24 hour fitness

I've been going to this 24 Hour Fitness center down in San Clemente for almost two years by now. Like any "Super Sport" grade facility of this nationwide gym chain, it's a big, tall hall with rows of treadmills, ellipticals, weight lifting racks and benches, dance floor, bicycle room, basketball court, stretch aisle, etc.

And an aqua section of indoor swimming pool, steam room, sauna, and jacuzzi. 

Three or four times a week I check in, change, step in the steam room, simmer for 10 minutes, splash into the pool, swim laps for 20, slump into the jacuzzi, swelter for 10-15 minutes, sling back to the pool for a few more laps swim, slip into the sauna room, smolder for 10 minutes, then back to the swimming pool, the jacuzzi... you get the picture.

The steam room is a good place to start, not only because it oozes open all my body pores and gives me a good sweaty warm up, but also the foggy steam prevents me from seeing through the glass door how many swimming pool lanes out there are open that might perturb my Zen mind and make me want to rush over to the pool side before all lanes are taken up...

Ah but that was just my monkey mind thinking. The pool is never that busy, most of the time only one or two of its three-lane runway are used. And even in the rare occasions when all three are taken, each is wide enough to accommodate two swimmers at the same time. A few simple courteous words such as "do you mind sharing" would easily earn you a berth of the waterway you need.

And sharing we all do. Inside the jacuzzi pool, there is one corner where a "super jet" spout pumps out mighty streams that are 10 times more powerful than those other lame ones that most people want to get at. The unwritten and unspoken rules here are "take turns, no hogging." Or you may just ask straight for it if you really need it, like some older gentlemen do when they feel their knee or hip needs a few minutes of special massage treatment that they think only this powerful jet will suffice.

The sauna room is one place where no hissing steam engine or bubbling water churn annoys but only nice smell from fresh cedar bench pervades, that allows you to relax and do your own thing, which, for many people nowadays, you might have guessed, is looking down and playing with their phones. I am amazed not only by how modern technologies have invaded every crevice of our lives, but also the build quality of these little gadgets that acclimates them to such harsh environment of high heat and damp air. No report of any phone battery blowing up here so far.

A gym is a microcosm of the world outside, with all kinds of people coming in and out every day. People generally keep to themselves, but occasionally the ice is broken and they chat, and I sometimes engage with people with interesting backgrounds or life stories that I did not expect. 

Like once I struck a conversation with a middle aged man who was flapping the door at the steam room and I interjected, and he apologized and explained to me he was fanning out the steam so to hasten the triggering of another round of fresh steam. It turned out he was a professional opera singer catered to perform only for upscale customers on their premises, for example, a royal Thai family living in the Modjeska Canyon area.

Another time I met a one-legged man who lost his leg during an oil drilling accident in Alaska and became addicted to pain-killer drugs after the amputation and had to go through rehab and was now living at a post-treatment center nearby that shuttled him here daily for exercise as part of the program. 

And there was this loud speaking young man at the sauna room talking excitingly to an old business acquaintance he just bumped into about the many new business opportunities people were bringing him, asking him to help set up marijuana farms around Orange and far flung area of Los Angeles counties. That reminded me of the marijuana legalization proposition we just passed last November in California, didn't we?

Fun as it is, I must confess I was not the one who initiated this gym going thing two years ago. My wife did, quite to my surprise. For she has never impressed me as the athletic type, but after a few weeks of trial membership with this gym, she so enjoyed the aerobic dancing program she pulled me into joining it with her. 

Not that I didn't try to do the aerobic dancing with her in the beginning, but I failed miserably--just didn't have the nimble body-and-mind coordination the full room of women all seemed to have. I also tried some of those hard hitting "body pump" classes, and re-activated my chronicle foot pain right the next day. As for those fancy weight lifting/muscle toning machines, I find their exercises tedious and hard to persist.

So off to swimming I go, an old habit I used to do every day when I had a pool in my own backyard at my old residence. It's low impact, full body, and fun. And this being done in a community, I occasionally get tips from some good Samaritan swimmers to correct some wrong moves I've been doing for years without knowing. 

