Road Trip Across America

That's the map of our trip. We went pass lots of cities but here are the places we stopped by or stayed the night.

Maryland -> Nashville, TN -> Memphis, TN -> Little Rock, AR -> Hot Springs, AR -> Oklahoma City, OK -> Albuquerque, NM -> Phoenix area, AZ -> Grand Canyon, AZ -> Las Vegas, NV -> San Francisco, CA

Each place has its own beauty and uniqueness from the food to the people. I’ve experienced a lot from mosquito bites in Tennessee, lightning striked in front of me in Arizona, driving across the New Mexico desert overnight, and seeing a truck flipped on the way to San Francisco. But most importantly, I get to learn lots of things. It’s definitely a great experience. I would do it again in the future if there’s a chance.

Here are a few photos and highlights:



Nashville, TN
- The Parthenon
- Downtown, convention center, Batman building




Memphis, TN
- Mud Island
- Beale Street
- Graceland, blues, Jazz, and country music
- Barbeque at Rendezvous restaurant is a must (long waiting time)




Little Rock, AR
- Clinton Presidential Library
- Flea Market
- Little Rock Central High School




Hot Springs, AR
- Hot mineral bath at Quapaw bathhouse (good experience, got to relax)




Oklahoma city, OK
- Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial




Albuquerque, NM
- Breakfast in the city and driving across the desert in the morning.
- Wanted to see the Sandia Peak Tramway but didn’t have time.




Arizona
- Meteor Crater
- Phoenix area, nice bbq and pool with friends.
- Grand Canyon



Las Vegas, NV
- We passed by Hoover Dam at night so didn’t see anything. Got pulled over by Homeland Security or Department of Interior for being “suspicious”. They pulled out random reasons like “You ran the STOP sign”, “you take pictures”, “you breath the air” and crap like that. Finally they let us go without any charge.
- Sight seeing and people watching.
- Stayed at the Bellagio, played Black Jack. Word of advice: if you want to gamble in Las Vegas casinos, the Bellagio is the toughest place to win (out of 4 casinos I’ve been to). They have these black box machines to shuffle cards. After several hands, they put the cards back to the machines for shuffling so you can’t really count cards (I don’t). The black box also made it hard to predict patterns because it’s all random after shuffling. Who knows what’s in that black box, they might count the number of players and deal the dealer 21 all the times. I was up and down for several hours but managed to stay on the plus side and quitted. The “easier” place to win is at the Palazzo / Venetian. They have the standard 8 deck cards. It’s more predictable and easier for money management.
- Cirque du Soleil KA show (great stage you have to see it).
- Wynn’s buffet (great food, good price, recommend) and Paris’ steakhouse (good food, too pricey).



San Francisco, CA
- Fisherman’s Wharf (This place looks like the Fisherman’s Horizon in Final Fantasy)
- Chinatown and financial district (Lively culture, good food).
- Golden Gate Bridge
- Russian Hill / Lombard St
- Coit Tower
- Japanese Tea Garden
- The Exploratorium (Good for physics / chemistry experiments. Nice place to bring the kids).
- Pho in San Jose was good. There’s a street with lots of night clubs / bars that’s worth seeing if you're into that.

The end of the world as we know it!

The picture says it all. How can you not believe it? It happens right in front of our eyes. From the recent natural disasters, the wars, and the global economic collapse. I'm not here to convince you when it will happen, but what will happen then, and what you should do.

What will happen?
It's going to be unbelievable, but you should believe it. There will be flood all over the world. It's like Leviathan teaming up with Poseidon to create tsunami up to the roof top of Nepal. Ifrit will crawl out of hell like a beaver underground and spit fire all over the poles causing massive global warming. Things of that magnitude will happen. And worst of all, Osama bin laden will swim to the US east coast and start multiplying himself into millions of bin laden's and flood the street, creating massive immigration problem and fears. People will line up in a path to hell and at the very bottom is the security checkpoint. There stand the mighty TSA with their gloves ready to molest and probe everyone passing by.

What you should do?
What you should do is up to you. You can sit there and watch the storm passes by or you can take action, like me! I've already withdrew all my money from all my bank accounts, sold my car, quitted my job. I also canceled all the graduation invitations and best of all, stopped paying my bills. I also made a poem about this but I'm not going to share it here. However, I forgot to take the money out of my retirement accounts and my stock options but those never earned me money so who cares. It's the end of the world, why do you need money? you might ask. That's the point. You don't, that's why you should donate them all to me. I will only use this money to promote awareness.

Anyway, if you've read this far, you know how serious this stuff is. You should not waste anymore time and start donating money to help my campaign. And with that, I will head over to meet my online friends to play a pick up online game of "Starcraft - Wings of Liberty" ... for the last time!

Some interesting facts

There are some interesting information that I found on this website that just happened the last couples of years.

* On September 18, 2008 the National Debt stood at $9.66 trillion. Today it stands at $14.16 trillion, a 47% increase in 2 1/2 years.

* The country is running $1.5 trillion annual deficits and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

* The States are running cumulative budget deficits of $130 billion in FY11 and expect deficits of $112 billion in FY12. This is leading to conflicts with unions, higher taxes and mass layoffs of government workers.

