I’ve been playing around with wordpress for the past couple of days (yes, instead of doing the schoolwork that I’m desperately behind on). There are several changes that I want to announce, even though I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned most of them already over the past couple of posts.

1. Countdown. I’ve added the countdown widget (left) and bargraph to keep track of how many days left until we leave for Urumqi. (!!!) As the bar gets less blue and more orange, we get closer and closer to leaving.
2. Flickr. The previous post talks about how I’ve set up a flickr.com account for sharing photos during the WorldTour(TM). I think I’ve sent invitations out to everyone already, but if I’ve missed you, let me know and I’ll add you to my “family” list so you can see all my travel photography from abroad.
3. Viewpoints. Related to the Flickr account, this new little widget (also left) will randomly display two of my favorite photos from the gallery. You can click on them to access my Flickr gallery webpage.
4. Subscribe2. This new plugin (currently located at the bottom of the left menu, if you scroll down) makes it possible for you to sign up for email updates everytime I post something new to this site. Yes, now you’ll never have to inadvertantly miss an exciting WorldTour(TM) Journal (which will from now on be referred to as WTJ) post ever again. Just subscribe with your email address and you’ll get a confirmation email ASAP. Once you’ve confirmed, you’ll start receiving posts directly in your inbox.

And also, this last thing probably won’t be too visible to you guys, but the WTJ has been officially updated to wordpress version 3.21! Yayness!

That is all.

Camira & I went to NYC to see the sites and catch on show the weekend before last (November 3-4). I meant to write about it earlier, but I got lazy.

In any case, I just set up a flickr account for myself to ease the storage & sharing of photos during the WorldTour(TM), so I’m using this opportunity to both test out the cool image blogging feature and to post about the NYC trip.

Here’s one of the pictures I took in New York. To see more, check out the NYC tag on my flickr webpage. I’ve also taken the time to add descriptions to every one of the pictures, so any comments would be appreciated.

NOTE: Only the pictures of places and things are available for public viewing. If you’re a friend (i.e. you know me in real life), please take a moment to set up your own flickr.com account and let me know so that I can add you to my “family” list & give you permission to see pictures of people. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on all the hot pictures of me travelling the world come January!

Broadway, play billboards, originally uploaded 12 Nov ‘07, 11.09pm EST PST

Some of the plays currently being shown on Broadway. Grease, the one we saw, is in the middle. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking of catching a play!

On Saturday, we went out to dinner with Aja’s family. This was the first meeting between my parents and Aja’s parents, and I was nervous. Mainly because I was afraid they’d compare the vague details of the WorldTour(TM) they’ve each gotten from me or Aja, separately, and come up with a big picture far too close for comfort to the real thing (which I feel we’ve been careful to avoid explaining too clearly on both sides). What they don’t know can’t hurt them. If that makes any sense.

But in any case, my fears were unfounded because the dinner went very well. We went to Levante’s, a Turkish restaurant in Dupont Circle. The food was good, the company was good, and our parents got along splendedly. Our dads even went so far as combining their respective passions and planned a future Uighur/film project, which is cool so long as they don’t drag us into it.

As far as the 2ish year thing goes, it sounds like our parents think that we think we’re gonna be gone for an extended amount of time, but that we’re wrong-oh-so-wrong and that we’ll come back homesick and broke, and with our tails firmly tucked between our legs, within half a year.

Well, they can think whatever makes them happy, because we all know that of course the whole tour will be a huge success and it’ll be years and years before we’ll want to come back. Of course.

In other news, my mom finally got confirmation on the tickets. We’re leaving on the 22nd of January, which leaves us with just over 2 months left in the States. (Check out the handy-dandy counter I just installed for a more accurate countdown.)

This thing is becoming more and more real everyday. Crazy.