Archive for December, 2006
As promised, here is the rest of exciting things happened around us, hope you are having \”fun with Jane and Sherwood\”.
- Christimas holiday celebration is the largest in scale so far. First of all, this is the first time Sherwood\’s parents to come over US to see how American people enjoyed the holidays. Secondly, Jane and Sherwood setup Christimas tree to celebrate the holidays for the first time ever since they moved to the house 5 years ago. This is also the first time for Sherwood in his life to setup one. The end result has been pretty stunning, especially in the night time thanks to 1250 lights and 50+ ornaments on the tree. Finally we have such a huge Christimas eve dinner that totally eight people barely eat half of the stuff.
- Getting crazy to buy a PS3. Sherwood and Jane participated in an online fight to place a PS3 station into their cart on launch date, but unfortunately, we failed miserably, leaving both of us sad and mad. Half an hour before the official time Costco said it would post the PS3 link, we were nervewrecks hawking at the site…around 10:40, chaos began. Each of us had about 10 windows opened simultaneously and were alternating back and forth in an attempt to get through (kept on getting page errors due to the overload) - it was a REAL test of endurance and patience!!! Each time we reached the next step, the very next one would fail and we would have to start all over again. It was not until later that we learned from a forum that there are tricks - such as saving the page each time a milestone is reached, and holding down the control key down while clicking furiously at the link - word has it that out of the 10 windows, 8-9 will fail but one will go through). Maybe the traditional way of physically lining up isn’t so bad after all…*sigh*
- Sherwood finally travelled so much that his frequently flyer mileage is enough to buy a round trip ticket to Asia, meanwhile, Sherwood\’s contribution to RDU airport has tripled, he has used the airport 21 times this year.
- Tigeryao.com has changed a lot without incurring significant development expense. Major changes include: New baby blog is created and owned by Owen, it is very well received among families and friends, new features added to main blog and baby blog to prevent spams, 26 new albums added to photo gallery. Overall in 2006 site total page view reached 305529 hits and 3.4GB total data usage (according to my web host). Maybe it is time to add google adWords for some cash.
- Among the first few people installed and used legal copy of Microsoft Windows Vista because I have MSDN. Overall, the real excitement was the moment after the install ended, that is also when the excitement ended. The only thing that I liked is really the cool Aero 3D user interface. Nevertheless, I have a firm belief that Vista will create huge positive impact on the overall PC hardware business because it needs such powerful computing power to render it nicely. Somehow I think Vista is more of a copycat of mac OS X on several things, you know what I am talking about if you are a MAC user.
December 25th, 2006
Merry Christmas, dear readers to tigeryao.com! 2006 is a great year to remember to each of you, here we want to share with you something special that happened to us, enjoy reading and hope you can share with us the news about you.
- First and also the most importanly, we are lucky enough to be the first two among 5 billion people in the world to see a little guy named Owen Yao.
- Jane celebrated her first birthday for not being a twenty something, Jane viewed this birthday very special just because now we have three people to celebrate.
- Sherwood got his first time cruise experience on a beautiful Norweigien Cruise ship - Jewel - to East Carribbean, include San Juan Purto Rico, Antigua, US Virgin Island, Bahama etc. Interestingly this is also his first time experience to travel (leisure) without Jane for the first time - amazingly, Sherwood survived himself by bring his parents, and brought home some very dark skin which made Jane had difficulties to recognize Sherwood.
- 2006 is the first year that Jane and Sherwood didn’t travel to overseas, but we did manage to travel pregnantly (hope this is a word, screw the grammer) to some USA places include Portsmouth, NH, Cape cod, MA, Newport, NH etc. The most memorable thing was a half day whale watching boat tour.
- We watched about 52 movies together this year, that is more than 60% drop Year over Year, but this still beats main street’s estimate for a first year parents. The 10 best in our humble opinion include “The Departed”, ”Cars”, “Da Vinci code”, “Over the hedge”, “Click”, “Eight Below”, “World Trade Center”, “Pursuit of Happiness”, “Borat”, “Thank you for smoking”.
