; a guy with a glowing hat and a scientist with a frog hand puppet which eats the audiences' popcorn.
Since the audience were so near the performers, I kept wondering what would happen if one of them makes a mistake and comes crashing down towards the seats. That didn't happen, but still it makes you worry a bit. What if the performers get stage fright and mess up...
Besides the actual performances, it was also fun to see the set design, how they transformed the stage to fit each act. So it's not only technical skill, but also child-like fascination with unusual sights. And also as usual the costume design was really good.
This guy is juggling against a glass cone, so the balls make unpredictable arches.

I got a new violin! Now I can practice quietly at home. It's a Cecilio electric violin, not the top company, but good enough for practicing. Apparently the original price was $500, but I got it online for $130 (it's new).

Comes with the case, rosin (a little higher quality than what came with my acoustic), headphones(kind of like the ones they have on airplanes, you're probably expected to buy your own) and a beginner's manual. As a side note, here in SF one good thing is that you can borrow music scores from the library, you know buying them yourself is bloodsuckingly expensive.

It's a lot quieter than an acoustic violin, but you can still hear it. I think it's ok so long as the door is closed. You probably won't hear it at all from outside. It is a little more zingy than an acoustic. If you use the headphones and turn the dial to the warmest tone, it sounds a little better, but for practicing I like to leave the headphones off so I can hear the worst of it and try to play better.
Here's how it looks like from behind. I was pretty pleased of myself for being able to assemble the bridge and tune the strings myself, since Yen did that for me the last time (when you buy a new violin, the bridge is collapsed to prevent anything breaking in transit).

Last Saturday, there was a sandcastle competition at Ocean Beach, which was for elementary school kids. So I thought of having a look, and going to the Sutro Bath ruins while I was there as well.

Each team was from a different school, with kids and some adults building. They had small scale plasticine or sketches of what they wanted to build by the side. And of course parents to stand by and supply food and drinks to the team.
It was interesting to see what props they had, buckets, shovels, spray bottles, etc. One team had a pump system going from the sea waterline to a pond they made next to their castle, no motorised pump, so a bicycle stood in.
Seal rocks, and the event going on in the foreground.
While they were completing their castles, I went over to the Sutro Bath ruins, which was right next door. It's a 1900's public bathhouse that has been left to decay.
Not much remains except the foundation, but it's nice to see something so strange and undeveloped in the city.

Back at the sandcastle site, and here are the finished works!





And this is how you take pictures of the castles if you don't have a big enough budget for a helicopter. I figure that there's a remote shutter release from the ground, a pretty expert kite flyer pulling the camera around, and a bound and gagged camera owner screaming for help somewhere.

Probably the recipe for a good sandcastle is to build bigger pieces with less detail, so it's clearer to see in the sand, at least my favourite pieces were like that.
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Fleet Week! I made the mistake of going on the last day of the aerial stunts, so I didn't get to see much (the main show was cancelled because of the fog, and the ships on show were too crowded to admit any more people), but here's the few pictures I got.
It was more crowded than I expected, so, next year, better start looking around on the first day, and early in the morning. Lesson learnt.
Blue Angels flying in formation.
This is one of the permanent ships at the Maritime Museum, but I think it's been dressed up for the occasion.

Yosemite! Massive picture upload, but I still feel like I took too little photos and didn't see enough of the park.

So, I was there with the uni, altogether maybe 50 people in 2 buses. I almost missed the bus there because the train was as efficient as usual, but after a little running with 2 bags, all was well. One person really didn't turn up though, wonder what happened.

So, after a 5 hour drive, we reached Yosemite Bug Resort, where we'd be staying. It's a little outside the park, but you can already start to see the geography there. With no further plans for the day, most of us went exploring the short trails around the resort. Here's a little waterfall we found. The rocks in there were pretty mossy though, but plenty of small fishes. Only a tiny trickling creek runs from it, so you can imagine how claustrophobic it must have been for the fishes.

And our first taste of sort of dangerous narrow slippery wilderness trails.
Lots of squirrels too.
This is the sort tent cabin that we stayed in. I'm not sure if some of us got the wooden cabins or not. But I did overhear a woman asking one of the resort staff how in the world they managed to house "all of us kids" around the resort.
And the inside. No bathroom, there's a communal one.
Here's the cafe, really nice and cozy. They have a fireplace, boardgames, and one night they had a live band as well. The kitchen staff were a bit overwhelmed at having to feed so many hungry students at the same time though.


