P-----U-----R-----P-----L-----E

WHAT AN EXCITING VALENTINE'S DAY

2012-02-15T16:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a strange Valentine's Day. The school was crazy because all these 12 to 15 years old think the world of this special day. So there's balloons and teddy bears all over the place - and 93% of our students "supposedly" cannot afford to buy lunch so the government gives them free lunch everyday; 10% "purportedly" are homeless, and yet, there must be 20% teddy bears that are as big size as half of me. Ha ha ha. And of course, you have this jealous...love...hate thingy going on all day-forget about school! A sub was fired on the spot because he allegedly pinched the student. Then I was on the phone with a vendor when I heard really loud commotion in the front office. I went out there, it was too late already. The girl punched her mother once in the right eye and another punch in her face. My boss (according to the sec) almost jumped over the counter to pull them apart. Both the sec and I wateched in horror. The girl was still getting up to want to hit her mother everytime when my boss let loose of her. I immediately pulled the mother over into my room to separate them. Then I closed the door and gave her some water and watched her cry. She doesn't speak English so I can't converse with her. But I feel terrible - imagine a girl repeatedly punching out her mom because the mom said that her boy friend gives her drugs and he is black. This is so sad. Well, I am so glad our family and culture is not like that. I came home and I told J not to buy flowers because it is a waste of money. After being together for 32 years, I don't think we need flowers once a year to validate our love. He said "But the ladies at the office must be getting flowers left and right." I said yes, but none of them lasted 32 years. What J really show in his love is the fact that he takes my bag and coffee out in the car to me and wave me good bye in the morning at 6am even though he really doesn't need to get up that early in the morning. Then of course, after that he has 12 hours to compensate for his sleep. Ha ha ha. Bo was kind of upset at work because her boss had not prepared for the big valentine rush. They were seriously shorthanded with the cook, with the delivery and waiters. She said many angry customers left because the wait was too long. She BF came to help out for an hour so I gave her special permission to go have a frozen yogurt with him. Then she paid for it--crazy gal!

FENG FEI FEI DIED

2012-02-14T17:41:00.000-08:00

News of Feng Fei Fei's death delayed until after CNYThe China Post news staff--President Ma Ying-jeou joined large swathes of Taiwan in mourning yesterday after the news that singer Feng Fei Fei (鳳飛飛) had died.
Feng Fei Fei, literally meaning flying phoenix, died of lung caner in Hong Kong on Jan. 3 at age 59. She is survived by her only son. Chiu Wan Kee (趙宏琦), her husband and also a victim of lung cancer, died before her on June 16, 2009. She was cremated in Hong Kong and her remains were interned in Daxi, Taoyuan County, her hometown, earlier this month.
Ever considerate, Feng was adamant shortly before her passing that her attorney did not break the news of her death to the nation until the Chinese New Year holiday was long past. “Breaking such news during the New Year holidays will bring bad luck to others,” she was quoted as saying.
President Ma said he was saddened by the death of the singer, whose performance of two songs wrapped up the 2008 Presidential Inauguration ceremonies, when he was sworn in for his first term, a presidential spokesman said.
The president called her son to offer his condolences immediately after learning of Feng Fei Fei's death, Fang-Chiang Tai-chi told reporters, adding “he sorely misses her.”
Born Lin Chiu-luan (林秋鸞) to a family of modest means in Daxi on Aug. 20, 1953, Feng Fei Fei began her singing career in 1968, when she won the championship in a television singing contest at the tender age of 15.
What followed was not a meteoric rise to stardom, but a life of privation for three long years, during which she tried to make every penny count and counted every penny of her income as an itinerant singer who sang at wedding and festival banquets.
“Sometimes, I had to switch buses several times before I reached the place, which was quite often in remote rural areas. And after the guests were gone, we were treated to a hastily reheated mixture of leftovers that we found so tasty,” Feng Fei Fei told an interviewer.
Her first break came in 1971, when one of her songs was included on a compilation album. She joined a label and released her first album “Wishing You Well” the next year.
Her next major award came in 1974, when she went on a concert trip to Singapore, where she was crowned one of the “top ten Southeast Asian Singers.”
Better known on stage as the hat-wearing diva who never completely revealed her coiffured locks, Feng Fei Fei was known for her huge collection of headwear as well as her unflagging support for causes the nation held dear.
A frequent performer at National Day celebrations and beneficiaries after her first trip to Kinmen in 1978, when she entertained troops stationed on the island, she donated both her time and money generously to charities. Baseball fans still recall the time when she put on the hat of a cheerleader and went to the United States to root for the junior national baseball team playing there. She was named a “patriotic entertainer” in 1981.
She married in 1980 and her singing career continued until 2011, when she had to cancel a pre-scheduled concert because of the damage done to her vocal cords by cancerous cells.
Fans rushed to CD stores today and bought up all stocks of her album in less than 12 hours

LOTS OF DRIVING TODAY

2012-02-10T18:21:00.001-08:00

Driving is really very, very stressful for me. Especially it was raining, it was dark, and it was very early-6:30am. It takes me 2 hours to get from the house to Rice University because 290 is always jam packed. I was 10 minutes late but the session hasn't started. Good. They changed the powerpoint and didn't give me a copy. I think boss didn't want me to do the presentation. I did the introduction anyway. After the introduction, I froze but they both did very well. I know I am not a good presenter, but I chipped in a little bit. My boss' boss gave me a thumbs up after the presentation. I was happy. I wish I could listen to the rest of the presentation, but I need to attend the Homeless meeting, so I left and drove there. I got lost again, after over an hour, I finally found the place. I was so stressed. The meeting was super, super boring. I almost fell asleep. After that I went to Chinatown and got food that I like to eat.

A RESTFUL WEEKEND

2012-02-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

This weekend is quite restful. Yesterday Bo went on out first time to the school's Showstopper with S, with J too. J said the show was really good and they went to eat at Chilis after that. Bo was very happy. Today went to the Y with J. Very tiring but I must shave off some pounds.

WORK STUFF

2012-02-04T08:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday attended the 3rd class with boss and A/P at Rice. Boss doesn't show any interest in the class at all. A/P was just all talks and no work, as typical as what Amer are good at - talks and no work. I worked at it, but miss out a lot of points because I am not that familiar with the wordings that schools use. But I did learn that one A/P was going to retire, one going to be principal at another school. Boss' been offered 2 high schools, 2 other teachers are leaving. Boss asked if I would go with him to high school, I said sure. There are a lot of changes. Well it is good and finally the unwanted counselor is moving on to elsewhere on Monday. Planky is going to another school. Lots of changes happening.....We left about 4:30pm. It was raining and I almost got into deep water. It took me hour and a half to get home. Bo was working, so J and I went to eat Japanese food. Yummy it was really good.

NEW WORRY

2012-01-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

Spring time comes early for Bo. The guy she works with approached her to invite her to the ball and be friends. I said she can go because it is in April, close to graduation. Next she started pushing to date him. I disagreed. She looks like she was going to cry. My baby is growing up too too fast.

HAPPY DRAGON YEAR

2012-01-23T16:15:00.001-08:00

This year chinese new year seems to come so fast, within a month of christmas. I called aunt and Shu Ching, my cousins and brother's family. Last night we went to the temple and arrived around 11:30pm, but they set off the fire crackers early, at 11pm, so we missed it. But we saw the 3 lion dance. Today I didn't go in to work and Bobo also took a college day at HBU. It looks like a pretty nice university. It is very small though, I worried they will have limited resources since it is so small.But it is very nice of them to award $68,000 to Bobo as scholarship, this will handle 2-1/2 year of the tuition.

REMAIN HOPEFUL

2012-01-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

Spent last 2 days attending the marketing strategic class at Rice University with my boss, his boss, AP and other 30 principals. I enjoy the class a lot, but to come up with our own marketing plan for our school seems very hard. Particularly the target segmenting part. The professor is really good. We took the class at Jesse Jones Graduate School. Rice is a beautiful university. Sec. said she has 2 growths and need to go in for surgery soon. Planky is going for a promo as sec at another elem school. AP is going to an elem school and my boss heard news that they are sending him to a high school. Looks like a lot of changes on the way...On the other hand, I have not heard from any one for another interview yet. But I am HOPEFUL !!!

NEW YEAR UPDATE THESE 2 WEEKS

2012-01-14T15:03:00.000-08:00

Like a scene from Titanic, this luxury Italian cruise fell over. Cruise anyone??

This passed week I wasn't that busy but I got somewhat depressed. I felt that my boss is ignoring me. Well maybe because he feels that since I am looking, that I will be moving on soon. Well I hope I can find something too. I was supposed to go to a cohort with him at Rice U last week, but I didn't go. I still don't feel like going. It is for marketing our school.

The coun. that was out since Thanksgiving came back this year, got family leave letter from doctor, of course, not something I would believe! Some people are just lucky and DIRTY.

Susan's dad had a stroke and they took him to the hospital. But they sent him home if he doesn't pay $5,000 a night. What!!! crazy people!

Poor Rose, she went in for a small surgery, and now she thinks that she is going to die in the hospital. I bought a box of chocolate and a nice "lucky" poster and plan on visiting her tomorrow.

My blog's been quite uninteresting lately, it seems that I have lost some zeal in life.

I was very upset yesterday - someone broke into my padlock and stole 50+Target gift cards. I hate it when people steals and it was under my care! I don't think I was negligent but I think it when people takes things that didn't belong to them. I had 3 7-ups and she even stole one, now only 2 left - that was why I suspect someone got into my office during the Christmas holiday. Very very mad!

A 82 year old woman even got beaten to death yesterday when someone forced into her house. They said she was wearing jewelry worth of over fifty thousand dollars. That is no excuse to kill someone, and besides she probably worked hard all her life to save that much money to buy the jewelry, but some scumbag came along and took what was not their. I hope they become an ant in the next life soon; and I will not hesitate to STEP ON IT!

I think I need to buy a gun. I don't feel safe anymore.

My itchy neck gets sooooo itchy. I should stay away from seafood, but guess what I just had lobsters :) We went to eat lobsters with Ellen. 2 lobsters for $18. The steam fish was good too.

Bo is working now. My sis found a tutor for Bo to learn chinese but he wants $45 per hour. Wow! I can never afford that.

