Bunch of new toys

Am back in East Lansing! Fortunately, I get to come back to sunny Michigan with blue skies, which is very rare in winter. The cold is much more bearable when there is snow on the ground and you can feel a little warmth from the sunshine.

After all the housekeeping stuff and catching up with all the papers I missed during break, am now back to planning experiments for the coming week. This is the longest break I have ever taken and not gone home to Malaysia...hehe...

Over the break, I somehow inherited a bunch of new toys..wait, actually, it should be A LOT of new stuff, some of them happen to be cool toys. Crazy as it sounds, I have sooo many presents from John and his family! 超尷尬的!! 但也很感動. 他們真的很熱情. One of the gift I received from John was the most unexpected gift I have ever gotten...a Nikon D5000! 在開禮物的時候, 感動到熱淚盈眶. It is also very sweet of him to let me use his macro lens to play with it...hehe...until I go back to Malaysia for some shopping! Hehe, I guess somewhere in my Flickr, he must have seen a photo that shows I do know something about photography that got me this camera.

The first few photos I took with it...

It does not have auto focus motor so it took me quite a while to get sharp images. The weight of an SLR camera also makes it much more difficult to get nice macro photos so Ping has lots more to learn!!! This combination will be good for me to practice focusing with stable hands.

The other new toy...was acquired while we were at Florida. We went to Ikea one of the day to help John's parents get furniture for the condo. While walking through the toys section, we saw this huge and cuddly elephant...and it came home with me all the way to Lansing to join my elephant collection!! Hehe, another unexpected one...or maybe not...for those who have gone shopping with me. *bleh* Wei Qi is now my first elephant with tusks! 也是John 送我的第一個毛絨玩具!