Skis and a small canoe sticking up in the rafters.
We had a bonfire each night, with the American tradition of making s'mores (marshmellow and chocolate melted in a sandwich of graham crackers) I'd guess the firewood came from around the compound. Surprisingly we didn't get very cold nights eventhough the weather forecast was something like as low as 7 degrees celcius.
And next morning, we are in Yosemite National Park at last! So much area to cover, so little time. Only a small part of the park has a shuttle bus going through it, so other than that I guess you'd have to bring camping gear for a very long trek, or bring your own car. We students stuck with the shuttle bus area; the Yosemite basics.
First destination, upper Yosemite waterfall. We were hiking for a good hour or so up slippery, steep, narrow tracks and thought we could reach the top, until someone we passed halfway told us we weren't even 1/4 way there, so we just stopped at the lookout point to take pictures and continue somewhere else so we could see more of the park throughout the day. This is a view of Half Dome (the rounded mountain peak in the middle) The picture can't do it justice, but from that height it's amazing to see how little everything looks on the ground. The trees look so orderly, like lego blocks.
Yes, dangling my feet off the edge of a cliff. OK, fine, there was a safety railing I was sitting behind. Apparently in winter, some of the trails are closed off because the snow makes the trails too slippery. It's pretty weird to think it could snow, considering the weather was so hot for us that day. Talking about slippery, one girl did sprain her ankle, and I fell once too, and that's when the trails are as dry as they could possibly be.
This one's much more accessible, the lower Yosemite falls.You can just walk a short distance to reach it, but I was trekking with 2 guys, so as I found out later, their relentless scampering up rocks(pass some warning signs too) paid off with awesome views
This time of the year, the water level is very low, since the ice has almost completely melted off the mountains. There should be a river here.
Yosemite is good for rock climbing as well. They provide lessons if you like, but I think these 2 are more experienced. I saw a group of people starting out on the smaller cliffs, some of them brought their little kids to climb as well. But of course they wore harnesses, so they were more or less pulled up and down the cliffs.
Some people even brought their dogs to the waterfalls, to climb up the rocks, no less. Of course, that is a sausage dog, and those are really big rocks, so half the time the owner was dragging the dog up by the neck.
Big cliffs, whoopie!
After quite a long climb up the waterfall, the crowd thinned out, so here's a tranquil pool at the top. I didn't dare to go right down to the water though.
And an awesome view, with the big crowd of tourists out of the picture. You could see the moon rising faintly behind the mountain too, but the picture I took wasn't very clear.
Waterfall! A very small fall at this time of the year.
A little easier climb down.
Awesome benches.
That's the toilet, but what a cosy rustic exterior of a toilet.
Walking along one of the rivers. The low water level makes for a beautiful scene, but I also saw a sign showing their record highest flood level, somewhere 6 feet off the ground.
Oops, a paparazzi shot. But what a nice colour for the river.



Clouds rolling over the mountains. Later on when we were already in the bus, we saw a pretty awesome sunset against the rock faces as well, so too bad a shaky bus doesn't make for good stable photos. Places like these really do make you appreciate how small you are.

Meadows. The boardwalk was built to keep visitors off the grass and let it grow properly.


A small church in the park.
At night, we had another bonfire, and this time some of the gang started to play with the burning sticks we used for roasting marshmellows, to write words with fire. And who happens to have a camera ready at hand? Me...
Next morning was the day we were going back to the city, so I woke up early to take some parting shots of the resort. More camps.
I've no idea what this is, but it looks cool.



Right at the top of the hill there is a carpark, which offers a good view of the surroundings. The past few nights a group of us went up in pitch darkness to look at stars as well. Because it's far away from the city, there is less light pollution, so we could see brighter stars. It was pretty awesome, I don't think I've seen them that clearly before. I tried to take some pictures, but it was far too dark for anything to show up on my camera. We ended up just lying down on the deserted carpark to look for shooting stars, which as it happens, is one every 5 minutes or so.
Sunrise on the mountain. Surrounding the resort, there are a few farms, some of them with donkeys, so I heard a few brays too. (as a side quiz, did you know that burrito means small donkey? cute, right)

The wooden huts look like this.
Schoolbuses. One of them broke down on the way back, so we were delayed an hour, but I guess it was a rough trip after all.
The firepit in the daytime.
This is supposed to be a cauldron for the fire, but I wouldn't recommend using it.
The cafe from the outside.
The resort has a spa too.
And yes, they do like their bugs. Not as buggy as Malaysia, but I guess they are a little hippie after all.