IS THIS YEAR THE END

2012-01-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

Called my aunt this morning. Wow she is really really talking nowadays. That's good. I told her our planned trip in July. Very excited! Um...is this year the end?
I found this article:
Terence McKenna's Time Wave Theoryby Dan Eden for ViewzoneEDITOR: We have some important new information on the TimeWave predictions at the end of this article. So many people did not read this story when it was first published on viewzone that we thought it important to repost it with the new data.I have a very good friend named Johnny who lives in Patagonia, one of the safest places on the planet. He often sends me ideas for stories on viewzone. A while back he tried to get me interested in something called the "Time Wave Theory." My initial reaction was to pass on the story. A theory about time? Einstein couldn't define what time is (or was, or will be).The Timewave theory, put forth by Terence McKenna [right], is further complicated by the fact that he is dead, and that much of what he learned about the theory is alleged to have come to him during shamanic visionary states while he was living in the Amazon jungle. Hmmm.But The Timewave Theory is perhaps the hottest topic on the internet today. Many reputable scientists and physicists have embraced it. It has broken the barriers between esoteric philosophy and pragmaticism. And, as you will see, its discovery is predicted within the theory itself.Lots of trendy websites have given summaries of McKenna's theories, especially as they relate to 2012, but hardly anyone has explained the theory in a logical way. Since that is my raison d'etre here on viewzone, I will attempt to do this now.The biography of Terence McKenna is fascinating and certainly worth exploring, but I will leave that for later. Our story begins in China about 4000 years ago with a phenomenon called the I-Ching.The I-ChingThe Chinese people are great at understanding abstractions. Their writing consists of symbols that suggest an idea or concept rather than phonetic sounds, like English. With hundreds of different dialects spoken in China, often people living in a neighboring village cannot understand the spoken language of their countrymen. Although the sounds and phonetics may vary, the written Chinese symbols are understood by everyone. Why is this important?The I-Ching is a system for what the Western mind would call "fortune telling." But instead of being able to tell you who you will marry, when you will die or next week's lottery numbers, the I-Ching predicts the pattern of events which will govern and shape your destiny. It's an abstract vignette of a universal influence for a specific block of time.In the I-Ching, there are patterns which are composed of six possibilities, represented by either a broken line (yin) or a solid line (yang). By simple mathematics it is easy to understand that two possible patterns, expressed in a matrix of six (called a hexagram), yield a possibility of exactly 64 different hexagrams.Typically, if you are in Asia and engage the I-Ching, you will toss a coin six times and record the heads or tails (yin or yang) and arrive at one of these 64 hexagrams. By referencing the Book of I-Ching, you will be able to ascertain the flow of events that governs your present and future life. The results will not be specific -- it's more of a kind of weather report describing the outcome of your actions.So why is this important to the Timewave Theory? It's not, really. The I-Ching is a kind of parlor game that evolved from something deeper and more significant. The true basis of the I-Ching was understood many thousands of years ago and was lost in centuries of ignorance and political upheaval -- that is until Terence McKenna accidentally stumbled upon it in the 1970s.The hexagramsExamining the King Wen I-Ching hexagrams, McKenna noticed an obvious pattern. The first hexagram contains six solid lines. Hexagram number two has six broken lines. Hexagrams 3 and 4 appear to be similar pairs that have been rotated 180 degrees. The same is true for most of the other hexagrams -- they are pairs in which the second hexagram has been rotated 180 degrees.McKenna noticed that sometimes, when a hexagram was supposed to be rotated, the rotation would not change the configuration. An example of this can be seen in hexagram 27. It also is the case with seven other hexagrams (#1, 2, 28, 29, 30, 61 and 62). When this happens there is a different rule that applies. The following hexagram is exactly opposite -- the yins become yangs and visa versa.McKenna then focused his attention on the number of lines that changed in each subsequent hexagram, moving from the first to the sixty-fourth. From hexagram 1 to 2 there were six changed lines, from hexagram 2 to 3 there were two, then four, and four again...He plotted these changes on a graph and arrived at a unique pattern.But he didn't make much sense out of this. He needed to understand why the I-Ching was made of six lines and why was it arranged in pairs that were rotated 180 degrees. The breakthrough came when he noticed that the extreme left and right of the graph contained a saw-tooth pattern. If he copied the graph, rotated it 180 degrees and superimposed it on the original graph it meshed perfectly "like the dove tail of a cabinet maker."To incorporate the six lines, McKenna repeated this new graph six times and superimposed it on the single plot. To incorporate the phenomenon of "pairs" of hexagrams, he repeated the pattern two times and superimposed it on the other two graphs. Eventually he arrived at a complex shape containing all three graphs. But what did this mean?With a computer it was possible to combine the peaks and valleys and arrive at an average graph (see math at http://www.fractal-timewave.com/math_twz.htm), representing the change of the 64 hexagrams and, as McKenna believed, revealing the secret encoded in their original design. This graph has become known as the Timewave.Confused?It is difficult for a Western mind to comprehend abstracts. In our everyday lives we ignore things that don't have immediate relevance, yet we do have many abstracts that we take for granted. Good and evil, light and darkness, love and hate -- these are opposite abstracts that we would have difficulty describing without using both words in the pair. Good is the absence of evil, darkness is the absence of light. Even in physics we have matter and anti-matter, positive and negative charges...In Asian Taoism philosophy the concept of opposing phenomena is represented by the Yin and Yang. Both are always present in everything, yet the amount of influence of each varies over time.The nature of yin-yangIn Taoist philosophy, yin and yang arise together from an initial quiescence or emptiness (wuji, sometimes symbolized by an empty circle), and continue moving in tandem until quiescence is reached again. For instance, dropping a stone in a calm pool of water will simultaneously raise waves and lower troughs between them, and this alternation of high and low points in the water will radiate outward until the movement dissipates and the pool is calm once more. Yin��yang, thus, are always opposite and equal qualities. Further, whenever one quality reaches its peak it will naturally begin to transform into the opposite quality: grain that reaches its full height in summer (fully yang) will produce seeds and die back in winter (fully yin) in an endless cycle.It is impossible to talk about yin or yang without some reference to the opposite, since yin��yang are bound together as parts of a mutual whole. A race with only men or only women would disappear in a single generation; but men and women together create new generations that allow the race they mutually create (and mutually come from) to survive. The interaction of the two gives birth to things. Yin and yang transform each other: like an undertow in the ocean, every advance is complemented by a retreat, and every rise transforms into a fall. Thus, a seed will sprout from the earth and grow upwards towards the sky - an intrinsically yang movement. Then when it reaches its full potential height it will descend.The individual lines of the I-Ching are made up of both Yin (broken lines) and Yang (solid lines). The concept of change and balance is inherent in the hexagrams. McKenna understood that his final graph must contain the "fingerprint" of change contained in time itself.The peaks represent the abstraction of "stasis" or habitual stability, while the valleys represent novelty or change.Fractals anyone?A fractal is a shape produced by plotting mathematical data which repeats whether viewed on a macro or micro scale. McKenna realized that his Time Wave had this special characteristic. The entire graph, representing the beginning and end of time, can be seen duplicated when one looks at a smaller span of time.In the example above the same pattern can be seen for plotting two differnt eras. The bottom plot spans almost 150 years while the top plot spans about 1.5 years.The drama of novelty and habit plays out, according to the Timewave, in a specific and orderly pattern. Because this pattern is a fractal, the ups and downs of the timewave apply equally to a long epoch, like the emergence of life on our panet, and a short epoch, like the lifetime of an individual.McKenna liked to joke about this phenomenon in his lectures. He would use the example of the fall of the Roman Empire, saying that it followed the same pattern -- habit and novelty -- as when he vacuumed his living room.Understanding this "fractal" concept makes it easier to understand why the I-Ching was used to predict the outcome of current events in Chinese philosophy. If one could learn where on the Timewave they were then they could infer whether novelty or habit were in play.Time compressionAs the Timewave pattern moves through time, the fractals become smaller and smaller. What took eons of time to complete next takes only thousands of years, then hundreds, then days, minutes, seconds. As we approach the zero point on the grand Timewave, waves of novelty and habit change more rapidly. This can appear chaotic to our sense of time but it is because the very pattern of time IS speeding up.Indeed the knowledge and understanding that we have accomplished in the last hundred years of civilization far surpasses the achievements of many thousands of years before. It is not so surprising then that the Timewave theory should be discovered, or perhaps re-discovered, at this fast paced era near the end of time.What is novelty?Novelty is characterized by increased activity and options. For humans, this usually follows some great discovery or event which changes our behavior. Imagine an ant's nest where workers go about their daily routine of foraging for food. All of a sudden a sugar cube is dropped on the ant mound and suddenly the behavior of the nest changes to take advantage of this new opportunity. If the discovery is significant enough the ant colony may have enough food for many weeks, thereby ushering in a period of stability and wellbeing. Novelty ushers in stability and visa versa.Novelty and stability may appear opposite but they are always present in time. The Timewave plots the move from one direction to the other. Moving up indicates a gradual increase in stability and organization while a downward curve shows that some new factors are influencing change. It's a continuous ebb and flow.I thought it would be helpful to take a look at the Timewave for the past two decades.The above timewave begins on February 1992 and ends on December 21, 2012. Yes, it's "doomsday" but we'll talk about that later. I have marked some events that happened close to the significant turning points -- either just before a downward or upward curve. I will let you decide if these events validate their position on the graph.DoomsdayWhen he finally arrived at the shape of the Timewave, McKenna then had to superimpose it on historical events. He placed the beginning of the wave at the theoretical beginning of the universe, more than 15 billion years ago. Here, the Timewave graph began at zero and spiked up to reach a high degree of organization. As he plotted the wave he realized that it eventually reached zero at the end. Further, this end was in our present era!The last harmonic of the wave has a duration of 67.29 years, marked again by some dramatic event at the onset of the pattern. At first McKenna placed this event with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This worked out to the graph reaching zero in mid-November of 2012. Later, when he learned of the end date of the Mayan calendar, he adjusted the wave to coincide with this time.According to the Timewave theory, on December 21, 2012 we will be in the unique position in time where we will experience maximum novelty -- maximum potential for change. Not since the birth of our universe has this happened. What will follow this date is something that we cannot imagine. The next day, if time recycles, will usher in incredible order and organization. Will we be part of this?Terence McKenna, November 16, 1949 to April 3, 2000Following the death of his mother in 1971, Terence, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-he, a plant preparation containing DMT. Instead of oo-koo-he they found various forms of ayahuasca and gigantic psilocybe cubensis which became the new focus of the expedition. In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, he allowed himself to be the subject of a psychedelic experiment which he claimed put him in contact with Logos: an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience. The revelations of this voice, and his brother's peculiar experience during the experiment, prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the I Ching, which led to his "Novelty Theory". These ideas were explored extensively by Terence and Dennis in their 1975 book The Invisible Landscape - Mind Hallucinogens and The I Ching.In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of psychedelic drugs, lecturing extensively and conducting weekend workshops. Timothy Leary once introduced him as "one of the five or six most important people on the planet"."It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. These are the two things that the psychedelics attack. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy." -- Terence McKenna, This World...and Its DoubleHe soon became a fixture of popular counterculture, and his popularity continued to grow, culminating in the early to mid 1990s with the publication of several books such as True Hallucinations (which relates the tale of his 1971 experience at La Chorrera), Food of the Gods and The Archaic Revival. He became a popular personality in the psychedelic rave/dance scene of the early 1990s, with frequent spoken word performances at raves and contributions to psychedelic and goa trance albums by The Shamen, Spacetime Continuum, Alien Project, Capsula, Entheogenic, Zuvuya, Shpongle, and Shakti Twins. His speeches were (and continue to be) sampled by many others. In 1994 he appeared as a speaker at the Starwood Festival, which was documented in the book Tripping by Charles Hayes (his lectures were produced on both cassette tape and CD).McKenna was a contemporary and colleague of chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham and biologist Rupert Sheldrake (creator of the theory of "morphogenetic fields", not to be confused with the mainstream usage of the same term), and conducted several public debates known as trialogues with them, from the late 1980s up until his death. Books which contained transcriptions of some of these events were published. He was also a friend and associate of Ralph Metzner, Nicole Maxwell, and Riane Eisler, participating in joint workshops and symposia with them. He was a personal friend of Tom Robbins, and influenced the thought of numerous scientists, writers, artists, and entertainers, including comedian Bill Hicks, whose routines concerning psychedelic drugs drew heavily from McKenna's works. He is also the inspiration for the Twin Peaks character Dr. Jacoby.McKenna also co-founded Botanical Dimensions with Kathleen Harrison (ethnobotanist) (his colleague and wife of 17 years), a non-profit ethnobotanical preserve on the island of Hawaii, where he lived for many years before he died. Before moving to Hawaii permanently, McKenna split his time between Hawaii and a town called Occidental, located in the redwood-studded hills of Sonoma County, California, a town unique for its high concentration of artistic notables, including Tom Waits and Mickey Hart.Of all his many accomplishments, Terence McKenna will be remembered for his discovery of the Timewave Novelty Theory and his unparalleled ability to describe this theory to others in a way that made it interesting, understandable and congruent with both physics and religion.As physicists look deeper and further in to the infinity of quantum mechanics, McKenna's work on the structure of time is gaining more respect and application. While some conservative minds will condemn his use of mind-altering drugs, it is perhaps because of the other-worldly nature of these psychedelic experiences that the abstractions of time were revealed.We can only wait and see.UPDATES AND IMPORTANT PREDICTIONS FOR 2010+First, I don't want to make this too complex. If you're like me, keeping your credit card in balance is tough enough to do. Although I have spent hours trying to understand the complexities of the Time Wave Theory, I can grasp enough to write about it in the most general way.One of the steps in McKenna's process that I described in the previous article -- where he took the first graph and reversed it -- has always bothered me. When he placed this reversed graph on top of the existing graph he aligned it in such a way that the "teeth" meshed. But they were not meshed exactly and this left little bits of the graph on both ends slightly misaligned with each other.Apparently someone else noticed this. A British mathematician named Mathew Watkins saw this discrepancy and decided to be more precise with this alignment. He aligned the reverse graph with the existing graph and let the numbers decide what happened. It wasn't visually pretty like McKenna's TimeWave, but it was mathematically sound.The result is what has become known as the Watkins Objection, and the resulting Time Wave pattern is only slightly different. But when you are dealing with things like time and events, a small difference can be quite significant.Let's look at the Time Waves for the "standard model" proposed by McKenna for the dates March 31, 2010 through the "end of time" on 12/21/2012 and compare them to the Watkins model for the same period:Above: the standard model proposed by McKenna.Above: The Watkins model showing adjusted calculations.In the standard model we see that there is an event which will happen around May 9th which will begin a period of habitual behavior that culminates on July 8th. From July 9th onward we are in a steep plunge of novelty which placed everyone in a state of confusion as they adjust to some new situation that has been thrust upon humanity. Around January 16th of 2011 we get a small reprieve and begin to cope with the new situation but in March 22 of 2011 something again happens that causes unrest and novelty. There are a few attempts to adjust to normalcy after this date, but eventually the situation becomes too much and absolute novelty overcomes habit on 12/21/2012.In the revised Watkins model we see that May 9th is also a significant day, marking our climb to habitual life that, like the McKenna model, changes on July 8th. But instead of a sharp decline into novelty, the Watkins model has a sawtooth pattern of adjustment with increasing habitual behavior, suggesting that humanity is coping well with some change. This happens until November 14th, at which time a free fall into novelty happens which is even greater than the one predicted by McKenna. It goes straight down until January 16, 2011. After January 16th there is a brief period of recovery and habitual behavior that reaches it peak on March 22, 2011. Then, something happens that takes humanity to maximum novelty on 12,21,2012.So, while the significant dates remain the same, the pattern of habitual behavior vs. coping with new situations in new ways is slightly different.One thing that was discovered with the Watkins model is that the Time Wave has absolute novelty both at the beginning and the end of the wave. This suggests that there might be some cyclical nature to the wave, and time itself.Why does this matter, you may ask, since there are many obvious differences between the two waves -- what is the significance of this difference? For the standard model wave, it has been argued that the zero value at the end of the waveform implies some kind of singularity at the end of the process -- or at the end of time. This revised wave is implying, however, that there may be singularities at both ends of the continuum. This is also an argument for a closed system that may be undergoing some kind of cyclic renewal process -- perhaps each cycle expressing ever higher ordered states of complex form, or Novelty.There are concepts emerging from the field of quantum cosmology that may describe an analogous cyclic process. This is a theory in which universes are treated like quantum particles that inhabit a larger, or higher dimentional domain called a multiuniverse. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist and co-founder of string field theory, has described a process where universes emerge from zero-point, or vacuum field, go through an evolutionary process, then perhaps return to zero-point field at the end of the cycle. This cycle may then repeat itself, possibly with increased complexity and Novelty. So could this be similar to the process that the TimeWave and Novenly Theory attempt to reveal? Perhaps further incestigation into the nature of the TimeWave will shed some light on these questions." --John Sheliak [Delineation, Specification, and Formalization of the TWZ Data Set Generation Process -- Philosophical, Procedural, and Mathematical]

