Pictures from Arizona and Yosmite

Our families at Grand Canyon


Family at Grand Canyon


Matthew with friend Victoria


With Ranger Deb


Ready to play a game at Grand Canyon


Matthew close-up


Matthew ready to swim


Harry at Yosemite


Harry and Li Soon at Yosemite


Family at Inspiration Point Yosemite


Matthew in front of Half Dome at Yosemite

Going home

Today, we will be flying home to Singapore from San Francisco after a month away. Seems to fast, and yet I am looking forward to seeing my little Nathan again for his 1 year birthday on the 28th. Wow. He's already 1 year old.
We''ll be leaving SF at 120pm today and arriving at 1am in the morning on the 28th. Don't know if I will be able to make it to church on Sunday morning.
It's been a productive, fruitful and learning experience for all of us during the time here. Li Soon and Matthew especially had learned and experienced a lot of new things. I'm so happy that God has provided the opportunity to do so this time.
PTL.

Catching up with blogging

Wow!! I just realised that I haven't updated my blog for 1 1/2 weeks already. There was no internet connection at the place we stayed in Arizona, so I couldn't get online to get emails or anything.
Anyway, here's what happened.

On Saturday, 20th August, I got up early and tried to get a ride to the airport car rental place to pick up the car I'd booked at Alamo for our Arizona trip. Phil had lent me his car to get around in SF, but since it was last minute trip, we did not get a chance to get it serviced or looked at and I didn't want to risk a fairly long trip in it. So I decided to rent a car instead.
What happened was, Phil was supposed to go with another family to his timeshare in Arizona for a week, and we were supposed to spend the week visiting some theme parks and attractions near San Francisco. But at the last minute, the other family couldn't go as their father was critically ill, on the terminal list. So Phil asked us if we wanted to go with his family instead. After discussing with Li Soon, we said.... why not. Li Soon and Matthew have never been to the Grand Canyon before and furthermore, we wanted to visit Yosemite with Wing Kong and family but they were not free. Phil also wanted to visit Yosemite since he had never been there before, so we decided to go to Yosemite on the way home from Arizona.

It was going to be a 800 mile drive from SF to Sedona, Arizona. Sedona is famous for it's red rock cliffs that surround 3 sides of the town. We drove separately to Sedona. Phil left very early on Saturday morning as he wanted to drive the 800 miles there in one day. Li Soon and I decided to take it easy and break down the drive into 2 days.

Well, my neighbour in the dorm, Mr. Ian, who is from Vancouver and dislikes driving in the city, kindly drove Li Soon, Matthew and me to the rental pickup place. After picking up the car (a mid-sized Dodge Stratus), we drove back to the church and loaded in all the stuff that we had packed the night before. It wasn't very much. 1 suitcase, several small bags and a hot water pot. One thing great about a driving holiday is that you can bring all sorts of stuff, unlike when you have to fly and have to worry about checking stuff in and what you can and cannot bring on board the aircraft. You don't even have to pack everything into a suitcase for a driving holiday!

We finally got started at about 1130am and drove through the Bay Bridge, then I-580 East to I-5 South, across to highway 99 and Bakersfield. From Bakersfield, we took the CA-58 which took us to Barstow. About 400 mile drive which was a nice halfway point. We made numerous stops along the way and it was hot, but not extremely hot. Li Soon had her first chance to drive in the US on Saturday. Between Bakersfield and Barstow, we drove through the Mohave desert and the town of Mohave where many unused commercial airliners are mothballed waiting for their day to be called back to service. We also went through the Tahachapi pass, which is famous for it's many windmills that help to generate electricity. We passed by Edwards Airforce Base where the Space Shuttle landed.

