My blog

From middle of nowhere...

Friday, Jun 26, 2009 11:05AM / Standard Entry

....I bring greetings to everyone. Sorry it's been so long between my posts. Time kept flying by with work and motherhood, I'm grateful to get enough rest on most days! :) I hope everyone's been doing well. I do read your blog posts. I enjoyed them very much!!

Recent news: Survived daughter's rehearsal and recital and there's more coming up. Have informed her that make up is for performances and playing dress up at home only, so don't bother to ask to wear any to school! She's simply not old enough and I prefer she study at school instead of learning to be "America's Next Top Model" kind of things! :P

Survived daughter's 6th birthday party with 19 screaming 5-6 year olds jumping and climbing all over the bounce house place. Definitely a right decision to hold the party there because they took care of everything. At the end of helping kids up and down climbing obstacles and what not, I'm too exhausted to thinka bout cleaning up duties! She had a blast and I'm happy that she's happy!

Lost one of my older cousin recently. He fell off of his 8th floor penthouse. Not sure if he jumped or that it was an accident and no good way of asking about it. Though he never seemed the type to do something like jumping, but top floor to penthouses usually have enclosures to keep accidents from happening. Am sad and mostly hurt for my aunt who's the kindest person I know and felt her life's been so tough on her always and felt that this isn't something she deserves. We weren't especially close growing up being this far apart, but he was a good guy.

Work is going fine. I'm pretty much on track with all that I need to learn and learning what I can outside of my usual tasks from anyone that I can. It keeps me from being bored. I'm not much of an office 8 hours+ a day person. It dulls my creativity and mind. Had a slight scare from VP who walked out of the company last week. She's the glue that held the company together and the oil that greased the wheels. She came back 2 days ago and I'm so very happy! Things were slipping through cracks without her, things that I noticed no one was taking care of or thought to assign someone else to do. I always liked her (knew her before I even worked at this place) and knew that she did more than her work title around the company.   Big warm welcome back to her and may she stays until retirement time!

Lost weight since mother left for her Asia trip. So nice to eat light during lunch. I do appreciate mother's great cooking, but I can't convince her that I prefer to pack my own lunch since I started working. I didn't gain any, but it's impossible to lose any with her heavy lunches. Hoping to lose enough so that I can play badmington better on the courts. I play really well, but I know I am not playing at my top form with extra poundage. So, look out fellow players! When I lost enough and return to court, I'll be first pick on women doubles during tournament time! ;)

2 more weeks of work and I get to take a week of vacation. Friend from PA coming to visit that week and wants to go fishing. Been a while, but would love to be outdoors again. Miss the trees, the grass and always loved the water. It brings peace and calmness. Joke with manager about how I may not want to come back to work after a week off and he looked a bit worried. Well, I guess I was too good at keeping a straight face doing that joke!

I think I've covered all that's out of the ordinary everyday things that's happened since I last posted.   I will sign off for now and head off to bed. 6am comes around very quickly here for me! I've reluctantly hung up my night owl badge when I got this job and joined all the other day folks. :P Take care all my friends. You're in my thoughts.

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I'm still alive...

Wednesday, Apr 29, 2009 11:50AM / Standard Entry

Just a quick update so my friends don't think I've fallen off the planet.

Working hard and wishing for more hours in a 24 hour day so I can do everything, like visit the forums more often and hang out. Miss forums friends and wish everyone's well.

Mother's off to Asia until possibly end of the year. A nice break for us both from each other. Though, I never thought I'd say this, but it's too quiet without her around and I actually miss her nagging at me! Scary! :P And don't any of you tell her I said this! I will deny it! :D

Finally gotten over my stupid stubborness of not contacting my childhood best friend for well over a decade. Darn near chickened out in leaving her a message online because I didn't know what to say and nervous that perhaps she doesn't want contact many years later. All's well as we had our first phone conversation in way too long and it felt good to hear her voice again after all these years. Chalk it up to being young and immature when our friendship fell apart. Looking back, it wasn't either of our fault, just simply too confused right after high school trying to figure out who we were and what we wanted to be and do and ended up neglecting a very precious friendship/sisterhood. May this renewal of our friendship last until death do us part this time. I have missed you more than I can express, lil' sis.

Waiting patiently for end of July to roll around. Taking a week of vacation to go fishing with best friend from PA. Catch and release style, as neither of us likes to eat fish but seemed to enjoy the act of fishing and sitting around with no dead lines and stress to just shooting the breeze for a bit. I need to climb a tree so badly that I planted 7 new baby trees in the back yard 2 weekends back. It'll be years before I can climb those, but hoping the July trip I can find a good tree to climb and lounge on for a bit.

I'll close on that note to climb into bed and dream of some nice tall trees. To all my friends - hope all's well and I've missed you all.