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012

2012-01-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!
Back to work. Took one sick day, had a profuse, painful M this month. Don't know why. Last month was so light, I thought it was ready to quit. But it came back fast and furious this month. Choy!!!!
Bo is busy working, she likes it very much. She is also busy with DI and scholarship application. Sis said her son may come to US university. J is sleeping much as usual. Yesterday he ripped the tires going to the post office :( Today we had breakfast at Luby, not very good but I love their coffee. I paid for Singapore trip airplane tickets already. So HAPPY!!!!!!! Will look forward to July1st!
My prediction reads: "I will have a good year, opportunity for a promotion and raise but don't rush into things. There are 3 evil stars that deliver stress and mistrust. This is a good year to move house or change furniture. Don't quarrel with people, good development in career."

LAKE TAHOE SKI

2011-12-31T20:36:00.000-08:00

I can say I have a very nice rest coming back from the vacation and work will not begin till Monday. Apart from not getting the job, things are going very well for me. The trip was fantastic, Bo loves it, she skiied 3 days straight, I did only once. Wow! Very tiring leh.

12/22/2011 DAY 1

We left the house at 6:30am, slightly rainy, and the flight was about 4 hours. The view from above was very nice. At arrival, I was upset that the vacation package did not include the bus from the airport to the hotel, and want another $50 per person for this bus! We ended up renting a jeep, paying four hundred dollars just for 5 days. They said it is high because it is Christmas time. So there we drove to Embassy Suites. The drive was only 1-1/2 hours and we get to see very beautiful mountains and granite rocks that are not available in Texas. No snow on the way. Lake Tahoe is 2 hours ahead, but we still get so tired, don't know why. It was only 4pm and we all fell asleep :P

12/23/2011 DAY 2

The breakfast was delicious, this package includes a cooked breakfast buffet every morning - of which we enjoy thoroughly. As soon as we finished breakfast, we drove to Ski Run Rental and rented the snowboard, boots, jackets, pants etc. Then we headed to Sierra which is a small ski slope. There were not that many people, and still no snow, they just blew the snow .o. Bo took the snowboarding lesson. J and I watched from the cafe. In the evening, Bo and I went shopping at the Heavenly Village.

12/24/2011 DAY3

After breakfast, we walked to the Heavenly Gondola. Then we took a very nice ski lift ride up the Heavenly Mountain, reaching over ten thousand feet above sea level. Umh, still no snowing, but they have snow. There were a lot of people here. The waits were painfully long. Bo and I rode the tube down. I fell on the standing lift up. We have to hold on to a round tube with the lift moving like 5 miles and hour, somehow, I lost balance and I fell and knocked off 8 other people like a domino. LOL. I can't get up because the lift was still moving, so I had jump to the side, finally a guy helped me up. I didn't want to go up again. But the tubing down was fun. Bo did a lot of snowboarding. We finished up at about 5pm, then I went to dip in the hot tub at the hotel thereafter. It was nice.

12/25/2011 DAY 4

It is Christmas Day! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Today is the day we get rich ---NOT. Anyway we didn't go skiing today, it is our gaming day. After a heavy, heavy breakfast, we relaxed and walked slowly to the Harrah Hotel where the casinos are. J and I played the slot machine. I stuck with the penny machine, because I am cheap cheap. We said we will set aside $100 each to gamble. Then I saw every table that I visited, people only lost their money. I work too hard for my money, I am not about to let if flow away like water. We spent the same amount of time, at the end of several hours J said he finally figured out how to win. I said Ha? I don't think so. He lost $40 and I lost $2. Who is the winner here? LOL. Next we walked to Harvey casino, we didn't play. Bo spent time at the arcades. Next we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and went back to the hotel quite early because they are both attracted to the cable TV.

12/26/2011 DAY 5

Finally gathered enough courage to ski. Yep. It was fun. I only fell once. I am scary cat. But mostly it is very tiring. Bo had a great great time. In the evening we went to enjoy a wonderful american buffet at the 18th floor of Harrah. The line was extremely long but the wait is worth it. It was a lot a lot of food and they are so absolutely delicious! We ate till we dropped. This entire restaurant was full. Lake Tahoe is full of 50% chinese (speaking Mandarin, so not ABC) and 50% Indian. It was incredible, you would think you are in China or something. This 5-day vacation seems to just fly by, but we had a great time and a great memory.

WHEN HEAVEN BURNS

2011-12-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

林保怡：年少多好，顽劣多好不甘安于封建制度里，迷信上街真理会达到旗帜高举，群众声讨不惜牺牲一切去上诉，权贵的想法太俗套只可惜生活是一堆挫折，只可惜生命是必须妥协。陈豪：年少多好，贫困多好一蚊积蓄足以快乐到，廉价吉他抒发我暴躁财富得到，命岁不保捐输不必讲究有回报，人世间总会有异数只可惜生活是一声发泄，只可惜生命是一声抱歉，怕追讨合：如果，命运能选择，十字街口你我踏出的每步更潇洒如果，活着能坦白，旧日所相信价值不必接受时代的糟蹋黄德斌：年少多好，朋友多好一番争执不会有被告，游戏竞争不会记入脑年岁增长，无法修补青春的诗总会老，时间多恐怖合：如果，命运能选择，十字街口你我踏出的每步无用困惑如果，活着能坦白，旧日所相信价值今天发现还未老如果，命运能演习，现实中每步不致接纳一生每步残酷抉择留守，过去的想法，我会否好像这样生于世上无目的鞭挞

http://youtu.be/2_7UTxWNQM4

DIDN'T GET THE JOB

2011-12-21T19:03:00.000-08:00

My dream ended. That job is showing "filled" so I guess they selected someone else. Oh well, I am disappointed, but what else is new in life :(
Today we were going to eat Peking duck at Peking Cuisine but when we arrived at the restaurant, it has a very bad odor so we left and went to Yao Ming's restaurant. However we had to wait like 30 minutes, not so happy. After lunch I met with the China investor regarding Hamilton Court. Next I got a very nice massage and we got home around 6pm to pack. Ready to fly early in the morning tomorrow.

