Hailing!

It's hailing, geez. I want to go back to California ...

Home ...

Geez, I'm home now. My short holidays were over. What a difference between San Diego and this miserable hippie town! And I need to do some work, gaaaarrrgghhh!

Drunk Day

YS and I drove to Temecula to meet up EC. EC also drove all the way from Los Angeles.

Temecula is a little winery area, and we were planning to go and taste a variety of wine today ... And we did. We are people of words!


To be honest, I don't remeber how many kinds of wine we tasted today, probably in five, six hours. But the very first winery we visited was impressive. This Thornton Winery is basically a champagne (I should say "sparkling wine" because "champagne" is only for sparkling wine produced in Champagne, France) place, but Zinhandel was also good (at least in my opinion).

After this place, we dropped by several wineries to taste more wine. But you know what? I had been already kind of drunk at Thornton. Yes, alcohol during daytime hits fast :P Anyway, it's kind of my holiday. Who could blame me, grrrrr?!

San Diego!

The sun! Oh, well, it's not perfectly sunny, but it's OK, better than my hippie town, which had rain this morning.

Warm! Well, it's not warm in my sense, which means hot in ordinary people's sense. But it's OK, better than my hippie town whose temperature this morning was ... I left my apartment around 5:00 in the morning, so it was chilly, of course.

Anyhow, I'm in San Diego!

PSA

Yay, I got over another conference! Actually, today's presentation was enjoyable. I guess that my audiences (I wouldn't say big) seemed to be interested because my topic was catchy, hee hee hee. I'm glad that I got more questions from the audiences than other presenters. I feel successful! Anyway, it was fun. Fellow presenters were friendly. It was enjoyable to get to know and talk with people who share similar interests.

By the way, the hotel where the conference was held is gorgeous. Of course, I can't afford to stay there tonight. I wonder when or whether I could stay this kind of hotel in the future. Nay, probably not :( I will be a poor student forever :P

My Hotel

So, this is my hotel tonight. It cost me $142, and still expensive for me. But luckily, I have YS to share the room tonight. She all the way drove down from Bakersfield to see me. It's almost a year since I saw her last time. She seems to be busy and active as always.

We went to an Irish pub near the hotel, during happy hours (yea, we made it!), to grab some Guinness. Yeah, here come my short holidays!

Bleaker, Bleaker, and Bleaker

OK, now, the turn of the Boston Globe. The New York Times Co. is threatening to shutter the Boston Globe because the paper is losing a lot of money ($50 million last year). To stay in business, the Times Company is demanding the paper's unions to make concessions worth $10 million. Wow. The most outrageous thing is that the company is proposing more freedom of casual layoffs and elimination of sick and holiday pay. If this proposal is forced, it would be violation of labor rights. Workers, stand up for your rights! Bob Marley sings, ♪Get up, stand up. Stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up. Don't give up the fight♪ Yes, indeed.