* The working age population has risen by 5 million, while the number of employed Americans has declined by 6.5 million. The true unemployment rate http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts has risen from 12% to 22%.

* In September 2008 there were 30.8 million Americans on food stamps. Today there are 44 million Americans on food stamps (14% of the U.S. population), a 43% increase in 2 1/2 years. The annual cost has risen by $37 billion, a 100% increase in 2 1/2 years.

* Real inflation http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts bottomed at 5% in early 2009, but has accelerated to 9% today, with further increases baked in the cake.

* Gasoline prices bottomed out at $1.61 per gallon in January 2009 and have risen to $3.54 per gallon today, a 120% increase in just over two years.

* Households have lost $6.3 trillion of real estate related wealth since the peak of the housing market. Home prices have fallen for six straight months.

* Almost 3 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2007.

* There are 11.1 million households, or 23.1% of all mortgaged homes, underwater on their mortgages today, with rates above 50% in Nevada, Arizona, California, and Michigan.

* Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the US government and have lost $170 billion of taxpayer funds so far. Losses are expected to reach $400 billion. Along with the FHA, they continue to prop up a dead housing market with more bad loans.

* The Federal Reserve balance sheet in September 2008 consisted of $895 billion of US Treasury bonds. Today it totals $2.55 trillion of toxic mortgages bought from Wall Street banks and Treasury bonds being bought under QE2.

* The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept. intimidated the FASB into allowing Wall Street banks to account for worthless mortgage and real estate loans as fully collectible. Magically, insolvent banks became solvent – on paper.

* The Dow Jones was 11,700 in late August 2008 and today stands at 12,000. The Dow has risen 84% from its March 2009 low. The top 1% wealthiest Americans own 40% of all the stocks in America, so they are feeling much better.

* In late 2007, a risk averse senior citizen could get a 5% return on a 6 month CD. Today, after two years of no increases in their Social Security payments, a senior citizen can “earn” .38% on a 6 month CD.

* The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to 0% in order to allow the Wall Street banks to borrow for free and earn billions without risk.

* Over 300 smaller banks have been closed by the FDIC, with losses exceeding $50 billion. There are another 900 banks on the verge of insolvency, with estimated future losses of $100 billion.

* The Federal Reserve initiated QE2 in November 2010, purchasing $70 billion per month of Treasury bonds and attempting to create a stock market rally. They have succeeded in creating a tsunami of energy, food, and commodity price inflation across the globe, sparking revolutions among the desperately poor in the Middle East.

* Wall Street banks “earned” record profits of $19 billion in 2010 after nearly destroying the worldwide financial system in 2008 and raping the American taxpayer in 2009.

* No Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for the fraudulent actions committed by their banks.

* Wall Street banks handed out $43.3 billion in bonuses in 2009/2010 for a job well done. The average Wall Street employee received a $128,000 bonus in 2010. In 2008, the year they crashed the financial system, they still doled out $17.6 billion in bonuses.

* The median household income in 2007 was $52,163. Today the median household income is $46,326, an 11% decline in three years. Real average weekly earnings are lower today than they were in 1971.

We're going backward. A lot of people don't even know those happened. Some know but don't really care because they do not directly affect them. With the debt at this rate, even if they tax everybody 100% for a long time, they wouldn't be able to pay off the debt. What the government is doing is print more money to make it worthless and the debt will go away, what a joke!

The economy and political systems in America are so corrupt. In a real free market there's no such thing as "too big to fail" that the government has to bail out. If one company fails, the opportunity will open for better ones to rise. What the government did was backing up their buddies (or campaign donators) from Wall Street. Their "solution" to fix the economy brought unintended (or intended) consequences and lay out a path for future storms to come that could potentially be worse. We can't afford another crisis similar to the one in 2008 but it's going to come. Last time we still have houses, jobs, retirement accounts, savings ... Many people already lost those and don't have anything left.

I love many things in America but there are a lot of wrongs. These systems are so corrupt and we go to other countries telling them to model after us? I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

Is US dollar becoming worthless?

Today, I had an embarrass moment. After eating lunch, I took a walk to CVS and bought a bottle of Pepsi. I came to the register to pay. The clerk scanned the bottle, I took out $2 and gave him. After awhile waiting to get my change back, I asked "Is something wrong? Is the cash register stuck?" (I was serious and sincere). He replied "It's $2.04, you're 4 cents short". I didn't have any more $1 bill so I had to use my check card. What an embarrass moment! I overvalued the dollar and thought $2 would be enough for a bottle of soft drink. Since when is it $2? When I was in college (which isn't decades ago), I can buy the same thing at the same place for $1 / $1.25. Now after 2,3 years it's double? Is it inflation or the dollar doesn't worth shit anymore? If they keep printing out money out of thin air in Washington DC to pay debt, next year a bottle of Pepsi will cost $3. The next thing is US dollar will lose its place as the world's reserve money. 8,10 years ago if you graduate and making $50,000 / year that's a lot of money, now you gotta be making $100,000 to be able buy the same stuff you did 8,10 years ago. It makes no sense. I want my paycheck deposited in my bank in gold, please.