They say swimming is one of the best, if not the best, exercises in the world, I tend to agree.

Dive in!

atria san juan

It's been almost a year since I volunteered at an assisted living community nearby where I live. It's a ministry organized by Saddleback Church with a simple idea: For those seniors who like to attend Sunday service but cannot or do not want to go outside the facility, we set up a simple worship center at site for them. 

There are three of us volunteers: Bettyanne & Darrin, a wife and husband team, and I. Every Sunday morning we go in there, get the DVD/TV remote controls from the front desk, set up the CD/video players, pass out the hymn booklets and help them (those who come on wheelchairs or walkers) sit as they come in. Then we start with a few hymn songs sing-along, a 20 minutes or so short sermon or bible study video, then another few hymn songs, then it's done. 

And once a month we conduct a communion ceremony, with Bettyanne bringing the bread and I the grape juice. Also occasionally Bettyanne will bring some homemade cakes or cookies to celebrate special holidays or some of the attendees' birthdays.

The part I enjoy most, besides singing those good old melodial hymn songs that you don't usually get to do at contemporary services, is chatting with these gentle old people after the service, when they are in the mood--which they usually are. Sometimes just a few words, sometimes for a few minutes, week after week. I gradually get to know some of them better, all with interesting characters and backgrounds:

Bud is a retired teacher and a WW II veteran from New Jersey (he's 94 now), who is almost always the first to come for the service, in a suit jacket, and always picks his favorite hymn "How Great Thou Art" to sing.

Bonnie is from Washington state, she moved here at the urge of her daughter who's living at Coto De Caza, an affluent gated community nearby, after her husband passed away and herself had a stroke. She's about my mother's age--if she hadn't had passed away so many years ago--and her gentle demeanor and reserved, humble way of speaking sometimes remind me of my mom.

Connie is in her 80's, but still has a sharp mind and vivid memories, and always takes notes while watching the sermon video, and would volunteer to share with us what touched her during the service. 

Bruce was an engineer when he got a stroke at his 50's that left him completely paralyzed on the right side and unable to speak or walk. He had since picked up his passion on painting and become the on-premises artist for the center for the past 20+ years. They hold annual art exhibit events for him and he had invited us to visit his living quarters which really looks like an art studio.  

Fred is another 90+ gentleman that doesn't talk much but always wears a smile on his face. He has an adult son and daughter-in-law who would occasionally come to visit and sit with him through the service, but a more common companion of his was another old lady in the center who would sit adoringly next to him every week, until her memory and mobility deteriorated to the point she had to be moved to the special care quarters and did not show up at the service any more.

June is another sharp old lady, who is never shy about making prayer requests for herself (unresolved relationship with her sister), her relatives (a pastor nephew-in-law whose son just committed suicide), and people around her (those who were not well at the center) every time Bettyanne asks the audience for them.

Margie is a healthy looking old lady from Chicago with a shiny braid of golden hair, and a good voice--that's why I sometimes teased her to sing harmony with me during the hymn singing but she would shyly decline.

Nancy & Glenn (wife & husband) are the only non-Caucasian people I see in the audience (and probably for the whole center), and they share the same last name Wong as I, though they are the 3rd generation Chinese immigrants from Canton and their Wong means "yellow" in Cantonese while mine means "old man" in Mandarin Chinese. Glenn has an opera grade voice that I like to encourage him to give us a solo performance someday.

As the service proceeds, I like to stay in the background, handing out the hymn booklets, playing the music (I downloaded songs on the two CD's Saddleback Church gave us to an old smart phone of mine and installed a music player app to make it a random access MP3 music player, to avoid swapping CD's in and out and sequencing through sound tracks one by one just to find the song they pick to sing), and let Bettyanne and Darrin do the talking--sermon summary, prayer request, etc.

And that had been working fine, until one day, when I got back from out of town and went there for the first time after a few weeks' absence, and found out that I was the only volunteer there. 

So I tried to "wing" it: I picked the video session by hunch, played and sang more songs than usual, and instead of sermon summary and prayer request, I shared stories of my recent trip to Europe and thoughts on my recent birthday, etc., and I made it through. Some even liked it, it seemed.