2011 TOP TEN NEWS

2011-12-20T21:28:00.000-08:00

Here are 2011’s top 10 stories

(1)OSAMA BIN LADEN’S DEATH: He’d been the world’s most-wanted terrorist for nearly a decade, ever since a team of his al-Qaida followers carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In May, the long and often-frustrating manhunt ended with a nighttime assault by a helicopter-borne special operations squad on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden was shot dead by one of the raiders, and within hours his body was buried at sea.power
(2)JAPAN’S TRIPLE DISASTER: A 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan’s northeast coast in March unleashed a tsunami that devastated scores of communities, leaving nearly 20,000 people dead or missing and wreaking an estimated $218 billion in damage. The tsunami triggered the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl after waves knocked out the cooling system at a nuclear power plant, causing it to spew radiation that turned up in local produce. About 100,000 people evacuated from the area have not returned to their homes.money
(3) NORTH KOREA LEADER DIED: At age 69 the leader of North Korea died of a heart attack on December 17th.power
(4) EU FISCAL CRISIS: The European Union was wracked by relentless fiscal turmoil. In Greece, austerity measures triggered strikes, protests and riots, while Italy’s economic woes toppled Premier Silvio Berlusconi. France and Germany led urgent efforts to ease the debt crisis; Britain balked at proposed changes.money
(5) APPLE LEADER DIED: Steve Job died of cancer.money
( 6) PENN STATE SEX ABUSE SCANDAL: One of America’s most storied college football programs was tarnished in a scandal that prompted the firing of Hall of Fame football coach Joe Paterno. One of his former assistants, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of sexually molesting 10 boys; two senior Penn State officials were charged with perjury; and the longtime president was ousted. Paterno wasn’t charged, but expressed regret he didn’t do more after being told there was a problem. sex
(7) GADHAFI TOPPLED IN LIBYA: After nearly 42 years of mercurial and often brutal rule, Moammar Gadhafi was toppled by his own people. Anti-government protests escalated into an eight-month rebellion, backed by NATO bombing, that shattered his regime, and Gadhafi finally was tracked down and killed in the fishing village where he was born.power
(8) TROOPS HOME: US withdraw troops from the middle east and come home in December 2011.power
(9) OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTS: It began Sept. 17 with a protest at a New York City park near Wall Street, and within weeks spread to scores of communities across the U.S. and abroad. The movement depicted itself as leaderless and shied away from specific demands, but succeeded in airing its complaint that the richest 1 percent of Americans benefit at the expense of the rest. As winter approached, local police dismantled several of the protest encampments.money
(10) GABRIELLE GIFFORDS SHOT: The popular third-term congresswoman from Arizona suffered a severe brain injury when she and 18 other people were shot by a gunman as she met with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket in January. Six people died, and Giffords’ painstaking recovery is still in progress.power

A LAZY DAY FOR ME

2011-12-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

Today Bo got her first paycheck. Yeah! $99 plus dollars. And she listened to me, 1/3 for the family, 1/3 for bank savings and 1/3 cash she gets to buy want she wants. I am so happy for my little honey!! She is responsible, motivated, energetic, reasonable and still know how to have fun! She also got accepted by UH :) Well today I spend the laziest day of my life. I did NOTHING!!! Ha ha ha. J cooked a turkey. Somehow the turkey is not as attractive when it is not shared by a lot of people like Thanksgiving. Yesterday was our last working day and we get 2 weeks off for the Christmas holidays. My joy diminishes since I have not heard about the job yet. I have not been rejected but still, it is taking that long, it means I am probably not their first choice. My hope for this job is now only 10%. Well, I've learned to accept it. I'll just look forward to my Singapore trip in July and then do the planning after the trip. For the first half of 2012 I will stay put and be good I guess. Oh well! What can I say - a minority among other people and people's country, it is even lucky that I have a job. No ambition. I'm just happy that good things are happening to my baby! I really really want her to have the BEST of the BEST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ACCEPTED

2011-12-12T17:29:00.000-08:00

Bo has been accepted by HBU and they awarded her $44,000 in scholarship! This is a complete surprise! Very happy!!! Wow :)

FOUND MY DREAM HOUSE

2011-12-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

Bo worked at the restaurant at 11:30am, J and I went to look at the houses in the Medical center again. Came across this house, brand new with a fountain pond right in the front and I love it so much. The price is very high though, without selling Leafwind we don't have enough for the downpayment. I am hoping that we can get the VA loan to do this. I really really like it! J still likes the Allison house because of the extra land. But it is 9 years old and so "lived in." New job, new house, Bo going to new university...all happening at one time. I am very excited.

PLEASE HURRY

2011-12-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

I am depressed today because they have not moved forward with the offer. I spoke to the recruiter and he said may be next week. I just can't wait through the weekend again!! I hate waiting. But what to do? I need to make plans. But nothing is firmed up. However I am still enthusiatic though. Please hurry hurry!!!

STILL WAITING

2011-12-08T19:59:00.001-08:00

They called my boss already. Hee hee hee!!!!

2 interesting youtube:--

http://youtu.be/n_sYoOLd9I4

http://youtu.be/oJS8GszWJuQ

FOR ALL YOU KIDS OF THE TIGER MOM OUT THERE...

2011-12-04T10:09:00.000-08:00

Asians are smart? Hee hee, read this:

"Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white. "I didn't want to put 'Asian' down," Olmstead says, "because my mom told me there's discrimination against Asians in the application process."
For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it's harder for them to gain admission to the nation's top colleges. Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges' admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination. The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.
Now, an unknown number of students are responding to this concern by declining to identify themselves as Asian on their applications. For those with only one Asian parent, whose names don't give away their heritage, that decision can be relatively easy. Harder are the questions that it raises: What's behind the admissions difficulties? What, exactly, is an Asian-American — and is being one a choice?
Olmstead is a freshman at Harvard and a member of HAPA, the Half-Asian People's Association. In high school she had a perfect 4.0 grade-point average and scored 2150 out of a possible 2400 on the SAT, which she calls "pretty low." College applications ask for parent information, so Olmstead knows that admissions officers could figure out a student's background that way. She did write in the word "multiracial" on her own application.
Still, she would advise students with one Asian parent to "check whatever race is not Asian." "Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, perfect GPAs, ... so it's hard to let them all in," Olmstead says.
Amalia Halikias is a Yale freshman whose mother was born in America to Chinese immigrants; her father is a Greek immigrant. She also checked only the "white" box on her application. "As someone who was applying with relatively strong scores, I didn't want to be grouped into that stereotype," Halikias says. "I didn't want to be written off as one of the 1.4 billion Asians that were applying."Her mother was "extremely encouraging" of that decision, Halikias says, even though she places a high value on preserving their Chinese heritage. "Asian-American is more a scale or a gradient than a discrete combination . I think it's a choice," Halikias says. But leaving the Asian box blank felt wrong to Jodi Balfe, a Harvard freshman who was born in Korea and came here at age 3 with her Korean mother and white American father. She checked the box against the advice of her high school guidance counselor, teachers and friends. "I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to hide half of my ethnic background," Balfe says. "It's been a major influence on how I developed as a person. It felt like selling out, like selling too much of my soul." "I thought admission wouldn't be worth it. It would be like only half of me was accepted."
Other students, however, feel no conflict between a strong Asian identity and their response to what they believe is injustice. "If you know you're going to be discriminated against, it's absolutely justifiable to not check the Asian box," says Halikias.
Immigration from Asian countries was heavily restricted until laws were changed in 1965. When the gates finally opened, many Asian arrivals were well-educated, endured hardships to secure more opportunities for their families, and were determined to seize the American dream through effort and education. These immigrants, and their descendants, often demanded that children work as hard as humanly possible to achieve. Parental respect is paramount in Asian culture, so many children have obeyed — and excelled.
"Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best," wrote Amy Chua, only half tongue-in-cheek, in her recent best-selling book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." "Chinese parents can say, 'You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you,'" Chua wrote. "By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out."
Of course, not all Asian-Americans fit this stereotype. They are not always obedient hard workers who get top marks. Some embrace American rather than Asian culture. Their economic status, ancestral countries and customs vary, and their forebears may have been rich or poor. But compared with American society in general, Asian-Americans have developed a much stronger emphasis on intense academic preparation as a path to a handful of the very best schools.
"The whole Tiger Mom stereotype is grounded in truth," says Tao Tao Holmes, a Yale sophomore with a Chinese-born mother and white American father. She did not check "Asian" on her application. "My math scores aren't high enough for the Asian box," she says. "I say it jokingly, but there is the underlying sentiment of, if I had emphasized myself as Asian, I would have (been expected to) excel more in stereotypically Asian-dominated subjects."
"I was definitely held to a different standard (by my mom), and to different standards than my friends," Holmes says. She sees the same rigorous academic focus among many other students with immigrant parents, even non-Asian ones.
Does Holmes think children of American parents are generally spoiled and lazy by comparison? "That's essentially what I'm trying to say."
Asian students have higher average SAT scores than any other group, including whites. A study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it's 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.
Top schools that don't ask about race in admissions process have very high percentages of Asian students. The California Institute of Technology, a private school that chooses not to consider race, is about one-third Asian. (Thirteen percent of California residents have Asian heritage.) The University of California-Berkeley, which is forbidden by state law to consider race in admissions, is more than 40 percent Asian — up from about 20 percent before the law was passed.
Steven Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon and a vocal critic of current admissions policies, says there is a clear statistical case that discrimination exists.
"The actual dynamics of how it happens are really quite subtle," he says, mentioning factors like horse-trading among admissions officers for their favorite candidates.Also, "when Asians are the largest group on campus, I can easily imagine a fund-raiser saying, 'This is jarring to our alumni,'" Hsu says. Noting that most Ivy League schools have roughly the same percentage of Asians, he wonders if "that's the maximum number where diversity is still good, and it's not, 'we're being overwhelmed by the yellow horde.'" Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania declined to make admissions officers available for interviews for this story. Kara Miller helped review applications for Yale as an admissions office reader, and participated in meetings where admissions decisions were made. She says it often felt like Asians were held to a higher standard.
"Asian kids know that when you look at the average SAT for the school, they need to add 50 or 100 to it. If you're Asian, that's what you'll need to get in," says Miller, now an English professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
Highly selective colleges do use much more than SAT scores and grades to evaluate applicants. Other important factors include extracurricular activities, community service, leadership, maturity, engagement in learning, and overcoming adversity. Admissions preferences are sometimes given to the children of alumni, the wealthy and celebrities, which is an overwhelmingly white group. Recruited athletes get breaks. Since the top colleges say diversity is crucial to a world-class education, African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders also may get in despite lower scores than other applicants.
A college like Yale "could fill their entire freshman class twice over with qualified Asian students or white students or valedictorians," says Rosita Fernandez-Rojo, a former college admissions officer who is now director of college counseling at Rye Country Day School outside of New York City. But applicants are not ranked by results of a qualifications test, she says — "it's a selection process.""People are always looking for reasons they didn't get in," she continues. "You can't always know what those reasons are. Sometimes during the admissions process they say, 'There's nothing wrong with that kid. We just don't have room.'"
In the end, elite colleges often don't have room for Asian students with outstanding scores and grades.
That's one reason why Harvard freshman Heather Pickerell, born in Hong Kong to a Taiwanese mother and American father, refused to check any race box on her application.
"I figured it might help my chances of getting in," she says. "But I figured if Harvard wouldn't take me for refusing to list my ethnicity, then maybe I shouldn't go there."
She considers drawing lines between different ethnic groups a form of racism — and says her ethnic identity depends on where she is.
"In America, I identify more as Asian, having grown up there, and actually being Asian, and having grown up in an Asian family," she says. "But when I'm back in Hong Kong I feel more American, because everyone there is more Asian than I am."
Holmes, the Yale sophomore with the Chinese-born mother, also has problems fitting herself into the Asian box — "it doesn't make sense to me."
"I feel like an American," she says, "...an Asian person who grew up in America."Susanna Koetter, a Yale junior with an American father and Korean mother, was adamant about identifying her Asian side on her application. Yet she calls herself "not fully Asian-American. I'm mixed Asian-American. When I go to Korea, I'm like, blatantly white."
And yet, asked whether she would have considered leaving the Asian box blank, she says: "That would be messed up. I'm not white."
"Identity is very malleable," says Jasmine Zhuang, a Yale junior whose parents were both born in Taiwan. She didn't check the box, even though her last name is a giveaway and her essay was about Asian-American identity.
"Looking back I don't agree with what I did," Zhuang says. "It was more like a symbolic action for me, to rebel against the higher standard placed on Asian-American applicants.""There's no way someone's race can automatically tell you something about them, or represent who they are to an admissions committee," Zhuang says. "Using race by itself is extremely dangerous."
Hsu, the physics professor, says that if the current admissions policies continue, it will become more common for Asian students to avoid identifying themselves as such, and schools will have to react. "They'll have to decide: A half-Asian kid, what is that? I don't think they really know." The lines are already blurred at Yale, where almost 26,000 students applied for the current freshman class, according to the school's web site.
About 1,300 students were admitted. Twenty percent of them marked the Asian-American box on their applications; 15 percent of freshmen marked two or more ethnicities.
Ten percent of Yale's freshmen class did not check a single box."