When we reached Barstow, which I had been before, there was supposed to be a big factory outlet. Barstow is the intersection of several highways. I-15 which goes from LA to Las Vegas, I-40 which starts in Barstow and goes across the US East-West, and CA-58. I drove through most of Barstow from CA-58 towards Las Vegas on I-15 but could not find the outlets. Finally, I said maybe it's in the other direction. So we turned around and went towards LA on I-15, passed the CA-58 turnoff and voila! The next exit was where all the factory outlets were. Our first task other than looking at what stores the factory outlets had was to look for accomodations for the night as it was getting late. We first looked at a Holiday Day Inn Express which was just next to the stores, but decided against it after we found out it was $130 per night++. We drove across to the other side of the freeway and finally found a Red Roof Inn for less than $50 for the night!! Thank God. It even had T-Mobile Wireless internet (not free), but that was about the last time I had internet access for a week!

Slept the night, woke up and bought breakfast at MacDonald's across the carpark, got everyone ready and then headed shopping!!
It was a huge outlet, so we only had time to visit Reebok, Gap, Coach. Matthew and I bought 3 pairs of shoes. Li Soon didn't buy very much, which was surprising.
After lunch at about 12, we finally said bye to Barstow and headed towards Arizona.

Another long day of driving ahead. We passed through Needles (the most expensive gas I had to pump at $3.35 per gallon!!), Kingman, parts of Route 66, and finally to Flagstaff where we ate at a Chinese restaurant there. (Chinese food out of California/New York is really iffy.) It was ok.
After dinner, it was already dark and we had to drive the last 27 miles from Flagstaff to Sedona.
It was the most scary drive for us. We didn't realise that Flagstaff was on a plateau at 7000ft and Sedona was at the bottom of the plateau at 5000ft, and the road, AZ-89A, was a very winding road down a canyon. It was completely dark outside, I was having a headache and tired, and we had to negotiate this road with hairpin turns and unfamiliar surroundings with very little traffic. Thankfully, there was a car ahead of us, so we followed it. It was good, cos in the middle, the car had to swerve to avoid hitting a family of deer in the dark! However, about halfway through the road, the car turned off the road and we were left alone. The road seemed to never end and kept winding and winding. It was almost 10pm already and Phil was calling us, afraid that we might have gotten lost or worse. After what seemed a long time, we finally saw civilisation. We had reached Sedona. The next challenge was to find the resort. We were given directions, but couldn't find the street in the dark. Finally at what seemed like the end of town, we decided to turn back and stopped at a landmark.... the only green-signed MacDonald's and Safeway. There we tried to call Phil but couldn't get through. We finally called the hotel and got directions. Apparently, the point we turned around wasn't the end of town after all. The resort was at the next traffic light after that, but we couldn't see it cos there was a hill in between. We finally pulled into the resort at 10pm or so. Relieved to have arrived and thankful for God's mercies despite our foolishness and weaknesses.

After checking into our nice studio in the warm Arizona night, we unpacked, showered and went to sleep.

To be continued.

No time to blog

Spent the last week in Sedona, Arizona visiting the Grand Canyon on Tuesday. Unfortunately, there was no internet connection...arrrgghh!!
It was a good week, staying in a resort in the red rock area of Sedona. Long drive today from Sedona to Fresno, CA. A drive of about 600 miles or 1000km.
Going to Yosemite tomorrow. Will blog more when we get back to SF tomorrow night.

Studio pictures

Pictures of the studio I helped set up.



The wires after we tidied them up. Too bad, I didn't take a "before" picture.

Pictures!!

Lazy me. Finally got my pictures up!!



Matt and Li Soon talking the walk down the long corridor to school



Matthew and Li Soon in Burlingame



Me and Li Soon in Burlingame



Li Soon in San Francisco



Matthew and Li Soon in our bedroom



Picture of our messy room



Another view of our messy room

Below are the wonderful views from our room

Overnight in Barstow

Drove 400 miles today from San Francisco to Barstow, CA, not far from Las Vegas. Won't be going to LV though. We are staying in a cheap motel, Red Roof Inn, for US$50 for the night before taxes. Not bad. Holiday Inn wanted $130 for the night!
Left at 1115am and arrived about 645pm. Long drive. Li Soon's first time driving in the US today, and at 80 mph or 130kmh!