So last Sunday, after we finished our usual first-Sunday-of-the-month communion ceremony, and while everyone was having the homemade cakes Bettyanne brought, I showed them some pictures on the big screen TV (through the hook-up with my tablet) of my recent trips to Taiwan and Japan, as well as some old photos of me, my high school reunion, where I live now, etc., and explained. They were in awe, probably by those places they'd never seen before, and/or maybe because they finally got to know more about this mysterious Asian man that they'd been seeing for almost a year without really knowing who he is.

And sure enough, Connie, the ever so diligent scholar of the class, asked me for the name of the city I showed that sits next to a volcano in south Japan, (I told her I'll get back to her next week), and Bruce, though speechless, stared at the photo of my home backyard that I showed last, thinking he could draw a painting out of it, maybe?

I'll find out in the weeks to come.

Atria San Juan is a privately owned and operated senior living center near where I live 

Their club room is where we set up the service

The attendance averages about 10-15 people per week

From left to right: Nancy, Connie, Margie, Bruce, Bud, Fred (with hat), and Bonnie (behind the dog)

Bettyanne and Darrin, with her homemade cakes

I went to Bruce's exhibit and bought one of his paintings

* For Saddleback Church Assisted Living Service Ministry, go to

http://saddleback.com/connect/ministry/assisted-living-center-worship/Laguna-Woods

smarter than we think

I always feel, when pulling weeds at my yard, that they know what I am doing. Right after I pluck out the first weed, the second, and the subsequent ones get tougher and tougher to remove, or their stems break so easily--almost voluntarily, sacrificing their upper part so I can't pull off their roots easily, a survival tactic they seem to enact seconds after receiving a warning message/red alert from their falling comrade, I suspect.

My suspicion got very much confirmed after reading the book "The Hidden Life of Trees" that explores and explains many amazing phenomena and behaviors of trees by a German forest care taker of 20+ years, and my subsequent research on the subject matters.

Trees/plants do communicate with one another, not only through electrical signals (they do have it, transmitting at much slower pace than ours, though), but also through the use of the senses of smell and taste. If a giraffe starts eating an African acacia, for example, the tree releases a chemical into the air that signals that a threat is at hand. As the chemical drifts through the air and reaches other trees, they "smell" it and are warned of the danger. If an insect starts eating the leaf of a tree, for another example, the saliva of the eating insect can be "tasted" by the leaf being eaten. In response, the tree sends out a chemical signal that attracts predators that feed on that particular leaf-eating insect.

And trees are social: they form a "wood wide web" with interconnected roots and soil fungi where they exchange nutrients, transmit/relay warning signals and messages against impeding dangers, take care of sick trees and "dead" stumps (Stumps keep water; without the crowd, hot sun and swirling wind can penetrate to the forest floor and disrupt the moist, cool climate), so they are better together in the long run.

They can "learn" and "remember". The sensitive leaves of Mimosa (the tickle-me-plant) that close up quickly after detecting droplets of water stop doing so after they learn that the repeated disturbance has no real damaging consequence. Trees need to know that warmer days are due to early spring or late summer so they know to grow more leaves if it's the former and drop foliage if it's the latter. They do this by keeping track of ("remembering") the combination of day length and temperature, and "deducing" that rising temperatures mean spring, falling temperatures mean fall. 

And if that's not enough already, plants can "hear" too. An experiment by University of Missouri recorded the sound of a caterpillar eating a plant's leaf and played it back to a set of plants, which later generated more mustard oils when attacked by caterpillars to deter them from eating more than another set of plants that were not pre-exposed to the recording.

If plants are so "intelligent", might they also have emotion, or even consciousness? Or have you heard the allegation that talking nice/showing affection to your plants makes them grow better than those you don't?

In a controversial documentary film made in 1978, researchers placed monitoring devices on both a plant and a man next to it watching a stimulus video and charted their responses. They found the needle movement of the plant's graph closely mirrored the man's emotional zig-zagging throughout the whole watching process.