THE WAITING GAME

2011-12-03T18:35:00.000-08:00

I hate the waiting game. Unfortunately that's what it is now. By Friday still no news yet, so frustrated. The more disappointing thing is that the sale of the rental house fell through. Oh well :( Then Gary W. called me about the house. We might have a deal here.
Saturday J and I went to "exercise" hee hee I walked 10 minutes. But it feels very good. I don't know why I don't do this more often. After that we went to eat Pho and then slept all afternoon. At night we had a steamboat at home. Bo began her training last Sunday at Eggroll. She is taking the SAT and then goes to the Mall with KK. Tomorrow she will work from 11 to 3. My girl is working!!!!!!!

HOPE I GET THE JOB!

2011-11-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went for the interview at Methodist. J took me there and we gave ourselves plenty of time to find the place, park and relax. I met the recruiter first and he took me to the office and I saw a big, cute dog there! Very surprise. But I think I did the interview well! Then we to pick up the medals for the school, ate at Myoka, went to Buffalo Speedway and check out the houses again, then got my flu shot. I hope I get this JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JUST ANOTHER DAY

2011-11-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was rainy a bit and we didn't go out. There were a lot of horror story on "Black Friday" with people looting, pepper spraying, stealing merchandise. I think people's gone mad already. Today J and I went to Ranch 99 and had tofu soup. It is not as good as the one at Da Jeung Gum, but since it was so cold out there (55 degrees) the hot soup really hit the spot. We shopped for a while and was wanting to go to YMCA to exercise. I fell asleep in the car and J fell asleep while driving the car! He got a rude awakening, thereafter we went home and slept through the rest of the day.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

2011-11-26T07:35:00.000-08:00

It was a very nice Thanksgiving party. We had 7 adults and 10 kids. Atmosphere was relaxing and the kids sure know how to have fun. 8 of the kids played till after 11pm. Ellen was great, she helped cook the whole meal, J got tired very quickly. We had avery happy thanksgiving and thank you God for everything!

IT IS A GREAT DAY!

2011-11-23T16:00:00.000-08:00

It is a great day! In the morning I did 2 assignments for interpretation at Hermann and J volunteered to take me there. It is so kind of him, that eliminates my stress in driving and looking for the place. I was done by 11 something and we went to eat vegetarian food at Chinatown. After we got home, J and Bobo began cleaning the stair carpets. I got an email to confirm my interview next week. I was happy about that. Also we have a contract to lease the house and offer to buy. All of this works out perfect. Bo also got a job at the restaurant, yeah! I just pray I get this job so I don't have to worry about job security for next year anymore.

I AM OPTIMISTIC

2011-11-22T13:51:00.000-08:00

Well it is kind of disappointing. I got all ready for the interview and he cancelled it and move it to next Tuesday. Now I have to worry another whole week. Last night I even went and dyed my hair and I would really not want to miss work today. But he said he was going to call at 8:30 but he didn't. So I called at 9:30am and that is when he told me that it is cancelled. Oh well, at least I still have a chance. So I just spent a lazy day at home. I cleaned out the study room and the small bath room. Still a lot to do but I am going slowly. House got leased too, hopefully the sale will go through as well. I am optimistic.

RELAXING DAY

2011-11-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

Doing full prep for this interview. Very excited! Also prepping for Thanksgiving party. I think it is going to be fabulous! Last night, we went to Ms Borden's daughter fifteenth year old party, it is a very big deal for spanish girls to turn fifteen. They have a big dinner and dance. Today is a very relaxing day - for watching TV, house cleaning, cooking and eating.

HAPPY

2011-11-18T15:58:00.000-08:00

So happi!!!!!!!!!!!Got an interview next week! Wish me LUCK!!!!!!!!

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE

2011-11-13T07:13:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought I have good health, the acupuncturist told me yesterday that my blood pressure measures 160/80, the high end is stage 2 hypertension already. Recently my neck and back pain just persisted so I went to get needles poked. I will need to reduce my sodium intake, and yes I love salt. I have already cut sugar, now salt? really all pleasure of life is gone! (sighed) We looked at 2 houses in Sugarland, we really like it, but Leafwind house is not closing yet. (another sighed) Then we saw this beautiful parrot in the backyard - just sitting there! We tried curry at Thai Spice and we both like it. Later we brought food to Ellen. Her eye can see now, thank goodness!

NOTHING BEATS A HEALTHY BODY

2011-11-05T18:11:00.000-07:00

We looked at 2 Sugarland houses today and there seem to be foundation problem with them. The size is enormous. But we are still back to the problem with driving. After that we ate at Chinatown then buy some food for Ellen. Ellen had eye surgery because her retna detached from the eyeball and she is blind if the surgery fails. We won't know the outcome of the surgery till 3 weeks later. I was surprised, I was told by the eye doctor over 10 years ago that my retna is going to detach, but I don't think it actually happens because I have not had any problems so far. Touch Wood. Anyway you look at it, even if you are rich, smart or beautiful.......nothing beats a healthy body!

A DAY OF REST

2011-11-04T17:52:00.001-07:00

Actually I was called for an interpretation assignment during surgery and I declined because it was too early to start-7am, it was very cold this morning, like in the 40s, then I lost confidence of my interpretation for surgical medical terms. In the end I just had a good rest at home, cleaning the kitchen! Then after Bo got off school, we went to see Tower Heist. It is a real low-class movie but very fun and entertaining. I like it. After that we ate at TGIF, oh my steak was sooooooo tough, I think I can throw it from the 10th floor down and it still won't soften. But I enjoy the family time together :)

Renaissance Festival

2011-10-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

Continued to look for houses at the medical center and by the lake. Don't have any yet so far. Yesterday we went to the Renaissance Festival, 3 adults and 4 kids. Bo dressed up as Robin Hood, she made the outfit herself. I was so tired by 5pm, I fell asleep at the entrance. The turkey leg was great but the funnel cake didn't seem as good. The glass-blowing show was still amazing even though I have seen it before.

MY WORLD AND THE WORLD

2011-10-22T16:12:00.001-07:00

Is it stress all week that causes me to go on a shopping spree today at the mall? Bo got a $50 jacket and $20 boots and I got $110 Ugg boots and $20 tennis shoes, plus 4 christmas presents for co-workers. This week one of my ladies P complained to my boss that I singled her out to decline her request of leaving work to take a book to her son. I told my boss that we need to get out of the culture of letting staff leave work to run errands all the time as they like. He is on my side. She also feels that I keep referring her to my boss and I explained that my referral is so that they have an option of going to the next level when request is being denied by me. Actually I have been extra lenient with her all the time and she knew it. But like a spoiled little girl that cannot get her way she tried my tolerance level by going to my boss to show her fangs. End of friendship! That's it P. While this is my messy world, out there are news of a much bigger messy world as:

President Barack Obama declared that US forces will leave by year-end, but some spoke of concern the pullout could further destabilise their country. The decision to withdraw all remaining soldiers in the country came after nearly nine years of war and the deaths of more than 4,400 US troops.

Muammar Gaddafi, leader of libya was killed this week. His blood-streaked body was on display in a commercial freezer at a shopping centre on Friday as Libyan authorities argued about what to do with his remains and questions deepened over official accounts of the long-time dictator's death. New video emerged of his violent, chaotic last moments, showing fighters beating him as they drag him away. Nearly every aspect of Thursday's killing of Gaddafi was mired in confusion, a sign of the difficulties ahead for Libya.

A Chinese toddler Yue Yue who was ignored by 18 passers-by as she lay critically injured in the street after being run over by two vehicles has died. The surveillance camera footage of people walking past the two-year-old girl, as she lay bleeding and unconscious sparked a wave of condemnation and soul-searching on China's hugely popular social networking sites.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is still ongoing strong. The protests were initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters. They are mainly protesting social and economic inequality , corporate greed, and the power and influence of corporations, particularly from the financial service sector, and of lobbyists , over government. The participants' slogan "We are the 99%" refers to the difference in wealth between the top 1% and the other citizens of the United States . Similar demonstrations were either ongoing or had been held in 70 major cities and over 600 communities in the U.S., including the estimated 100,000 people who demonstrated on October 15. Internationally, other "Occupy" protests have modeled themselves after Occupy Wall Street, in over 900 cities worldwide. Rush Limbaugh said: "When I was 10 years old I was more self-sufficient than this parade of human debris calling itself Occupy Wall Street." Glenn Beck said, "Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you are wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you. They will do it. They’re not messing around". Rejection of the capitalist system and the policies that OWS protesters advocate, including limits on trade and student loan forgiveness, would not lead to improved economic conditions for unemployed Americans. According to Brownfield, the Foundation believes it is "right to decry out-of-control bailouts and corporate subsidies" and there are valid concerns regarding the economy, unemployment rates and low job creation. However, Heritage argued that capitalism is key to improving the economy and that the movement is focusing on the wrong solutions to the problems they protest: it should be protesting the expansion of government instead of calling for more government intervention.

This crazy guy Terry Thompson let loose over 50 wild animals in the neighborhood before he committed suicide because he was mad at his neighbor. The deputies shot 49 animals and saving only six before experts with tranquilizer guns arrived. They are three leopards, grizzly bears, bengal tigers and monkeys. No they don't have to kill all these animals!!! People are coward and bullying! Poor animals :(

2011-10-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to the Allison house and Bellaire house with Ellen and Amy. Then we went to eat Dim Sum. Today we looked at one at Bingle and another one with lake and swimming pool. The Bellaire house does not have a yard for our dogs, the Bingle house is in a bad neighborhood and the lake house is too old-1999. In the end I keep thinking it over and over and over again. The final negotiated price is really a good deal. I don't think we should pass. So finally at 9pm today I told J that we we need to go with the Allison house.

PLAY WITH FIRE AND GET BURNT

2011-10-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

Chinese proverb says: If you go to the mountain many times, you will meet a tiger.....in English we say: Play with fire and you will get burnt. Today they caught a worker ........during work on camera OMG OMG, she got fired. Boss was upset, poor thing he is so stressed. I had to do this crazy report for the afterschool program, taking like 30 files, so crazy, then I didn't see the auditor today? Well, we met half way on the price of the house plus the lot, 265K, cut 1% of my commission. It is a really good price. We are going to see the house again tomorrow with friends. Bo went to the football game and Cy-Fair wins again!!! Straight win this year with no Loss. Woohoo!