Tomorrow, we will continue on to Sedona AZ for a few days vacation.
Pray for journey mercies.

Dinner in Berkeley

Took us almost 45 min for us to drive the 8 miles from SF to Berkeley across the Bay bridge during rush hour. We went there to meet Stephanie Chia for dinner on Friday night. We picked her up at Bancroft and Telegraph right outside UC Berkeley. Drove up and down University looking for this one Japanese restaurant but couldn't find it. Finally ate at another Japanese Restaurant at Shattuck and University. Had quite a bit of nice Sushi there. Matthew enjoyed his plain Maki Sushi without any fish.... just seaweed and rice!!
It was nice to catch up with Steph after a long time. She's going to Hawaii this weekend with some friends.... how nice.
Have a good trip Steph.

Fixing the left over stuff, going to Arizona

Haven't blogged for a few days.
Today we are off to Arizona, Grand Canyon and Yosemite for a week. It was kinda of a last minute thing. Phil was supposed to go to Sedona with another family for his RCI timeshare holiday. However, the other family had some urgent family problems and had to cancel at the last minute. So Phil asked us if we were interested to go and Li Soon and I decided to go. Since Phil will be gone, I can't do much this coming week anyway. So here we go. We'll try to go to Yosemite on the way back from Arizona.
Phil and his family left this morning for the 15 hour trip from SF to Sedona, AZ. He's driving straight through. We will be leaving later this morning, after picking up the rental car at the airport. We have decided to take a more leisurely drive today and probably staying overnight near Bastow California after an 8 hour drive today. Depends on how far we get today. Looking forward to it.
Missed David Au in the Bay Area when he was here earlier this week. He's going to the Grand Canyon, so maybe we'll meet up near there.

I spent the last 2 days clearing up the last remaining items for the video studio, like tidying out the cables, labelling, etc. I must say I am pretty satisfied with the results now. Almost everything is working properly now. The crew will use it this weekend for recording the service, and then they'll report if there are any other issues. When we get back, I'll get on fixing the last 4 remaining items, which mainly pertain to sound in the sanctuary.
I tried to fix the waveform monitor on Thursday and traced it down, with my very limited knowledge of analog electronics and a borrowed oscilloscope, to a couple of components that may be bad. However, they might end up buying a new one, cos the are now running in component video instead of composite video. The old waveform monitor only ran composite video. I had a tough time trying to match the component video and the composite video signal levels, so I gave up and only did the component video setup by "Eyeball". Component video signals are better as they split the video into 3 cables instead of 1, which gives you better overall quality.
I'll try to get some pictures up soon.

Li Soon's day off, still fixing studio, TV show shoot

Li Soon took the day off today after finishing much of the work yesterday. I think she finally had a chance to rest.
I spent most of today still fixing up the control and machine rooms, getting the stuff that we didn't get to yet to work. Finally got the tally lights to work today after some tricky soldering of a 44 pin D-sub connector!! Another item off the list.
Quite satisfied with the results so far.

Tonight we recorded 2 more episodes of the TV show about families and husband-wife relationships. Tiring work. Finally finished around 1030pm.

Today was Li Soon's first time preparing dinner. We had pre-packaged caesar salad, chicken nuggets, chicken wings, and rice.
Today, when I picked up Matthew from class, he was learning to play chess.
Tomorrow is 2 weeks since we got here. Time flies fast. Hoping to meet up with Stephanie in Berkeley on Friday night and get some time off to go to Marine World and Yosemite with the family next week when Phil goes off for his vacation in hot Arizona.
Also looking forward to meeting with Peter, Dollie, Kai and maybe Christine next week.