Another experiment used two cabbages... one hooked with electrodes to a machine that converted its energetic expressions into audible tones. When the cabbage that was not hooked up to any instrument was being chopped to pieces by a human scientist, the plant hooked up to the machines was heard screaming or crying, with a very high pitch tone.

A similar, but even eerier experiment had a man chosen at random go into the lab and destroy one of three plants. The other two plants were then hooked up to electro-encephalographs (EEG – brain wave monitors) and they marched the men in one by one. The plants exhibited no alarm, but as soon as the one responsible for the plant death entered the room, the other two plants started registering wildly on the graphs. They knew who it was that killed their friend, so to speak.

Just like all the weeds in my yard know who their Top Enemy Number One is now.

reunion, in the evening

Then I went to another reunion in the evening. This was again a somewhat impromptu thing: Just about a couple weeks ago, I was invited to a chat group formed by alums of my junior high school (再興) and its senior high division. Right after the chat group was formed, they decided to have a meetup dinner for all who could attend, and I signed up for it.

In contrast to the senior high school I attended, which was a public school, 再興 was a private school with only 3 classes each for its junior high and senior high divisions, and therefore a smaller but closer-knit body.

The dinner was at an up-scale hotel at the heart of the town. We reserved a banquet room just for ourselves, 23 in total. Half of them I didn't know, since they were from the senior high division; half of the junior high people I sort of knew, since they were from different classes; and the remaining half I really knew, since they were literally the mates I sit in the same classroom with day in and day out through my junior high years, including one year living in the same dorm.

One of the main purpose of this reunion group is to promote health awareness and encourage one another to live healthier lives. Many of attendees today were doctors or of medical background. They shared their take on various health issues and real life encounters with them. One of them in particular has been promoting end-of-life care for years and is in charge of all the municipal hospitals in Taipei. He shared with us the sweat and tears, heart break and joy of working and developing relationships with towns folks and the theatrics of dealing with city council... All so endearing and interesting stories from a now avuncular looking buddy who was just a kid like me sitting a row or two behind some 43 years ago.

Besides doctors, the guy sitting to my left is a businessman, my right a lawyer, the chairman of the group himself the chief executive of a multi-national conglomerate, and many other alums who did not attend today are professionals working and living in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Southeast Asia, US, etc. Even the hotel restaurant manager is a 再興 alum.

They shared stories about a fun trip they made recently, a gathering of guys from different parts of the world flying all over to Hong Kong just to attend and celebrate the wedding of one of their own. The camaraderie and enthusiasm shown were enviable.

One incident that triggered the forming of this more formal alum group, I heard, happened last year, when one of the alums, after a late night business meeting in Shanghai, got injured in a serious traffic accident and remained in coma. Though they tried getting the best doctors and treatment through their alumni network to save him, he still didn't make it.

I remember when we were in school, every Monday morning there was a "Mental Rally Talk" (精神講話) session by the principal (who's also the founder of the school), and at the end of her speech, she would always exhort us to "invoke 再興 Spirit" (發揚再興精神) to do great things. It sounded so cliche at that time, and nobody really knew what "再興 Spirit" meant. But looking at what these fifty-somethings are doing, helping each other and the society in general in ways they can, I think I know what that "再興 Spirit" means, and that our long deceased lady principal would be smiling and very proud of her boys now!

Biggest round table I ever saw in Taipei, seating 23

Some of us only attended Junior High (such as I), some Senior High only, some both

These up close and personal classmates of my Junior High years. The big guy at the center in black, nick named "Uncle Jian", is one well known and respected end-of-life care advocate in Taiwan

One serious looking boy at 15

reunion, in the morning

I received an email from the alumni affairs office of my high school in Taiwan a few weeks ago, announcing the coming 40th anniversary of the classes of 1976 and encouraging me to register for the celebration party they were planning. I did not know whether I would be in Taiwan or able to attend the event at that time, but I registered it anyway: 40 years is one big milestone, if I did make it, heck, maybe I'd bump into some old classmates I thought I'd never see again after graduation.

