Keaners Tour You Around The World | Los Angeles

The time I ever wanted to go to Los Angeles is when I was playing GTA5. Los Santos in GTA5 is designed according to Los Angeles and its surrounding area. This summer vacation, taking the chance of participating in an academic conference in Los Angeles, years of desire finally get to be achieved.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles, located in the southwestern of California, is the biggest city in California and the second biggest in the US. Being called the City of Angels, it is a large area composed of an urban district and many satelllite towns. Here you won’t see the concrete jungle as you may see in Manhattan.

Los Angeles in the game is quite a spacious city. On the road run normally private cars, which made me think that the transportation system is less developed and it is hard to go around without a car. In reality, the city is spacious, but the public transportation is not as bad as I thought it would be.

During the few days in Los Angele, with a 7-day Metro card plus the help of google map I went to many places merely by subway and bus.

I named the freeway crossing the city ”lower road” because it is just like an expressway embedded underground. Standing on the bridge you can feel cars underneath moving fast, giving you the feeling of pressure as if you were a time-traveler.

Now the climate. Los Angele is located in the Mediterranean climate zone. It’s hot and dry in summer, but mild and rainy in winter. In mid-July, the temperature fluctuates between 20-30 degrees Celsius. It is pleasing to hear the weather forecast saying it would be sunny in the future 7 days.

Despite the fact that it is the second largest city in America, Los Angeles is totally different from the dynamic New York. At night, we could barely see pedestrians in downtown street and shops were closed early. When I arrived at LOS Angeles, it was after I walked past several blocks, dragging my suitcases, that I found a Verizon shop still open the night. The silent city night is similar to the one in GTA5. Despite its silence, the siren came from afar every now and then.

About AHFE

My primary purpose for this trip is to participate in the AHFE Conference. AHFE stands for Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics. The purpose of this conference is to provide an international forum, communicating research progress of human factors and ergonomics and its application. Either academic authorities or grassroot scholars, you are all welcomed to participate in this conference and share your research findings.

For me, as an undergraduate, it was my first time to attend such a global academic conference and this is a valuable opportunity.

Nearly 300 projects will be presented in this conference. Under the guidance of Dr. Pinata Winoto, senior student Yifan He and I finished the project report through joint work. Our report is about the practicability of assisting people with defective vision in operating on touch screen smart phone. Through our stimulating researches, we discovered that by an assistant case and specialized applications can we achieve the goal of operating on smart phones without direct visual contact to some extent.

Before the presentation, AHFE conference provided tutorials to participants. Participants can choose appropriate tutorials and interact with professors in related areas according to their interest. I chose Design, User Experience and Usability, in which there are participants who are specialized in user experience and usability from all over the world. They are undergraduates, postgraduates and even university faculty. The tutorial was relaxing, academic and dynamic.

Presentation

Stars and Tramp

After the conference, I started exploring Los Angeles. The first place I went is the Walk of Fame in Hollywood.

The Walk of Fame is the landmark of American culture and history. Nearly 300 celebrities left their names here.

Out of the Hollywood/ Vine Station, you can see Jennifer Aniston’s star on the avenue. Even the signature in the center represents the movie star of her, Jennifer’s movie characters are not as famous as her classic character Rachel in the American TV series Friends.

In Los Angeles, there are full of celebrities, and there are tramps wandering around the streets too. I have seen a report that the number of tramps in Los Angeles has increased by 23%, reaching more than 50 thousand.

Some tramps pitch tents and some just sleep on the street. Despite the huge number, it’s not hard to see kind people giving them food and water. The local people have no qualms letting tramps appear in this city.

This reminds me of a report I saw before. A city in China designed a kind of narrow curved waiting chair at bus stations merely to prevent tramps.

By contrast, Los Angeles is more inclusive.

This Los Angeles trip is different from my experience in New York. Different from the prosperity in New York and the fully occupied schedule of New Yorkers, people in Los Angeles are living in a slower pace. They sophisticatedly decorate their houses, with gardens planted with flowers. They sometimes rinse their eaves with high-pressure water jet.

Here, people are enjoying the amplest sunlight in America, living a peaceful life and doing what they like.

Whoever you are, wherever you are from, whatever your background is, whether you are wealthy or not and whether you are well-being, you can always find a place you belong. You are always appreciated and fully respected here.

From ZHU BO