SO BUSY

2011-10-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

I am so so busy now. Let's see, first the rental house is on contract now. Yeah! This Saturday we had the wierdest experience with the house hunting at midtown. The owner was a famous person, somehow got into something and the house looks like he had to go out of town in a hurry. We were shocked by someone in the house when we went there. Then I found out a person with the same exact name, born one year difference, but came from the same state, same weight, same height.....how scary and he's an escaped murderer! I can't get it out of my head, I kept thinking and thinking about how this can happen?? Work is also very hectic, boss told me that one counselor is ready to go, auditor suddenly came in, I am doing the charity, chemical safety and benefits training. Appraisal is also due this month, asap reports are due Friday. Also Ida called me and we talked about interpretation, she said the market has gone down a lot.

WHAT IS WITH ME!

2011-10-08T17:16:00.000-07:00

OK OK OK OK OK.........................I don't know what is with ME! Work is finalized, looks like all our jobs will stay intact! Thanks to my budgeting skills! hee hee I must take credit for that, having to operate with $800 thousand dollars less is no easy job; but I balance it! That is why my boss is now so nice to me. For the past 3 weeks, we have been combing the Medical Center area, the houses are not well made, average prices, but we are looking for less driving for me and Bo in the near future. Today one house in my dream Lismore Lake opens up, oh I love it so much. Bo too. Then J even more. Wah lah! but it's under a contract. Then our Leafwind also got an offer today. Great. So we look at more houses. Tomorrow going to see another one again. Bo is in her pretty blue dress, attending her senior year homecoming dance. She is excited about the homecoming and the upcoming PROM. My girl is a big girl. I think I am suffering from a potential detachment threat from my girl.............My mind is just totally not settling these days. Why? I don't know why? Seriously what is with me!!!

STEVE JOBS DIED

2011-10-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs, an Apple innovator and visionary died today at 56. He was almost exactly 1 year older than me. Born 2/24/1955. His journey is not a blank, not a waste - what about me!

I AM CRAZY

2011-10-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if I am crazy. I am crazy because right now I am doing so many things at one time. I am applying as citizen, studying to get the interpretation license, applying universities for Bo, finding houses in midtown, applying for jobs, preparing for Shu's visit and getting airplane tickets for Singapore trip, plus continuing working 3 jobs, starting at 6am in the morning and don't get home till 7pm......................ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, am I crazy!!!
Today we went to show Leafwind again, but it is a no-show, so we went to do a second viewing of the 2 houses at Sandra Ann. Then we looked at 2 new ones at Buffalo Speedway. They are located inside a manned security subdivision and the houses in there look fabulous. We all fell in love with the 4 storey house, but it is too expensive. I found out that it is asking for $324K - way out of my budget. So we are going with the shortsale one, I am offering $200K. I hope they will take it. I am planning on closing end of November. I will rent it out for 6 months, then move in in May 2012. We will have 6 months to clean up and fix up the cypress house for sale. In June 2012 we should move in. In July we go to Singapore. In August Bo goes to college.

TYPICAL DAY IN U.S. CLASSROOM

2011-09-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZldVbeuHW8&feature=player_embedded

Nothing actually is surprising. This happens in our classrooms everyday. Teachers have a very hard job now. They can't teach because of all the interruptions and social mediations plus parenting that they have to do.

HOME EARLY

2011-09-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Today is a fall holiday for teachers and students, but not for me. I just worked half day anyway because my boss let me go home. He's been very nice to me lately. He's also hinting that he is leaving next year. I had lunch with J and stuffed ourselves silly. Then I went with Bo to take her senior pictures. Home around 4pm. It is thundering now. Wow we had this drought for so long. Spoke to SC the other day, she and family may be coming in November. So happi looking forward to seeing her.

LOOKED AT 2 HOMES

2011-09-24T14:13:00.001-07:00

The tension between me and the sec is off and on. She keeps trying to do "projects" instead of "duties" to prove that she can do what I do. Then she flopped and boss gets mad at her. Boss also got mad at Plancky, she's really sharp and fast, but still lack the professionalism required for a professional. LOL. This weekend, we went to look at 2 homes in Stella Link, a location very close to the medical center and we really like them. I am hoping to sell the Leafwind home and use it to buy the new house. We will see. Bo is busy with soccer every Sunday and D.I. every Saturday. We ate fish today!

FIRST STEAMBOAT

2011-09-18T17:11:00.000-07:00

YUMMY! HOMEMADE STEAMBOAT.

CONTAGION

2011-09-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

This has been a stressful week, what else is new. The kids are behaving better though, but enrollment is still a problem. The ladies are very nice to me this week, they all bought me lunch. But Ms. S is upset with me, starting from her email complaining of more work to the downgrading of her job. I sent emails out to staff reminding of their responsibility and got attacked as well. Boss consoled me, he said he gets tons of those everyday. Thursday night was late working the volleyball game till 7 pm. Friday we went to see "Contagion." We like it very much!

DON'T WORRY

2011-09-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

I have been so worry lately......about so many things.
Last night I didn't get to sleep till after 12 midnight because I am so worry.............
THEREFORE, TODAY I AM GOING TO ADVISE MYSELF:
DON'T WORRY
Well, I guess my worries began with the budget cut, having to squeeze the dollar at work so as not to cut teachers, co workers and even myself. It is a blood dripping job -how do you squeeze blood out of stone?
I finally balance the budget, by moving the copiers and 1 teacher position over to title I dollars and cutting CIS program. I began grabbing all the opportunities to write grants, I got 60 free donated computers for the kids, I got free parent computer classes for the students' parents......my boss is starting to like me. Today someone came and told me that he said he trusts everything I do. Happy. But the sec. seems jealous. She has a jealous nature. And the clerks are still bickering a lot. I sent an email out to ask them to work as a team yesterday, people are still fighting for their jobs.
Because of the instability in my job, I have applied many jobs and yet not a single one asks me for interview. Super disappointed. Starting to doubt my credentials. Starting to hurt my career pride. The additional cost of the new car and insurance weighed me down. Also planning on vacation next year made me conscious of spending habit. Am I going to have enough money to have a great vacation in Singapore? Or am I going to squeeze every dollar out? Here goes the worry.
Looking at the citizenship issue again. Should I do it or should I not do it. Am I making the right decision? How is that going to affect my future residence? Cost another over $600. Don't know, don't know, don't know.
Tenant in Leafwind is moving out end of this month. Then found out the value of the house drops from over $100 thousand to $66 thousand. Major financial hit! Upset. Facing potential loss rent. Oh this is financial again.
Bo's going to college. UH or UT? UT or UH? Average school - not a bright future. Good school - but very expensive. Can I afford it? Can I afford to retire?Should I retire? Would I lost my job before I retire? If I retire, can I make the same money with interpretation. Yesterday I turned down 5 interpretation jobs. I am so tired driving 66 miles every day. I really want to live close to where I work. But we cannot afford to move now. So when should I move if not now? How? When? Where? I am worry again and again and again.
OK, I am now going to blow all the air out of my lungs, take a deep breath, pop my neck to one side and tell myself: DON'T WORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