I did make it, last Sunday. I was going to take the subway there, as people mostly do nowadays in Taipei, but then I decided to take the bus instead--that same old bus line (#208) that used to take me to school for my 3 senior high years. It still ran the same route, but with much nicer vehicle, much less crowd, and a stop a few hundred feet off the old spot where I used to get off.

Right after I walked into the school, I met a couple of welcome stands manned by today's high-schoolers, respectfully instructing us elders to where the celebration party was, a 5-story building I didn't recall seeing when I was attending the school.

All seats of about 50 round tables were pre-assigned. One quick glance at the seating plan and Bingo! I knew I was the only person from my class (we had a total of 26 classes graduating in the same year) who came today. 

I was early, so I sat at my table and waited. All of a sudden a guy in red shirt approached me. Surprise! He was an old college friend of mine who also went to the same high school. We had some larky happy catch-up before he had to rush back to his own table.

All the rest of my table mates had arrived by now. I chatted with one sitting next to me. A few exchanges later, I learned he was a doctor and we actually shared a few common friends that were either his classmates in high school and mine in college, or mine in high school and his in college, or some of my classmates who became doctors and he knew them through the medical profession, etc, etc... The intricacy and power of Mark Zuckerberg's "social graph" many times manifested.

The majority of people at our table were a group of 7 who came from the same class (they had been in touch before they decided to come to the event), and once I mentioned the name of the junior high school (再興) I went to, they said one of their close classmates (who didn't come today) was from that school too so we kind of connected right there. 

Sitting across the table from me was one of those larger-than-life "celeb kids" during our high school years, in this case an openly gay boy at a time when homosexuality was a societal no-no and looked down upon by many if not all. Though we had never met before, I initiated a conversation with him asking how he'd been doing since graduation. He said he had been involved with gay rights and HIV/AIDS prevention movements all these years, but not too much into the current legislative fight for same-sex marriage that's been the talk of the town these days in Taiwan. For what reason, I didn't ask... passing the baton to the next generation, perhaps, judging from the soft, mellow tone I heard from him speaking.

It was a celebration not only for us 40-year returnees, but also for those who graduated 30, 35, 45, 50, 55, and 60 years ago. The guests of honor included the former president and a congressman of the country, both alums themselves. There were also musical performances and magic shows, singing and dancing and photo taking... all the fanfare, along side a delicious banquet lunch. 

Not bad for a Sunday morning.

My college friend (on the far right) came not only to attend the party, but also to perform classic Chinese music with his high school club members.

The former president making speech on stage. He seemed a much happier man than when he was president, from what I saw.

Each holding sign showing the class they belonged to. Like many there, I was the sole representative for my class.

On an outing with my high school classmates, when I was 17, going on 18.

butterfly, snowflake, and turkey

Back in the early 1960s, a mathematician-turned-meteorologist Edward Lorenz tried to model a weather system using some simple mathematical equations and a primitive computer. He was pleasantly surprised by the reasonably complex results generated by such simple setup and the fact that they never repeated themselves, just like a real weather system would behave.

One day he decided to repeat a particularly interesting part of his weather model and reset all the variables to the state they had been in before the period he wanted to rerun, then set it going again and went to get a cup of coffee.

When he returned he was surprised to find his weather system was doing something completely different than what it had done before. At first he thought he might have typed in the data wrong, but that was not the case, except he did type in some numbers that were a few decimal places shorter than the original ones, for example, 4.526 instead 4.526173. Small as the difference seemed, it eventually caused the system to diverge and behave totally differently from the original.

Lorenz published his findings in his paper "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow" in 1963, which subsequently gave rise to a new field of study called "chaos mathematics" that studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions and whose outcomes are utterly unpredictable.

Lorenz popularized the idea through use of the phrase "the butterfly effect." If a single butterfly in Brazil decided to flap its wings, he explained, that could ultimately decide whether a tornado formed in Texas. 

Or like those "Back to the Future" movies show, one minor twist of events in the past could result in extreme make-over of things today. 

