Here are the photos from the second and third days of my trip to Chicago.

After waking up, showering, eating breakfast, and playing a few games of League of Legends, we left to take the CTA to Oak Park.

On the train ride there, Ed played some intense Candy Crush.

This is right after arriving at Oak Park and getting off the CTA loading area.

On the way to the movie theater in Oak Park, we came across this house. If you take a look at the gutter, you will see that the owners of this house appear to be collecting leaves in there.

We also came across a plant with very soft, fuzzy leaves.

While Ed was feeling the leaves, cool guy Hao walked ahead of us.

“Why is the top of that church so shiny?” “Because it’s piercing the heavens.”

As we got closer to the movie theater, we decided to get some food before watching the movie. On our way to finding a restaurant, Ed tried to take a photo that looked like he was holding a car. He failed.

Ed and I went on a trip to Chicago to visit his old roommate, Hao (who you might already know as someone with whom I frequently play League of Legends).

We got on the train to travel from our home village to the Chicago city area. In the photo you can see Ed’s chin and his headphones, artistically obstructing the view out the window.

After completing our train ride and taking our first steps of the day into Chicago, we came across this structure. Ed said that it was the “Olympic torch for giants.”

Then we noticed that it was actually called the Batcolumn.

Ed decided that he likes the name “Olympic torch for giants” better.

While we were walking from the train station to Hao’s apartment, we walked across the highway.

As well as this brilliantly named restaurant – El Famous Burrito.

We also walked across this truck whose logo resembled a Pokéball.

After a bit over a mile of walking, we finally made it to Hao’s apartment.

During late May, my buddy Ed Lam (also known as Grainyrice on the Internet) went on an international va­cation across multiple oceans. During his trip, he took a handful of photographs.

He sent them to me a while back, and I didn’t know what to do with them, so I decided to put them on my website. The second image shown below was cropped and is currently being used as the background image for my website. It’s not much different than the one I had before, so if he sends me more photos, I might change it again soon.

Usually, when I put someone else’s photos on my website, I give them credit via a link to their website, profile, or portfolio, but Ed has nothing of the like, so an unlinked credit will have to do.

As promised a few days ago, I went over to Ed Lam’s house today. We took a good handful of photos and got enough footage to make a video. I’m still in the process of editing the video, but I’m done editing all the photos. The photos are posted below, and the video will be released on YouTube later tonight and on my website tomorrow.

You can click on any of the photographs to see a larger version of it.

Ed wanted me to throw in some of his photography into my blog post, so I picked out a few. This first one is a black-and-white photo of his piano. Even though the focal point is strange, I still thought the photo was intriguing.

This is a picture of a bush in Ed’s lawn. At first I thought it was a picture of grass, and that was the effect Ed wanted.

This is a picture of a small, vicious puppy that we came across while Ed and I went to the local park to take photos for my new universal profile picture / avatar. For whatever reason, it loved eating wood­chips, and the owner thought it was a good idea to let it eat wood­chips because apparently wood­chips are rich in fiber. You’ll see a little bit more of this dog in tomorrow’s video.

This was one of the options I had for a new profile picture. Although I like how it turned out, it wasn’t very compatible with the 1:1 aspect ratio of avatars, so I ended up being unable to use it.

This is a picture of me sitting on monkey bars, and is the picture that I ended up using for my new profile picture (which will be coming out on January 1, 2012). This is the first time that I am releasing the original photo of one of my avatars, and you’ll be able to use this to see exactly how much editing goes into one of my avatars (which, if you haven’t noticed already, is a lot).

This next picture is one of my favorites. Why? Because Ed decided that it would be a good idea to focus on the green bar rather than on my face, and because I’m not even looking at the camera.

Ed thought this next picture would look amazing because I would be hanging sideways on a weirdly twist­ed ladder and he would adjust the camera to make it look like I was flat, but the house in the back­ground would be at a strange angle. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out too well, especially because my body is contorted in an attempt to not fall off the horizontal ladder.

This is what Ed wore to the park. He looks like a silly tourist in pajamas.

Ed wanted me to take a picture of him taking a picture of me. His camera lens is very dusty.

And last, but definitely not least, this is Ed having a little bit too much fun driving his imaginary car.

The taekwondo academy where I train, Chicago Martial Arts, had color belt promotion testing yesterday.

I, being a black belt, did not test, but I was there to watch, help, and hold breaking boards for the stu­dents who were testing.

A bunch of the photographs were put on the Chicago Martial Arts’ Facebook page, and here are some of the ones where I show up:

If you want to see the rest of the photos, you can add the Chicago Martial Arts grandmaster on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/bill.h.lee.