Barricated suspect this morning

When I was on the way to school this morning I suddenly got an emergency phone call from the university JagAlert system informing all students and faculty that several of the northern parking lots on campus are closed due to the IMPD police action. And as soon as I got to my workplace in the school I got exactly the same phone call, except it's not calling my cell phone but the land line phone where I work. So I decided to go to the school website and see what happened. Then I thought it's some kind of police emergency so it should appear on the Indy Star's Indy 911 calls web page. As soon as I went to the Indianapolis Star website, I saw the news that there's a barricaded suspect situation in the Lockefield Gardens apartment complex just by the school. The suspect is a veteran just came back from Iraq, he was holding the police off with an assault rifle. I wondered is there any hostage or not. And finally in the afternoon I saw the same news on Indy.com after I got off from class, except it added with "after holding the police off for 7 hours, the suspect surrendered at 11:42 AM" Although the classes were not affected, it's still sort of scary when I think about it after it's all done. But praise the Lord that none of my friends nor me were involved in this incident.

Chicago trip on Aug. 18, 2009

The day before yesterday, I went to my dream city -- Chicago, which is a.k.a. the Second City. Although it has been surpassed by Los Angeles in population, it's still a lot more "urban" looking and it's still the second most important city in the country (at least I believe so). I was lucky enough to buy a round trip ticket from Indianapolis to Chicago for only $2.50.

Here's the nice double-decker I rode on. I arrived the City-County Building (where the bus stop of Megabus is located at) a lot earlier than the time I am supposed to in order to get a good seat to take photographs.

Goodbye Indy!

















It pays to go to Chicago...One of the greatest union stations in America is the Chicago Union Station, which is still serving a lot of train & subway passengers.

Looks like some kind of market or something in the downtown hi-rise area.


Boats at the harbor
US Cellular Field

Trolley

A snake looking bus

The sign of the famous Chicago Theater

Art Institute

Soldier Field

A hi-rise under construction

Hi-rise condo

Aon Center

Lincoln Park Zoo, the largest free zoo in the country. (I didn't get a chance to get into there, I'll go there next time)

Chicago is really a city of gardens, you can see parks everywhere.

A view of the downtown from the highway

Downtown skyline & Lake Michigan. The water in Lake Michigan is so blue and clean, cleaner than the water in the Pacific Ocean. It even has beaches, which makes me hard to believe it's a freshwater lake, although it's true.

Chicago River

Me at the Cloud Gate

My old friend George at the Cloud Gate

Under the Cloud Gate

Chicago street scene

Me standing by Lake Michigan

George standing by the lake



Kids like to play at the Crown Fountain






The Willis Tower, previously called the Sears Tower, was the tallest building in the world and is still the tallest building in North America.

Late post: July 5, 2009

An unexpected rain totally ruined my precious July 4. It was supposed to be a real great day, with free concerts, free admissions to the museums and a spectacular firework display at night in downtown Indy. But one thing fortunate is that the firework display was not canceled, but
postponed until the evening of July 5. And thank the lord that July 5 ain't raining any more! The fireworks were really great! (although the pictures are blurry) Well, our great nation has gone through 332 years now. Happy birthday America!

My very first blog

I never wrote any blog before my former journalism course required me to do so last semester. But I don't consider that as my own "real" blog, because it's just done for that course. However, I was inspired by that and I think it may be a good thing to write blogs so I could share what I wanna say with other people. Therefore, I cleaned up my blog, changed its URL and started to use it as my own blog. And this posting is the very first posting on my "real" blog. So, well, that's about it I guess.