We humankind had successfully rocketed ourselves to the moon hundreds of thousands of miles away and back, and cracked the "God particle" out of the tiny atoms with ultra-fast super collider, but the truth of the matter is 99.9% of the day-to-day world we live in is still chaotic in nature. There is no pure straight line or perfectly round circle or truly symmetrical pyramid in real world--they only exist in our imagination. One accident on the highway, a transformer blowout in the power grid, or a glitch in computer software, reminds us how swiftly our peace and prosperity can be taken away and we returned to the chaotic state we thought we had long managed away!

*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

Another mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot, another computer, and another simple equation, 16 years later. Mandelbrot fed the answer of his simple equation--no more than a multiplication and an addition--back to the computer and had it repeat the calculations millions of times. He then painted the results on his computer display, with a pixel of black representing the answer heading toward zero and pixels of various colors representing the speed at which the answer raced off toward infinity. 

The result, after the equation had been applied to the whole screen, was an appealing black splodge in the center of the screen with colored, crinkly edge.

The edges of the shape were wrinkled and unpredictable, and sometimes bulged out to form another near-circle. Zooming in to them, it revealed more and more detail. There were swirls that looked like elephant trunks, and branching shapes that looked like ferns or leaves. The patterns kept coming as you looked closer, there were even miniature versions of the initial shape hidden deep within itself. But at no point did the patterns repeat themselves exactly, they were always entirely new.

A video rendition of the explanations above can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/PD2XgQOyCCk

Mandelbrot coined the word "fractal" to describe what he had discovered. A fractal, he said, was a shape that revealed details at all scales.

Fractals can be found everywhere in the natural world. They are in the branching of trees, the shape of leaves, snowflakes, ice crystals, and the shape of human lungs. They describe the distribution of blood vessels, and the path of a flowing river. 

They seem to be the common language spoken among the created--a tiny antenna built according to the fractal rule can receive a wide range of wireless signals much better than a large, cumbersome antenna that is not--and the building principle used by the Creator: the branching pattern of one single tree in a rain forest is similar to the distribution of large and small trees in the whole region. 

As the poem says: "To see the world in a grain of sand."

It may also help resolve the long puzzling contradiction between the second law of thermodynamics that says in an isolated system entropy (disorder) would increase, and the ever more complex and orderly development of organisms evolution theory says and biologists observe. With the arrival of chaos mathematics and fractal discoveries, biologists now have a key that helps them study the way order spontaneously arises in nature.

And for artists and designers, sophisticated art and creative design can be generated through adoption and manipulation of fractals. There are order and beauty hidden behind seeming chaos, after all. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

euro exploreo

As things go so far, my vacation plans have been masterminded by my wife--leaving all the fun of finding great traveling deals and perfect touring itineraries to her highness while saving my brainpower for ignominious jobs such as watching college football games is a no-brainer to me. So when she told me she'd decided this 12-day (excluding the intercontinental flying in and out, it's actually only 10 days) Central/Eastern European tour provided by a reputable Chinese American travel agency was the best deal she found for us this year, I just nodded my head and said go.

Here's the map of the tour:

It rounded up 6 countries--Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Czech--and 12 cities--most of them well known big towns such as Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Prague--in 11 days.

How do I remember them? I remember

The Castle
By a real king wanting a dream castle and devoting his reigning lifetime building it, risking bankruptcy of his kingdom, this Disneyland emulated fairy tale castle in southern Germany was as real and fanciful as I imagined it to be before I visited it. 

The Salt
Was the source of wealth for Salzburg (Salt City), Austria, hometown of musical wizard Mozart. A two-hour underground tour of the salt mine was both entertaining and educational.

The Caves
Of Slovenia is another cool underworld I've never experienced before. Didn't they find some pre-historic Neanderthal remains in caves like these somewhere around this part of the world, I recall?

The Lakes

At Croatia's UNESCO sanctified world treasure 16 Lakes National Park are yet another pristine beauty hidden at one obscure corner of old Europe, while Lake Wolfgang in Alpine Austria is bustling with sailboats and swimmers and paragliders and resort villages and even appears in the movie "The Sound of Music".