Sunday service, graduation, checking out auditorium, fixing lens

Woke up a bit later on Sunday. Li Soon brought Matthew to Sunday School and at and I went to help Phil who was doing sound for the Cantonese service at 10am. Had a chance to see if the video system was working alright after Friday's re-wiring. Found out that the mother's room TV had sound but no video. Finally traced it to a cable that we did not plug in in the machine room. Found the cable and plugged them all in and got picture, got sound. Went back to the sanctuary to sit with Phil at the sound booth to understand the very nice Soundcraft MH3 mixer and loads of outboard gear. Add one more thing to the list - need to set up the audio levels for the CD recording so that it is more normalised for ripping to wma for the website. Currently, levels are too low. Will try to do it this coming week.
After Cantonese service, went back upstairs to the control room to standby in case there were any problems. They have a crew, so I didn't have to man anything. Realised that the Scan converter was set to zoom and the text was too large. Fixed that. Otherwise, everything went smoothly. Had a chance to talk to Dennis about any other problems he was facing.
In the afternoon, we brought down 1 camera from the studio to the sanctuary for the kindergarten graduation. Had lunch with the tech crew and then helped to man the remote controlled cameras for the graduation ceremony. Was interesting, having 3 remote cameras and 1 "live" camera with Alex manning it. Made for an interesting video overall.
I've seen too many kindergarten graduations in my life already. What with Cornerstone, Bethesda Frankel, and my son's 2 kindergartens, I've probably seen more than 50 by now!
After the graduation, went back to the room for a short nap before going out with Li Soon and Matthew to Stonestown mall for dinner. Food court food in the mall is more expensive than buying take-out at the Chinese restaurants near the church!

Monday morning, we all woke up kinda late. Made breakfast for Matthew. At 920am, got a call when I was in the toilet from Phil. I called back and he said he was waiting for me outside the sanctuary to go out. I totally forgot that we were going to the Scottish Rite auditorium to check it out for their ChristmasSing program in December. Hurriedly went down to meet him where he drove us to the Sunset district. Quick 10 min drive.

The hall is quite grand, but the first thing that hit us as we walked in was the musky smell. CEBC used to rent this hall back in the 90s, but has stopped for almost 8 years as they had stopped renting it out until now. The lighting system had just been recently replaced, which was a delight to Raymond, the tech crew head. However, the sound system was still of 1960s vintage, but with an older Mackie 1604 mixer. Talked with Phil about how to cover the whole hall sound wise. Probably will need pretty high scaffold or genie lift to bring the speakers to sufficient height to cover all the way to the back. The hall seats around 700+.
They will have to rent the entire sound system. May be good to use a small line array to cover the long depth. Also checked out the lighting system and tried out some effects with the scrim. Pretty cool. However, the muskiness of the place is going to be a problem as all of us developed some allergy symptoms after leaving the place. Think it might be a fungus problem. However, the guy there insists that he doesn't smell it...... right.

After returning for lunch, Phil and I checked out the camera lens problem on camera 4. After changing and checking, found that the servo for the zoom control was kaput. Changed the lens and got it to work with another lens he had. Praying that it will continue to work.

Thereafter, we rewired the inputs to the switcher and tried to get the computer graphics to key into the video properly. However, by this time, I was totally out of it as I was very sleepy. Will continue today.

Longest workday!

For those of you who think that I'm in SF for a holiday, you couldn't be more wrong. Friday was my longest working day yet. Started at 830am and didn't finish till midnight. So a total of 15 1/5 hours including a couple of short breaks for lunch and dinner!! Phil and I continued to re-wire the control room and machine room the whole day. We pulled these thick and very stiff video cables, cut them to the right length, and terminated them (meaning putting the connectors at the ends). There was a lot of excess length before, so cutting them to the right length is the best way to clean up the mess. As Phil had a wedding to attend on Saturday and the whole system needed to be used on Sunday for a graduation concert for the school, it was imperative that we finished it on Friday. I crimped the connectors onto the cables until my hands hurt, in the very cramped space behind the racks in the machines room.
By 830pm, we had finished all the cabling and proceeded to test the system to make sure it works. There were some problems with some of the monitors and cameras that took us till about midnight to fix. Made some recordings to make sure that everything works as designed. Finally satisfied, with a much neater setup, properly wired up and most important of all, better quality pictures and more reliable performance. The proof will be in today as we shoot the graduation. Praying......

