xchineboix

It is near the end of Chinese New Year holiday season and my homesick might finally get eased a little bit.  I had enjoyed such celebration for many years since childhood.  It's already buit into my blood stream.

Tomorrow is Primary election for CA.  Here they use Primary to decide parties' nominees plus other local elections or Propositions.  They always combine several elections together to save expenses and increase voting rate.  Any election, you want to have more voters participations to have real representation of people' will.

I have been very busy in the last 2 weeks.  In the mean time, I have several thoughts.  Maybe I have to jam them through.

Smoking looks like a personal matter but actually is a public issue.  This time I witness more people smoke in Asia.  Especially there are more young or female smokers.  I was surounded with lots of smokers no matter where I moved.  I had no place to escape to.

Glad to be back.  But the weather is much hotter than I expected.  I knew there was winter cold storm in TWN before I left.  I brought with me the heavy duty jacket and long coat.  They all became useless here becasue the weather here is really hot.  I visited China, Japan and Korea in winter before.  It was very cold and I believed it was below 0 degree or very close to zero but no snow.  I think the moisture in air was too dry to have snow.  I brought goose down jacket but not enough.  Goose down jacket kept my torso warm but not the 2 legs.  My legs were freezing to death when the cold wind was blowing there.  That's why I realized that I need long coat in winter.

TWN here I come.  Haven't come back for a while.  Always can only visit relatives for short period of time.  spent most of time for business trip.  Hope have more time this trip.  Country road takes me home to the place I belong.

Winter is CA's primary rain season.  The rain in winter is very important here and accounts for a majority of the yearly water supply.  The reason is very simple.  CA's weather climate is similar to Mediterranean, dry and lacks moisture.  It won't snow in temperatures below zero unless it rains.  The rain in winter will produce snow in mountains and pile up.  The snow will melt gradually when weather warms up producing a constant water supply.

As I mentioned in last note, US and UK tighted up security check procedures due to new plot.  They implement the body search and full search on carry-on to filter out bad seeds.  Body search is very common practice in Asia and Asia travelers are willing to accept it.  But in Western world, people feel uncomfortable of body search and disgust at such practice.  I remember about 2 years ago there was serious dispute about a new advanced X-ray machine.  Well, under such new development, people can't help but to accept it.