The Rivers

Our "fill-in-the-gap" pre-tour Rhine River cruise took us through the famous Loreley Rock and gorge and views of some famous castles again; the Danube River in Budapest that divides the city into hilly Buda and plainy Pest brought us views of its grand cathedrals, palaces, monumental buildings on both sides as well.

The Music & The Dances
On the night in Vienna we went to an optional concert that was worth every penny for its impeccable performance of Mozart and Strauss pieces and operatic singing; on our arrival in Budapest a "Hungarian Night" dinner and entertainment featuring high-strung folk dancing and multi-lingual singing was equally enjoyable.

The Austro-Hungarian & The Holy Roman
The Holy Roman Empire was a loose confederation of mostly German speaking states and principalities since the 17th century on (and is therefore neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, as some would joke), before it was finally dissolved by Napoleon in 1806, but was a formidable polity during High and Late Middle Ages when it was ruled by powerful kings and "cooperated" with the Pope and its territories extended to northern Italy and eastern Europe and parts of western Europe.

One powerful king of Bohemia (part of Czech today) who became a Holy Roman Emperor was Charles IV, who built the famous Charles Bridge in Prague by laying the first stone himself at 5:31am on 9 July 1357, believing the magical number 1357 9, 7 5:31 (same reading forward and backward) will add extra strength to the bridge.

They are celebrating King Charles' 700th birthday in Czech this year.

The House of Habsburg was one of the most influential royal houses of Europe. The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the Habsburgs between 1438 and 1740. The house also produced emperors and kings of England, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Russia, etc.

The Austrian Empire was created out of the realms of the Habsburgs by proclamation in 1804, in response to (or for fear of) Napoleon's First French Empire. Geographically it was the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire and the third most populous after Russia and France at the time.

Franz Joseph I, a Habsburg, of course, was the longest reigning emperor of the Austrian Empire. Probably due to the heavy lobbying of his famous wife Sisi, who was the cousin of the "loony" Bavarian King Ludwig II who built the said dream castle above, who detested the suffocating Austrian/Habsburg court rituals but was a great fan of Hungarian culture, he agreed to elevate the Kingdom of Hungary to the equal of the Austrian monarchy, thus the Austro-Hungarian Empire was formed, in 1867.

Franz Joseph died in 1916, two years before the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved at the end of World War I.

They are commemorating the 100th anniversary of Franz Joseph ("the forever Kaiser")'s death this year in Vienna.

Travelling today is quite different than yesteryears, by that I mean the omnipresence of WiFi and wireless internet makes self-help traveling even better and easier. During this trip, I used Google Maps to know where I was, Google Search for the stories behind the places I visited, and Google Translate to convert Slovenian and Croatian texts to English while at convenience stores or out in the wild. "Shoot (photos) first, ask Google later" was the new traveling motto I used to joke with my fellow tourists. I actually learned more through Google and internet about the places I visited than from all those tour guides combined.

But nothing beats going out there and seeing the real things, or talking to people from different parts of the world and learning through their perspectives, even when sometimes your feet were hurting tired or the crowd was too much and the time too little you couldn't see or enjoy as much as you wanted to. All's worthwhile, though, including the time you spent on hotel bed going through Wikipedia reading stories about the things you saw or places you visited that really roused your interest.

So next time when my highness presents her perfect tour plan I'll nod my head and say go again.

* For photo-by-photo explanations of the tour, go to my Facebook album
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10210668871703103.1073741833.1387569224&type=1&l=37e54b131c

* For the Hungarian Night dancing, go to
https://youtu.be/h7h1a-rURvY

* For the Hungarian Night hat play, go to
https://youtu.be/u0R1majorCg

* For the Hungarian Night singing American, go to
https://youtu.be/EP_C7DFbmAQ

* For the Hungarian Night singing Chinese, go to
https://youtu.be/MbhwDNUiZcE

* For the rail ride out of the caves, go to
https://youtu.be/vfIp4h9xgzk

* For the salt mine cruise, go to
https://youtu.be/uKh5C7NuXoQ

* For the Munich town hall glockenspiel show, go to
https://youtu.be/AzL09-I5JcU