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Catching up

Saturday, Jun 7, 2008 7:59AM / Standard Entry

Favorite uncle on mother's side passed away last Monday night (Tuesday morning in Taiwan). It was a sudden shock, as he was as healthy as can be for someone who just retired last year. Entire family tribe's in shock and some having trouble believing and accepting that he's gone.

I won't be able to attend the funeral as I would like to, because of my expired passport. The fastest process work for passport still takes up to 3 weeks. With regret and pain in my heart, I can only mourn him here quietly thousands of miles away on another continent. We were scheduled to meet in Houston, TX sometimes around June 20th and I was excited to see him after two decades. That is one of the biggest thing that stuck in my head, because it was one of those 'so close yet so far' feeling.

Then my summer class in Financial Accounting started this week. It's good, because I needed a distraction from the unfortunate news. I spend this week going to class and studying as well as spending as much time as I can with my daughter. She just turned 5 last day of May. I look at her and all I can think is 'seize the day', as no one knows if anything would happen as suddenly as my uncle passing.

Life's unpredictability makes life seemed so fragile. Let me from this moment on treasure life and life's little moments more.

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Power Outage

Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007 2:47AM / Standard Entry

Freezing rain caused trees falling everywhere. Power lines are down all over and no telling when we'll have power back. No heat, no way of cooking food and no hot water. The things we take for granted, like internet, tv, phone... Never knew how much we rely on those things on daily basis until they're all gone. After a day and night of total silence (aside from mother being so bored she paced the house looking for something, anything to say to me! lol) hiding under layers of clothing and heavy comforters, I'm trying to stay sane!

They're working on getting important things back on ASAP. Residentals could take anywhere from 3 days to a week. Fortunately, mother found a friend who's got power and we're visiting at the moment. Internet and hot shower is all I needed. I had bills to pay online and emails to check, as my calculus final was supposed to be today, but no power, school's closed for the day. I was hoping to see something from my calculus prof, but nothing just yet. Likely she doesn't have power to get online to contact anyone.

Will come back on as soon as power's back on, but didn't want to worry anyone.

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Updates

Friday, Aug 31, 2007 12:38AM / Standard Entry

20 years ago (I'm showing my age here! lol ) when I took Calculus I class, I had Dr. L. He's an older gentleman of full time university staff, been around forever and pretty high up in the math department. He thinks women can't handle higher math such as Calculus and he lectured directly to male students in the classroom, never once looked at any of the female students; it's as if we don't exist. During the office hours when we have questions and shows up to ask him, you hear him carrying on joking with the male students and when the female ones enter his office, he puts on a 180 turn around attitude, as if we're a bother. Calculus was not fun to me 20 years ago. Dr. L was a brilliant mathematician, but he wasn't a good teacher when it comes to explaining to us all the knowledge he's got inside his head. We're often lost and struggled every step of the way.

I took Calucus I again after 20 years, it started last Monday and it's Monday and Wednesday of each week. The teacher's fine, I liked him well enough, but by the 3rd class (this Monday), I find that he's not at all prepared for the lecture (new textbook this year) and he is lacking in geometry area in math. There's another prof teaching Calc I, so I immediately took action and sat in on her class Tuesday morning after asking for permission. Before I even gotten to talk to her, one of her student outside her office waiting for another student to finish with his questions informed me that they skipped Chapter 1 all together, which reviewed Algebra and Trig, and started with Calc part already with Chapter 2. That meant I sat in on her 3rd class starting lecture on Chapter 2, section 5. After the sit-in lecture, I switched teachers. It's departmental rule to have both professors' signature as well as Assistant Dean's signature when changing teachers of the same course. Luckily, both prof were still on campus and I managed to get everything taken care of on Monday.

Prof J. had lecture dates all planned out and printed for us in calendar form, including review days and test days. She had homework assignments assigned and printed out for students that have unstable internet connection and cannot do the online math lab homework. She also had notes from each of her lectures saved in case anyone missed a class can make a copy, I took advantage of that along with borrowed notes from classmate (Thanks M!!) and spend the last 2 days playing catch up. She was organized, old school about high expectations on our ability as students to have turn in homework assignments along with Chapter review problem sets with answer key showing everything step by step. I am more than impressed considering the testbook is brand new. She had been working very hard in preparation to teaching this class.

I managed to use both set of notes, the Calc book for this course and another Calc book that's on my book shelf from years back and caught up between Chapter2 sections 1 through 4. Today, we finished Chapter 2 and I walked out of the class bouncing with happiness and excitement. I never thought Calc was fun 20 years ago, didn't think it's possible to feel this elated. Everything was explained fully and clearly and everything made sense and Prof J. made it fun!

The first test for Chapter 2 is next Thursday. Granted, this means I have to catch up on all the homework assignments and study for the test, but it's worth all the work right now to have a good teacher to have Calc I solid since I am planning to take II and III. I'm psyched!

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