Is it Spring yet?

Unlikely! But the weather these few days is lovely!! The sun is out, the wind is mild and the temperature is way about 10 degrees C. Since Ping had just finished her committee meeting (with great advice and motivation from all her committee members!!!), Ping took a walk around campus on the way back from class to lab.
Look...the plants are making their green chlorophylls again!!! The trees will soon be filled with green leaves and it will be pretty soon!
As always, the river is Ping's favorite place. It is even more mesmerizing to be sitting by the river at this time because the water level is high enough to create a mini rapid at the rocks area behind the Admin building. If you were to lie down by the river and close your eyes, it is pretty easy to imagine you are sitting by the falls at Titi Kerawang back home.
If you walk further west of the rocks, the flow rate decreases and instead of the loud rumbling, you here the little waves of the water flapping over the roots by the river bank.

Another sign that spring is around the corner - the sun is setting later!!

Where's the duckie?

Can you spot the duck? Ping was walking by the river on Saturday afternoon and came across this hidden duckie. Lovin' the sunny weekend!!!

Blah.

Am trying to play around with the template but can't seem to get a lot of stuff right. The photo in the header is taken at the Red Cedar River, right behind the MSU Admin building. One of Ping's favorite place during the summer on campus. There are so many ways to capture that spot on camera. It is also fun to just sit and watch the ducks waddle.

Happy Wednesday!!

The pic below is taken at 5am this morning at the parking lot in front of the MSU Planetarium, where Ping parks every day. Doesn't it look peaceful? Ping likes to play around with night shot but is not very good at it. To get a good night shot, definitely need to get a tripod but Ping just like to take it for fun and too lazy to carry a tripod around.

The brother is learning how to cook!

Ping's brother has been here for almost 3 months and this is probably the most cooking he has done in his life. While he has been perfecting his skills at cooking bacon (this is definitely the first time Ping have seen someone eaten sooooo much bacon in her life!!!) or any other dish that requires bacon, he has been taking efforts to make other stuff too. Most likely because Ping's cooking is limited to healthy food that he is not a very big fan of.

The first thing he cooked...fried egg with green beans.
A simple dish but it was good enough as a dish to go with rice. The green beans (四季豆) here are not like the French beans (or gui dao) we get in M'sia. Ping still couldn't find fresh French beans here, even at the farmers market at Okemos.

Of course, he caught up with the American 'quick and easy' boxed or frozen food pretty fast.
Hungry Jack pancakes with syrup. Burning his first one...
Chicken fingers. He is definitely a big fan of fried food.

His most recent and complicated one...
with chinese sausage (臘腸, lap cheong), hot-dog sausage (香腸), and mixed vege. Pretty good too!! But of course, the cici was also standing right next to it, adding all the sauces. *grins*

Big Ten Champ!!!

The best part about being in a Big Ten college is watching the Big Ten games, especially basketball!! Ping never gets the American football so have never followed the craze of football. Basketball is way more fun anyway!! Ping got season tickets with Pei to all the basketball home games. We've been following all the away games too and the Spartans is definitely a team worth spending the weekend watching!!
For the students tickets, you either get to sit right in front of the court (lower bowl) or all the way to the top of the stadium (upper bowl). To secure a seat at the lower bowl, you gotta be there at least an hour early. Since Ping and Pei is never free enough to spend so much time lepaking at a basketball court, we only get to sit at the upper bowl. The view from the top may not be much but the atmosphere is nothing like watching the game on tv!!!
Watching the game live, during timeouts and half-time, Sparty and the MSU Cheerleaders keep us entertain, which is way more fun than watching the UPS and Wendy's ads that Ping is starting to get bored of! The pic above was taken during one of the games during the holiday season where Sparty dressed up as a Santa Claus.

One of the most fun game...when we beat Minnesota 76-47.
The Spartans warming up their shots just before the game with Indiana in early February.

We beat them again last night at Indiana, giving us the Big Ten Championship title!!! Right after the game, we got the message that there will be a welcoming back to celebrate the win at the Breslin Center. Ping and Pei was super excited about it! Entering the tunnel into the Breslin Center with the Spartans logo in the background.
Hopefully we'll have more games to watch as they forward into the NCAA!!!