9/11 REMEMBERED

2011-09-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

Close your eyes and picture Sept. 11. The memories are cauterized, familiar forever. The second plane banks and slides in, the fireball blooms, the towers peel away as if unzipped from the top.
Start with the Tuesday morning and the blue sky and walk through the day from two perspectives, inside and out. From that of a man who managed to survive above the impact zone in the south tower and from that of the helpless, watching world.
In those first two hours, before anyone could put together the full, awful picture, chaos filled in the gaps.
No one knew exactly what was happening, or how vast, or at whose hand. No one knew, for a time, that the instruments of destruction were not prop planes but jumbo jets. At the very first, almost no one knew there were planes at all.
Brian Clark was working at Euro Brokers, on the 84th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. He arrived at about 7:15 a.m., had his cup of coffee, went about the morning's chores.
A "loud double boom" is the first thing he remembers. Then flickering of the lights in his office. Something caught his peripheral vision. He spun around. His view usually looked out over the Hudson River. The river and the sky.
"It was filled with flame," he says. "Two yards from my nose is the window, and it's right against the glass, almost swirling. I can't recall whether there was a flash of heat. But the bright glass — you were in the fire. The flames washed right up."
It was 8:46 a.m.
For reference, Clark sometimes tells people to imagine a three-by-three grid, like the first nine digits on a telephone keypad. The north tower sat where 1 would be, the south tower at 8.
Clark's office faced west, near the southwest corner of the 8 button. American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the north face of the north tower, the top of the 1 button.
Since the 1993 bombing of the trade center's underground garage, Clark had volunteered as a fire marshal for his floor. Now, as if on autopilot, he grabbed the flashlight, grabbed the whistle.
He remembers encouraging his colleagues to leave the floor. He also remembers one of them, a woman, spinning around from the window in shock and tears, and telling him that people were jumping.
Clark called his wife. "Something's happened next door," he says he told her, "but we're OK."
Just then, the network television morning shows, where the top stories of the day had included whether Michael Jordan might make a comeback in the NBA, cut for the first time to a live shot of the gashed north tower of the World Trade Center.
The first alert on the national news wire of The Associated Press moved at 33 seconds past 8:53 a.m.: Plane crashes into World Trade Center, according to television reports.
___
At about 8:55, Clark remembers a voice over the PA system: "Building Two is secure."
Eight minutes later, at 9:03, he was standing outside his office and talking with a coworker, Bobby Coll. They were 2 feet to a yard apart, he thinks, eye to eye.
In an instant, "the room exploded."
The feeling was of tremendous air compression. Then things so secure no one ever gave them a thought, things like the lights and the floor, came loose. For several harrowing, torqueing seconds, it seemed the building itself might go over. The power went out.
"Everything was full of construction dust," Clark says. "Yellow, chalky, gritty air. As if you gave a demolition crew a week to destroy the floor, but it happened in a second. It was like someone had torn open a cement bag and just waved it in the air."
He remembers terrorism crossing his mind. He also thought something that seems ridiculous to him in hindsight. He remembers cursing and saying, "We've got to come back tomorrow and clean up this mess."
To the outside world, at 9:04, went the AP alert: "Explosion rocks second World Trade Center tower."
TV networks were in the middle of interviewing eyewitnesses to the first explosion when United Flight 175 approached, slipped into the south face of the south tower, and sent a mushrooming fireball out the other side.
"That looks like a second plane," Charles Gibson said on ABC.
"And now," Matt Lauer said on NBC's "Today" show, "you have to move from talk about a possible accident to talk about something deliberate that has happened here."
With people around the world now fixed on live pictures of the trade center, the puzzle was slowly coming into focus. The AP reported at 9:12: "FBI investigating reports of plane hijacking before World Trade Center crashes."
In Sarasota, Fla., President George W. Bush was reading to schoolchildren when Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, whispered news of the second crash into his ear. The color appeared to drain from Bush's face.
Inside the south tower, Clark was trying to lead a small, snaking line of people toward a central stairway and down from the 84th floor. Three floors into the trip, they were met by a woman, heading up.
"We've got to go higher," the woman said.
A debate ensued. Up or down. Clark shone his flashlight on whoever was talking. In the middle of the discussion, Clark heard a muffled scream for help coming from the 81st floor. He and a coworker, Ron DiFrancesco, went to investigate.
They squeezed through a crack between drywall and door frame.
"I have this very clear vision of all my coworkers turning around and starting up the stairs," Clark says. "And they all died."
Mid-rescue on the 81st floor, DiFrancesco was overcome by smoke, coughed and sputtered and turned back. Clark continued toward the stranger's voice. It was Stanley Praimnath, an executive with Fuji Bank.
To get to safety, Praimnath had to scale a toppled inside wall. Clark pulled him over on the second try. Clark fell on his back. They introduced themselves and told each other that they would be brothers for life.
They made it down to the 31st floor and called their wives to report that they were OK. It was just after 9:30 a.m. To the outside world, it was about to become clear that the disaster, whatever it was, was not limited to two skyscrapers in New York.
"Today we've had a national tragedy," the president told reporters and young children at the Florida elementary school. " Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country."
ABC showed pictures of smoke rising in the distance behind the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, southwest of the White House. A bewildered correspondent said she could not explain it.
"Want to hold our breath here, it just seems to me for a second," said Peter Jennings, the anchor, "and, and, and — and, and not get into a mode that the country is under attack."
At seven seconds past 9:43, another alert on the AP wire: "An aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon, witnesses say." It was American Flight 77. Seconds later, another alert said that the White House had been evacuated.
When Clark and Praimnath finally made it out of the south tower, they looked out at a moonscape. A plaza between the twin towers, normally brimming with life — a fountain, flowers — was abandoned and gray.
As they started toward Liberty Street, the southern boundary, and out of the trade center complex, a fireman told them to run for it. They saw no debris or falling bodies, and ran for it.
They made it into a deli, where, in one of the day's absurdist touches, a worker handed Clark a platter of sweet rolls and melons, wrapped in cellophane. "Take this," he said. "Nobody's coming for this today."
They wound up at Trinity Church, two blocks downtown. They stood gripping the iron railing around the cemetery, close to what they later learned was the burial site of Alexander Hamilton.
They argued about whether the south tower, burning high above, might collapse. Praimnath thought it would. "No way," Clark said. At 9:59, for no specific reason that Clark can remember, they turned and looked up.
It was, Clark says, as if they had been invited to witness the destruction.
"Floor by floor, it kind of dissolved in front of us," he says. "The white wave."
The south tower came down as if something were pulling on it from the top at a hundred different places. It left a column of gray smoke and sent a ghastly plume shooting through the streets of lower Manhattan.
The AP reported it first as a new explosion, then, having confirmed that the building was simply no longer there, moved the news as a flash, the highest priority: "One World Trade Center tower collapses."
Clark and Praimnath dived into a building on Broadway. Clark was still carrying the breakfast tray. He set it on a reception desk and two dozen people, taking refuge in the building, descended on it.
They stayed in the building for perhaps 45 minutes. Praimnath gave Clark a business card. Later, when they left and walked through lower Manhattan, stepping through ash as though it were new snow, they got separated.
Later, the card was only way Clark knew for sure that Praimnath was real, that it wasn't all some fantastic dream.
In the relative safety of the building's lobby, with the storm of ash swirling outside, they missed what happened next.
At 10:29 a.m., a second flash on the AP wire: "Second World Trade Center tower collapses."
Eight minutes later: "Large plane crashes in western Pennsylvania, officials at Somerset County Airport confirm."
The official times were 10:03, for the crash of United Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pa., and 10:28 a.m., for the collapse of the north tower of the World Trade Center.
In all, it had taken under two hours and almost 3,000 souls. The official count of the dead, adjusted slightly every so often in the years after the attack, including for some deaths from respiratory disease linked to the towers, was 2,977.
The count was 40 in Pennsylvania, 184 at the Pentagon and 2,753 at the World Trade Center.
Clark, who lived then and lives today in Mahwah, N.J., got off the island of Manhattan by ferry. He walked east and found that ferries to Jersey City, which usually leave from the west, along the Hudson River, had been diverted to the East River.
He remembers chugging through the dust of Sept. 11, around the base of Manhattan. He remembers "yammering" on the boat — all these people, trying to make sense of what had happened.
Only when the boat got to the Jersey side did Clark realize that both towers had collapsed.
"We come out of the fog, and now the trade center site is visible," he remembers. "And it's blue sky, and they're gone."

9/11 MEMORY

2011-09-10T06:14:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- For Tim Duffy, the day started with a postcard-perfect sky over Cape Cod. Within hours, everything changed.
From his jet fighter, Duffy had a ghastly bird's-eye view of lower Manhattan, watching the second tower of the World Trade Center collapse beneath him.
"Anytime I see it's a beautiful day to fly, I kind of think of that morning," recalls Duffy, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts Air National Guard at the time.
Duffy not only witnessed the most horrific day in modern U.S. history -- his story is one of the numerous footnotes in The 9/11 Commission Report.
"What struck me, particularly ... was a sense of responsibility," he said. "There was so much guilt shared by so many people that had nothing to feel guilty about.
"Ironically, at the time I think that feeling wasn't shared so deeply -- and I want to be fair -- as you go up the rungs."
CNN spoke to eight of the men listed in the commission report's footnotes -- the ticket agents, the pilot on alert to shoot down a passenger jet, the maintenance worker who took a phone call from a flight attendant on one of the ill-fated jets.
These people woke up on 9/11 expecting a routine day. Ten years later, the guilt over being unable to avert the disaster still looms for some.

The order to shoot
As he looked at the clear blue sky over Cape Cod on the morning of September 11, 2001, Lt. Col. Tim Duffy felt frustrated.
Duffy -- who was stationed at Otis Air Base but worked as a civilian pilot for United Airlines -- had flown the day before, so it was unlikely he'd get to go up in the skies on such a beautiful day.

Col. Tim Duffy may have gotten the toughest order on 9/11: be ready to shoot down a passenger plane.
Then, he got the call that would change his life forever.
He learned that American Airlines Flight 11 had possibly been hijacked.
Duffy and his wingman raced to the two jets that were "hot" --meaning armed with missiles.
He flew at supersonic speed toward New York City, figuring at his altitude he wouldn't break any windows -- and this was a national emergency.
But before he got there, he received a call that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. And then another.
Then, he reached the skies over Manhattan and couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"As I am looking at the square, it just started getting smaller,'' Duffy said. "I had no frame of reference for it ... and then as I am looking at it I see a plume coming out of the bottom and I realized it was falling away from me as I was looking at it."
What Duffy witnessed was the north tower and the beginning, he realized, of a war already under way.
"That was the only time during the day I was absolutely horrified," he said.
Three commission investigators interviewed by CNN said Duffy personified courage under fire.
He was told by superiors he might have to shoot down the next plane -- a plane that could have been carrying his United colleagues.
Soon into his flight to New York, Duffy was asked whether he would be able to pull the trigger on a passenger plane, if necessary.
"That kind of ticked me off, that's why it sticks in my memory, that call," he says. "After a 20-something-year career being [put] in that position.
"If I wasn't ready to do whatever was called for, I was the wrong person and that's it."
The three investigators said when they interviewed Duffy, the only time he showed emotion in recounting his actions that day was about that issue -- still upset that anyone would question his ability to answer the call of duty, first and foremost.

'Beware cockpit intrusion'
Chicago dispatcher Ed Ballinger still blames himself for the deaths of the passengers and crew on United Airlines Flight 93.
Ballinger was United Airlines flight dispatcher for 16 flights that day, including Flight 93. It was supposed to be his day off.
Ed Ballinger, a retired dispatcher, still worries about whether he adequately warned Flight 93 about cockpit intrusion.
After learning of the terror attacks in New York, Ballinger frantically typed out messages to pilots -- at least 122 in an hour --trying to warn the planes that one plane, possibly two, had hit the World Trade Center towers.
It is the message and response from Flight 93 that continues to haunt him.
"I thought of the most succinct [warning] message ... with the least amount of words," Ballinger said. "'Beware cockpit intrusion.'"
Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl replied in a written message, "Ed confirm."
In the four minutes it took for Ballinger to send the initial message and reply to Dahl's message, the hijackers had taken control of the plane.
The commission report would later confirm that the passengers, already aware of the other hijacking outcomes, rushed the cockpit and the hijackers --sending the plane into a dive.
Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all aboard but likely saving others in the nation's capital where investigators believe the plane was headed.
Ballinger went into his own tailspin.
He tried to return to work but realized the safest place for a plane was on the ground and he looked for reasons to keep them grounded.
He took time off, and later was deemed unable to resume work. He retreated to a local warehouse for six months where he mourned and refurbished an old sailboat. He applied for and received disability and retired from a 44-year aviation career.
He has been sailing with his wife ever since, admittedly still haunted by whether he should have said something more explicit in his warnings.
Investigator Raidt said Ballinger was proactive that day and acted without being told by a supervisor what to do.
"Circumstances were beyond his control and that's why it's heartbreaking that he feels such a sense of responsibility," Raidt said.

'Look(s) like an Arab terrorist'
Mike Tuohey, a retired US Airways ticket agent, "lives a life of avoidance" in his rural Maine home, steering clear of news about the wars overseas and any other aftermath of 9/11.
Still, months after his retirement, Tuohey said he started coming unhinged, having hallucinations and visions of the hijackers driving by in cars.
Retired ticket agent Mike Tuohey pegged two hijackers as "Arab terrorists," then chided himself for the assumption.
Tuohey is footnote No. 1 in the 9/11 Commission Report, holding the unenviable historical note of being the first to encounter the ringleader of the 19 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, and fellow hijacker Abdul Aziz al Omari on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Investigators believe the hijackers split up to avoid detection. Ten of them convened at Boston's Logan Airport to board American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, the two planes they would use to strike the World Trade Center towers.
Atta chose Portland, Maine, a small airport that's just a short plane ride to Logan Airport. Atta and al Omari showed up at the US Airways counter where Tuohey worked at the time to check in for their flight to Boston.
"I'm looking at the two of them and I said [to myself] 'If this guy doesn't look like an Arab terrorist, nobody does,'" Tuohey said.
Tuohey kicked himself for thinking such thoughts, resolving that the two could just be Arab businessmen.
Nonetheless, Tuohey gave them a rough time -- a fact the investigators confirmed. With no legal reason to hold them off the plane, he checked them in.
Hours later, when he learned two planes had hit the World Trade Center, he said he instantly knew the two men he had checked in were responsible.
Tuohey took a few days off, but later returned to work and eventually retired.
About five years ago, Tuohey -- in his first on-camera interview -- told CNN that reading the 9/11 Commission Report lifted a burden off of him.
He said he reasoned that if so many intelligence agencies had information that such a plot could conceivably happen, how did they expect "a little ticket agent from Portland, Maine," to stop the hijackers when he knew none of the intelligence that had been gathered?
'They could not be stopped'
All of those interviewed by CNN said they can remember 9/11 like yesterday; that it is a part of their lives that will always be there.

For some, the pain is still there.
Others, like air traffic controller Terry Biggio, who was in charge of Boston's air traffic center that morning, have tried to make the world safer.
Biggio followed Mike McCormick -- manager of the New York air traffic center on 9/11 -- to Iraq to help rebuild that nation's civil aviation system after the U.S.-led invasion and war.
On the morning of 9/11, Biggio ordered the hijackers' tape recordings be pulled and reviewed after a controller reported hearing something suspicious.
That move gave officials the first proof that multiple planes were hijacked. Biggio believes the role he played on 9/11 -- getting other planes safely landed -- is why God put him on this earth.