Spent a lazy Saturday morning in, resting and sending the laundry to the washing machine. Left for the Singapore-American Business Association picnic in Burlingame which featured Singaporean food from various Singaporean restaurants in the Bay Area including Prima Taste, Straits Cafe and Baba Neo. Met Alex Lee and his family there as well.
It was nice to get out of the cold in San Francisco and enjoy some time in the sun. However, yesterday was quite a hot day, which left us panting as we walked down the very nice main street of Burlingame. Popped into the Baskin Robbins for some ice cream and a nice cool drink.

After that, we drove into downtown San Francisco to do a little of the tourist thing - sightseeing. A Saturday afternoon in summer is not the best time to go sightseeing in SF. Seems like every other tourist is also trying to see the sights. It hit me when we reached the bottom of the hill and saw the long line of cars lining up to climb the road to go down Lombard street. Finally gave up and just went around the hill to see the road on the other side. Also went to Coit Tower, and lined up a very long time to get a parking space. Took a view around the place and Li Soon visited this self-cleaning toilet. It cleans the floor and sanitizes the toilet seat between each user. Cool. The only problem is that it takes a long time between users and therefore, a very long line outside the toilet.

Finally went to Chinatown for dinner and realised that the street parking is incredibly expensive. It's 25cents for every 6 minutes, so a 1 hour parking is $2.50. Used to be like 50cents or 1 Dollar per hour. Now wonder there were so many empty spaces, unlike before. Found a little restaurant called ABC where we had wonton noodles. Matthew really liked it and ate quite a bit. We'll be having leftovers for breakfast this morning.

Came back after a long traffice jam getting on the freeway, then sent the laundry to the dryer and later picked it up for ironing before going to bed, satisfied and tired.

Going to service at 11am today and Matthew's Sunday School at 10am. Then to help out in the graduation recording at about 130pm.

Rewiring

Spent yesterday rewiring the studio control room. There's about 40 pcs of equipment in the control room and another 10 in the adjacent machine room. The wiring was such as mess. Now that I think of it, I should have taken a picture before the rewiring. A before and after look. Anyway, the kids helped to unhook and pull out all the cabling and we are starting from scratch. Pull out most of them by lunch time, but putting them together again is going to take some time. But it needs to be done by Sunday morning. So got about 30% of it done tomorrow, and will try to finish it by today.
Got to go get back to work now.

Fixed lights today

Just got back from a long day of work.
Put in the laundry in the morning. Finally got the deposit from the Singapore customer, so ordered the equipment and software in the morning. Also sent email to my friend at Videotek to arrange to send me the service manual for a malfunctioning waveform monitor. Looks like the horizontal drive is not working. Hopefully we can solve it.
Then spent most of the day re-lighting the studio set. I think it looks better now. It's a 2 person set, with a wall and 2 windows. Had the key light come in through the window, also set up back lights and fill lights. Added lights to the cyc for the sky through the windows and some lights for the set walls.
Picked up the laundry before coming back to the room at about 5:30 for a simple dinner before going back to the studio at 7pm for the studio recording of the TV program. Did some fine tuning of the lights and cameras.
Fruitful day. Check another couple of items off the to-do list.

