Edgerton Park Update [Photography]

I spent several hours in the Edgerton Park today. It's very hot and humid. Eventhough the light is not very good, there are still some very interesting things.

There are lots of dragon flies. And it's almost the butterfly season. I saw many kinds of butterflies, including the monarch butterfly - my favorite. However I think it's still very early. They are very sensitive to approaching people. I believe they spend most of the time looking for the mate. I will come more frequently recently to shoot the peak of the butterfly season.

Weiwei posted @ 21:44:33 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Shadow Divers [Books]

Woody recommend the book Shadow Divers to me when we dove in North Carolina. He told me it's a book once I opened it I would not like to put it down. And he told me not to see the photo illustrates in the middle of the book.

But it is until on the trip to the Richland that I had time to read the book. I finished on the way back. It's just an amazing book. It tells the true adventrue of two Americans who risked everything to solve the msteries of a world war II German U-boat.

First of all, it intrigued my great interest to the shipwrecks. It's not only the shipwrecks itself, but the history, the people behind the shipwrecks. John Chatterton and Richie Kohler happened to find the shipwrek of a German U-boat. However no any of the histroy record showing that there would be a U-boat at this position sixty miles off New Jersey seashore. Chatteron and Kohler spent about 6 years to finally find out it's U-869. It's the stories of people involved the process that touched readers heart. No matter if you are a diver or not, it's basically a book of life, of humanbeings.

Another interesting part is the history. Even peple tried very hard to find out the truth of history, there are still lots of questions that can not be answered. The U-869 was attacked by one of her own torpedo - the accident called Circle Runner. So if the U-869 was attacked by her own torpedo, who the torpedo was aimed at and escaped the attack? What really happened in the several minutes to the crew member in the U-boat?

Moreover, the failure of recording this U-boat warned people that how much the written history was accurate? This reminds me that one of my friends who studies history once told me that task of historians is to find out the truth of what really happened.

The book also talks about some of the deep diving. Some day I am thinking I would like to try.

p.s. For more information of U-boat, you can see www.uboat.net.

Weiwei posted @ 21:13:34 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Visit Pacific Northwest National Lab [Research]

I had a very nice visit to Dr. Scott Chambers in Pacific Northwest National Lab in Richland, WA. This is the first time I have been to the west. It took about 7 hours to fly there. It's basically a trip across the nation.

I can immediately feel the difference of the two places. (I mean New Haven and the Richland.) Not only the desert scene, not only the very dry weather but the people look different. However I just can not say exactly what's the difference. It's just the different feeling.

The national lab also has a lot of differences with the university. People here are more like working on a job. They look very professional - the whole thing they do is experiment. However in the university you can see different people - both students and professors and people from different background.

This is also a very intellectual stimulating visit. I met several scientists whom I have admired for a long time. Moreover during the flying, I saw the Great Salt Lake. I have known the lake since I was just a kid. Now I eventually saw it.

Weiwei posted @ 19:45:41 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Diving The Beavertail [    ]

Beavertail State Park is at the southern tip of Conanicut Island in Rhode Island. Chi and I decided to have a dive at this site. We knew it's a tricky dive here but we still decided to try.

We left the dive shop at about 10:20 and met the extremely heavy traffic on I-95. (I knew later in the news that a car rolled over and caused a 5-hour traffic block.) We eventually got to the site after more than two hours.

As soon as we got to the site, we knew it would be very hard. First of all, there was a long difficult trail from the parking lot to the shore. And more over, the current was very strong. We did every slowly so it's not very hard. But when we got into the water, we felt the difficulty from the current. We struggled a lot to get to the deeper water. This site is facing the wide open ocean and it's hard to get furter.

After a while, we found that we lost the flag. We had to swim a long way to get it back. And when we decided to decend, it was at the 65 feet that we reached the bottom. I glanced that it's very beautiful but the only choice at that moment was to swim as quick as possible to the shallow water.

It took us about one hour to swim back to the shore. And because of the current, we walked from the end of the island all the way up to the parking lot.

I was really nervous and worrying when we were in the water. We made our second dive in Fort Wetherill, which was much better.

Weiwei posted @ 22:52:00 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Dive in Fort Wetherill [    ]

Chi and I had two dives today in Fort Wetherill, Jamestown. It's just wonderfull - I never had better shore dive than this one. The wether is perfect. The visibility is very good. The most important - after the trip from North Carolina, I feel much more comfortable and confident for diving.

I did not bring my strobes into the water. I thought it's hard to handle in shore dive. We saw many flounders. They are huge. I tried to shoot directly above. For several shots, I even took the regulator out of my mouth. We also saw some tropical fish. It's very interesting.

Weiwei posted @ 18:40:46 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

James Blake in New Haven [Sports]

James Blake came to New Haven today for the pre-Pilotpenn clinic. Min and I was on the way to do something else and came across the event in New Haven Green. James Blake is the only star who came today for the event.

This year the Pilotpenn will held both men and women tennis in New Haven. Eventhough most of the super stars in men's tennis will not come, the game will be much more interesting than those in the previous years.

Weiwei posted @ 14:52:26 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Dive North Carolina Shipwrecks [General]

I came back from Northa Carolina. The trip is wonderful!

After about two years diving in New England, I finally dove in the warm and blue water. It's amazing! The darkness and cold will never bother you. Also the view is very beautiful. The shipwrecks in North Carolina are rank #1 in US for diving. The others are not even close.

But if looked at it the other way, I am proud of to be a diver in the cold north. I do not want to be a tourist but a explorer. I do not want to be on vacation, but on work - improve my diving skill and do the photography.

Thanks for the whole group: Don, Mike, Karol, Sue, Woody and Wayne. I had a wonderful time with you guys and learned the most important thing not from diving but from you.

I put up a trip report. This is the first time I really do underwater photography. It's actually very hard - we had very limited bottom time. The first day, I did not use strobes, trying to get mroe used to the diving. The second day, I used the strobes but most images were over exposed. The third day the camera was by mistake set at MF. Only the images on the fourth day are marginally okay. The fifth day the diving was blew out. So even the images are not very good, I hope I can give you a basical idea of what I saw over there.

Everything comes up with time! I will keep on diving!

Weiwei posted @ 17:18:18 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Update [General]

Hey it's July - the official hot season! I love summer so much even though it's been really steamy recently.

I am still busy with my job searching recently. There are still some issues that need to be solved before I can finally say where I am going. But I did make a lot of progress. One thing for certain - I would be extremely busy for the next couple of months until the end of the year.

I am heading to North Caralina tomorrow morning. This is my first diving trip to a far place. I packed four packages, not including the stuff that I have already loaded on to Don's truck. I have dreamed this trip for a long long time and finally it comes. I am so glad with it. I will put up a detailed jounal when I come back.

So there will be no any update on my website for a couple of days until I come back. Hope you guys can have a very good holiday!

Weiwei posted @ 22:53:15 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)