Stay tuned and look for the update for part 2.
December 25th, 2006
For people with visiting family members from other countries, B-2 visa must sound familiar to you. Typically your family members will be granted a stay of six month upon they pass the US Immigration and Custom checkpoint at the airport. If you wanted to extend their stay for whatever reasons, you have to file an request to US Homeland Security, this request must be filed with $200 per person processing fee, this sounds expensive.
Actually I found you can get that extension in a better way - just bring your family members to a cruise which stops at the Carribbean ilsands (like Bahama). Because the island is a foreign country, and upon return, you will have to pass the Immigration checkpoint, which they will grant you another six month of stay without asking you any questions! You might think why cruise? because I guess Cruise is a controlled env, people who is allowed to enter the cruise departing from a US port should already have permission to stay in US, so US DHS just assume you have valid permissions and all they need is just another putting another stamp on your passport.
Maybe you call my title “cheating” since you still have to pay for the cruise, but to me “Cruise” price in a heavy discounted season might be much less than $200, and don’t forget you’ll get served really well on the ship.
December 18th, 2006
My last blog was almost a month ago, I was on the road for more than three weeks! it was just too tiring to sit in front of computer at the end of each exciting day. The most exciting part that I have to share with you is my first cruise experience, as you read in my prevoius blog, to east carribbean via NCL Jewel.
Overall the “Freestyle” is by no means just a brand of NCL, there is indeed a lot of freedom on the ship, and even with my parents who are in their 60’s, we all have a lot of fun on the ship. Being a first timer, there are for sure a lot of bummers, such as things forget to bring with you, so let me summarize what I have learned and hope that is useful to you, especially to those who will take NCL ships.
Things to do before boarding:
- Make internet searches and book excursion trips by yourself, it usually save $10-25/pp for each excursion trip. Internet on the ship is available but it is expensive. Once you have made reservation, suggest you write down the contact info and where to meet near your cruise ship. Notice sometimes booking excursion trips may give you early disembark advantage. Plan to return to the ship at least 1 hour before the embarkation time, so that you can accommodate unplanned events such as traffic jams if you use a rental car.
- Board early: usually boarding started around 1pm, so get there early to beat the crowd.
Things to do immediately after boarding:
- Reserve special restaurant for dinner first: notice there are three restaurants charges cover charges (Chin-chin:$10, Le Bistro: $10, Cagney:$15), but first day has ½ price on the cover charge, and then early dinner time (5:30-6:30) has ½ price too. The rest of restaurants are free of charges. Check map first to be familiar with the location of the reservation desk. Be sure to check itinerary so that you don’t book a restaurant for a time slot when you are still off the ship.
Stuff you shouldn’t forget
- Large water bottles to carry water, NCL charges fee for bottled water on board, but they do offer water for free in buffet restaurant where you can fill your bottle without spending a penny. Also soft drinks (coke etc) are not free, so bring your own if you want to save some dollars.
- Medicine for your medication, check the information desk if you have common problems such as cold or headache as they have things like Tylenol for free.
- Sunscreen, deodorant etc. Otherwise, you will suffer some serious sun burn.
- Snorkeling gears (include a life jacket if you are note a big swimmer) if you plan to take a snorkeling trip, the price to rent the gears on ship is about the same when you purchase a new one in store.
- Photography things: such as water-proof camera. If you do have DSLR, bring both telescope lens and wide lens.
If you use DSLR and wants to changes lens on the road, make sure you bring a CMOS cleaner because the chance of dirt went into your camera body is much higher when you are near the ocean.
- A portable printer is nice to print post card to mail to home from a location.
Beach bag, it is handy to have it and put things in an organized way.
- Personal spare time killer: Mp3 player/video game console/books, there are lots of things to do while onboard so you won’t easily get board unless you are interested in nothing. The ship gym is very nice; easily spend some quality personal time over there with your favorite music.
December 10th, 2006