Sunday, March 25, 2007 - Atlanta Underground, Atlanta, GA I hardly can recall on how a marathon would do such harm to your body from my past Marine Corps Marathon, which took place six months ago (see ). A hostile reminder, however, was inevitably after completing another 26.2 mile course, noticeably when you were wobbling around the finishers ground, while your now stiffen legs, strained back muscle, shoulders and forearms were screaming in agony after a couple of hours worth of strenuous exercise, and trying to reach the snack table to nourish back your body and repla [View Full Entry]

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Sunday, January 21, 2007 - Playa Flamenco, Culebra - Spanish Virgin Island, Puerto Rico Not many people have heard about the Spanish Virgin Islands, which mostly consists of two archipelago groups of Culebra and Vieques. This is the very spot where the Greater and Lesser Antilles meet. Geographically, these islands should be considered as the U.S. Virgin Islands instead of Puerto Rico; Culebra is only 12 miles west of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands (compared to 17 miles from mainland Puerto Rico). But, that is just a formality. Culebrenses would consider themselves [View Full Entry]

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Friday, January 19, 2007 - Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico "So, you’re going upstairs later on?" Ricardo, my Hard Rock Café waiter asked me while delivering my second refill of cold Mt. Dew to my table. Meanwhile, I was struggling with my whole chicken, fried plantains and Spanish rice. "What’s upstairs?" I blinked. Surely he wasn’t talking about the deserted second floor of Hard Rock Café? "What?! You don’t know what’s going on? Why do you think people are packing up the streets of San Juan this weekend?" "Err … Fiestas de la Calle [View Full Entry]

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Semper Fidelis ‘Always faithful’ - United States Marine Corps motto Being committed to a marathon seems to be a straightforward business of running a 26.2 miles course. At least this is one naïve assumption I’ve had, signing up for the 2006 Marine Corps Marathon in early spring. And of course, as it turned out, the marathon business is slightly more complicated than I have originally thought, as I learned from my training program in the past 20+ weeks. This is a word of wisdom from a marathoner. The hardest part of embracing the challenge [View Full Entry]

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Visiting Washington, D.C. is simply a journey that satisfies a history buff like myself. I’ve read and learned so much about DC, and I’m confident to say that almost every major US histories can be traced to the nation’s capital. Here, you will find countless monuments, memorials and grand architecture achivements, important sites and designs, including fine art collections, painting masterpieces, dirty political issues and hip urban town. In fact, Dee-Cee is not only for historian nerds, it is for everyone. There is always something in DC that fulfills every visitors and res [View Full Entry]

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Fall, in my opinion, is the best season of the year. The official ‘autumn’ date falls on September 23, and Atlanta has been really comfortable for the past couple weeks, allowing people to catch some last summer sun before the temperature drops into freezing point. Leaves start to change color, squirrels continue on collecting acorns for upcoming dormant season and everybody moves in a slower pace. It is a perfect athmosphere for all to enjoy. Football season has been great for the most part; I adopted the ‘Yellow Jacket’ Georgia Tech as my home-based team to root [View Full Entry]

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A couple days ago, British intelligent raided the city of London and arrested about two dozen of its own citizens of plotting a series of terrorist attacks on about ten aircraft jets flying to the United States from Heathrow Airport in London. The plot is to use common items brought on-boards, to be filled with some chemical components to be mixed once they are in midair, creating an explosive device for a suicide mission and eventually kill thousands of people, plunge to the Atlantic. From what I’ve read from the Travel Advisory provided by the US Government, the US Department of [View Full Entry]

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(disclaimer - I write this blog solely from my observation and information I received. I didn’t mean to offend anyone - so if you’re sensitive towards the homosexuality subject, I would suggest you to skip the blog, because this is not for faint hearted people) Ah, Atlanta. I always find cultures are interesting, that is probably the biggest reason I’ve been addicted to traveling, just to experience different things and explore new places. After two years residing in the big city of HOT-lanta, finally I realized that there is an obvious culture that I hadn’t [View Full Entry]

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OK that sounds inhuman and cruel to describe having a mini vacation while helping out a good buddy Ryan moving to his new place in Dallas, Texas. Moving, like any other unpleasant activities, requires a lot of sacrifices, including but not limited to, driving at least thirteen hours behind a U-Haul truck, sleeping deprived, boredom, lack of movement (no marathon training!), and nutrition malfunction consisting of many Red Bulls, chewing gum, MacDonald’s double cheeseburger and soda pop, just to realize that as soon as arriving at the destination place, instead of having a good rest, sti [View Full Entry]

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Mist of sunrise was hanging over the Northern Georgia town of Dahnolega when we arrived at seven in the morning. It has been a long day already, starting by waking up at four in Atlanta to meet up with the group at 5:30 am, to participate in the 10th Annual Ranger Run event. There are fifteen people in our group, doing the 5k Run, 15k Ranger Run, or the 34k Biking Race. The race is then followed by the US Army Ranger Open House which only happens once a year. I need to quote the Ranger Run mission statement from the [View Full Entry]

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