First day of work

Sent Matthew to class for the first time this morning. I think it's a bit hard for him to get used to things here, but hopefully in time he'll be ok. It doesn't help that one of the teachers speaks Cantonese to the other kids. Looks like Matt is the only one that doesn't understand what she is saying. When we met him at lunch, he didn't want to eat the macaroni in spagetti sauce as he is definitely not used to it. He's more of a chicken rice, french fries kind of boy. Didn't even want to drink the cold milk. Finally got him to drink some water and a little bit of the macaroni without the sauce. Today we made sure he brought biscuits and stuff. Understand the lunch today is rice, so hopefully it will be alright for him.
Li Soon started work in the office, helping to fix up some filing shelves and to do filing. Seems that she works too fast....hehe. So she said she'll take it easier today so that she doesn't stress up the others ppl in the office.
Yesterday I made up a to-do list below. Managed to only finish item number 2.
1. Wire component video cables from Panasonic WV-RC700A CCU to switcher
2. Figure out how to switch CCU to component video output
3. Look for 44 pin D-sub connector for switcher tally – contact manufacturer?
4. Hook up tally lights for cameras
5. Look for and order waveform monitor
6. Check key input on switcher
7. Fix Cam 1 colour problem
8. Camera 2 control cable issue
9. Training for calibration and tuning of video cameras
10. Fix headphone connector for studio
11. Adjustment of sanctuary speakers
12. Tuning of sanctuary EQ
13. Acoustic treatment for sanctuary
14. Studio camera lens issue on camera 5
15. Studio camera servo issue on camera 4
16. Relight studio
17. Get service manual for waveform monitor.

Also brought in a network cable into my room so that I can surf at night, as they are definitely not happy with wireless LAN here.
Gotta go back to work now.

Troubleshooting, shopping and church

Spent Saturday morning helping Phil with some of the studio troubleshooting. I wonder how he juggles so many things at one time. There was the Cornerstone Singers recording in the recording studio and the Youth Mass Media group getting training in the TV studio and sanctuary to get ready for the kindergarten graduation on Sunday.
While in the studio, I helped to troubleshoot a couple of problems. The first was that of the audio not getting from the Mackie D8B mixer to the Digital Performer software on the Mac. After some troubleshooting, checking all the optical cables and connections, realised that the hardware input settings for the MOTU I/O unit was somehow changed and it wasn't taking the input from the optical in, but something else. Changed that and managed to finally get some input. Next, there was a problem with the headphone cue audio leaking into the control room monitor speakers. Strange problem. Again, checking and tracing finally showed that the headphone monitor output was leaking back through the ground into the mixer due to an intermittent 1/4" connector in the studio. Also as the output was stereo headphone, and they were using only a 1/4" mono cable from that to the headphone distribution amps, the left channel of the headphone audio was shorting to ground, causing the leak. To do - change/fix the headphone wall socket and change to stereo cables for the headphones.
Next, there was a problem in the TV studio with camera 1 not coming up on the switcher, but was showing some strange video noise. Was wondering if it was a camera problem or not. Finally did the obvious, reboot both the camera and the video switcher and it worked!! Helped to set up the camera in the santuary and then Phil said they'd be ok for the rest of the day.
We then went back to rest for a while (jet lag still a majot factor), then went shopping for some groceries before going to Wing Kong and Do Hui's for dinner.
Had fresh Salmon sashimi and a strange looking but delicious Blue Rock Cod shashimi with fish miso soup. Delicious. Had a chance to catch up and talk about Singapore happenings as only Singaporeans can. They had a co-worker from Apple, Raymond, over for dinner. He's also from Singapore. He's family's back home for the summer holiday and he's alone here for the time being.
Matthew left his Gameboy at their house..

Sunday, woke up early again and did laundry. Brought Matthew to Sunday school at 10am, but he didn't want to go in and was just stubborn outside. Finally had to sit him down, and then took him on a small tour of the huge kitchen before he opened up. Finally he went to the class with a new friend, Victoria, who is Phil's youngest daughter.
Went for service at 11:30am. Quite late. Took Rev Wong from Cornerstone EB church in Singapore and his daughter for lunch. His daughter is starting school at Skyline College end August and she was moving into her room yesterday.
After lunch, came back, moved the laundry to the dryer and Rev Wong move out of their apartment here. After that, went to do some for shopping for essentials. Didn't buy much though. Tried to bank in a cheque at the ATM, but it didn't work. Will have to call them up to see if my account has been frozen.

Came back and slept till 9:30pm. Actually overslept.
Made dinner and then went to sleep finally around midnight. Woke up at 4am again, made breakfast and now getting ready for the day. Matthew's going to his school class and Li Soon is getting ready to help out. Gtg bathe now.