Former ticket agent Vaughn Allex spent months feeling guilty after checking in two hijackers.
Former American Airlines ticket agent Vaughn Allex -- who checked in two of the five hijackers who crashed Flight 77 into the Pentagon -- now provides logistical support for federal air marshals who patrol the skies.
He spent months wallowing in guilt but, like Tuohey, Allex had no legal right to prevent the two he checked in from getting on the plane.
And, as the investigators pointed out, three other hijackers were already on Flight 77, anyway.
Allex knows he did not suffer the terrible losses of so many families and hopes his work supporting air marshals will help prevent another 9/11.
But he said that day did take one precious thing from him: the joy of a clear blue sky.
"When I go out on a beautiful day, I look up and I go, 'That sky is September 11 blue,'" Allex says. "I've never been able to look at the sky and not said 'September 11 blue' because that's the way it was that day."
Those charged with investigating the 9/11 attacks have struggled, as well, having to listen over and over to the horrific tapes of the doomed passengers and the voices of the hijackers, and interview people who were rescued from the stricken buildings.
That was one of the hardest parts for investigator John Azzarello, an attorney, who thought long and hard before working for the commission.
Two of his brothers-in-law died in the World Trade Center attacks.
His wife supported Azzarello's decision -- but she did not want to hear the daily details during the 18-month investigation. When the report was delivered, she decided to attend the hearing even though Azzarello warned her that it would include the transcript of Flight 77's communications -- the plane that was responsible for her brothers' deaths.
There was so much guilt shared by so many people that had nothing to feel guilty about. --John

National Counter Terrorism Center
"I do remember during that hearing, when we were collectively reading our report as a team, that there were some gasps from the audience of horror reactions, some crying," he said. "And one in particular I recognized was my wife's reaction."
Despite the heartache, Azzarello has no regrets. He believes his work could prevent other families like his from going through the same pain.
Investigators said the 19 hijackers -- despite intelligence information that had accumulated in several government agencies over time -- managed to still slip through the cracks in the system.
By the time they got to the airports, the die had been cast, John Farmer said.
Farmer, now a Rutgers law school dean, was in charge of the commission's team that determined who did what and when on 9/11.
"The time to have stopped these attacks was before they ever got on the airplane, before they ever got into the country," Farmer said. "Once they were on those airplanes, they couldn't be stopped."
CNN's Max Newfield contributed to this report

TOUR UH

2011-09-04T12:30:00.001-07:00

I feel so lazy today. Just browsing for jobs, watch chinese TV and clean up after the dogs and J's mess. Yesterday was still very hot when we toured UH. Can't believe I was taking Bo to tour UH, a place I worked for 10 years, and 10 years ago. The campus has certainly expanded a lot. The whole year's tuition is about $9,000. With Susan's family, Ellen, Amy and Anna we had a total of 10 people. After we stopped at UH, the kids played at the game room. They have bowling, poolball, ping pong, archade games etc. They had fun. Thereafter we went to eat at Chinatown. The lobster is delicious.

THIS WEEKEND

2011-08-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

There were 25 of them who came to the school yesterday to go door to door to missing students' home to talk to them about coming back to school. I was partnered with the AP, spanish teacher and sp ed staff. The AP brought her 2 year old in the SUV, I didn't think that they were very focus on what we were doing. The sec and Rose's group seemed to do well. After that I went to Chinatown to buy groceries. It was super super hot! Today I cooked the delicious egg roll. So yummy, but I ate too much....now I am feeling miserable from my over eating :(

HURRICANE IRENE

2011-08-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Irene is a lot like Hurricane Ike
"It's only a category 2 hurricane." That's what our reporters in North Carolina have heard from a couple of people who are choosing to ride out the storm instead of evacuating.
Sound familiar?
That's what some people said about Hurricane Ike the day before it made landfall in southeast Texas on September 13, 2008.
The strength of a hurricane is currently gauged on the maximum speed of the wind and does not reflect the amount of storm surge that will wash ashore. During Hurricane Ike, over fifteen feet of water washed ashore to the right of the circulation and devastated Bolivar Peninsula. And it was "only a category 2" hurricane.
Both are wide storms.Although maximum winds in Hurricane Irene are currently ranked category two status on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, the hurricane force winds extend 90 miles out from the center of the storm. The tropical storm force winds extend out 290 miles. Similarly, tropical storm force winds in Hurricane Ike extended 275 miles out from the storm center.
In the case of Hurricane Irene, offshore buoys have already measured wave heights between 20-40'. While the topography along the east coast of North Carolina is different than it is in southeast Texas, the National Hurricane Center is predicting an "extremely dangerous storm surge" with water rising "as much as 6 to 11 feet above ground level." This storm could be more about the storm surge than the wind. Just like Hurricane Ike.

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. (AP) — Whipping up trouble before ever reaching land, Hurricane Irene zeroed in Friday for a catastrophic run up the Eastern Seaboard. More than 2 million people were told to move to safer places, and New York City ordered its entire network of subways shut down for the first time because of a natural disaster.
As the storm's outermost bands of wind and rain began to lash the Outer Banks of North Carolina, authorities in points farther north begged people to get out of harm's way. The hurricane lost some strength but still packed winds of almost 100 mph, and officials in the Northeast, not used to tropical weather, feared it could wreak devastation.
"Don't wait. Don't delay," said President Barack Obama, who decided to cut short his summer vacation by a day and return to Washington. "I cannot stress this highly enough: If you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now."
Hurricane warnings were issued from North Carolina to New York, and watches were posted farther north, on the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard off Massachusetts. Evacuation orders covered at least 2.3 million people, including 1 million in New Jersey, 315,000 in Maryland, 300,000 in North Carolina, 200,000 in Virginia and 100,000 in Delaware.
"This is probably the largest number of people that have been threatened by a single hurricane in the United States," said Jay Baker, a geography professor at Florida State University.
New York City ordered more than 300,000 people who live in flood-prone areas to leave, including Battery Park City at the southern tip of Manhattan, Coney Island and the beachfront Rockaways. But it was not clear how many would do it, how they would get out or where they would go. Most New Yorkers don't have a car.
On top of that, the city said it would shut down the subways and buses at noon Saturday, only a few hours after the first rain is expected to fall. The transit system carries about 5 million people on an average weekday, fewer on weekends. It has been shut down several times before, including during a transit workers' strike in 2005 and after the Sept. 11 attacks a decade ago, but never for weather.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was little authorities could do to force people to leave.
"We do not have the manpower to go door-to-door and drag people out of their homes," he said. "Nobody's going to get fined. Nobody's going to go to jail. But if you don't follow this, people may die."
Shelters were opening Friday afternoon, and the city was placed under its first hurricane warning since 1985.
Transit systems in New Jersey and Philadelphia also announced plans to shut down, and Washington declared a state of emergency. Boisterous New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie demanded people "get the hell off the beach" in Asbury Park and said: "You're done. Do not waste any more time working on your tan."
Hundreds of thousands of airline passengers were grounded for the weekend. JetBlue Airways said it was scrubbing about 880 flights between Saturday and Monday, most to and from hub airports in New York and Boston. Other airlines said they were waiting to be more certain about Irene's path before announcing more cancellations.
Thousands of people were already without power. In Charleston, S.C., several people had to be rescued after a tree fell on their car.
Defying the orders, hardy holdouts in North Carolina put plywood on windows, gathered last-minute supplies and tied down boats. More than half the people who live on two remote islands, Hatteras and Ocracoke, had ignored orders to leave, and as time to change their minds ran short, officials ordered dozens of body bags. The last ferry from Ocracoke was set to leave at 4 p.m. Friday.
"I anticipate we're going to have people floating on the streets, and I don't want to leave them lying there," said Richard Marlin, fire chief for one of the seven villages on Hatteras. "The Coast Guard will either be pulling people off their roofs like in Katrina or we'll be scraping them out of their yards."
Officially, Irene was expected to make landfall Saturday near Morehead City, on the southern end of the Outer Banks, the barrier island chain. But long before the eye crossed the coastline, the blustery winds and intermittent rains were already raking the coast.
Some took to shelters for protection.
Susan Kinchen, her daughter and 5-month-old granddaughter came to West Carteret High School with about 50 others. She said they didn't feel safe in their trailer, and the Louisiana native was reminded of how her old trailer lost its roof to Hurricane Katrina.
"We live in a trailer with her," said Kinchen, referring to the infant. "I'm not taking any chances."
National Hurricane Center meteorologist David Zelinsky said earlier Friday that he expected the storm to arrive as a Category 2 or 3 hurricane. Later in the day, other forecasts showed it would strike most of the coast as a Category 1. The scale runs from 1, barely stronger than a tropical storm, to a monstrous 5. On Friday afternoon, Irene was a Category 2.
Regardless of how fierce the storm is when it makes landfall, the coast of North Carolina was expected to get winds of more than 100 mph and waves perhaps as high as 11 feet, Zelinsky said.
"This is a really large hurricane and it is dangerous," he said. "Whether it is a Category 2 or 3 at landfall, the effects are still going to be strong. I would encourage people to take it seriously."
Officer Edward Mann was driving down the narrow streets of Nags Head looking for cars in driveways, a telltale sign of people planning to ride out the storm against all advice.
Bucky Domanski, 71, was working in his garage when Mann walked in. He told the officer he planned to stay. Mann handed Domanski a piece of paper with details about the county's evacuation order. It warned that hurricane force winds would flood the roads and there might not be power or water until well after the storm.
"You understand we can't help you during the storm," Mann said.
"I understand," Domanski replied.
After the Outer Banks, the next target for Irene was the Hampton Roads region of southeast Virginia, a jagged network of inlets and rivers that floods easily. Emergency officials have said the region is more threatened by storm surge, the high waves that accompany a storm, than wind. Gas stations there were low on fuel Friday, and grocery stores scrambled to keep water and bread on the shelves.
In Delaware, Gov. Jack Markell ordered an evacuation of coastal areas.
"We could be open tonight for business, but there's a very fine line between doing the right thing and putting our staff at risk," said Alex Heidenberger, owner of Mango Mike's restaurant in Bethany Beach, who expects to lose $40,000 to $50,000 in business. "It's not so much we're worried about the storm coming tonight, but we want to give them a chance to get out of town and get their affairs in order."
Officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington said they were speeding the transfer of their last remaining patients to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The transfer had been planned for Sunday.
In Baltimore's Fells Point neighborhood, one of the city's oldest waterfront neighborhoods, people filled sandbags and placed them at the entrances to buildings. A few miles away at the Port of Baltimore, vehicles and cranes continued to unload huge cargo ships that were rushing to offload and get away from the storm.
In New York, the Mets postponed games scheduled for Saturday and Sunday with the visiting Atlanta Braves, and the Jets and Giants moved their preseason NFL game up to 2 p.m. Saturday from 7 p.m.
And in Atlantic City, N.J., all 11 casinos announced plans to shut down Friday, only the third time that has happened in the 33-year history of legalized gambling in that state.
"I like gambling, but you don't play with this," Pearson Callender said as he waited for a Greyhound bus out of town. "People are saying this is an act of God. I just need to get home to be with my family."

I GOT CLAWED TODAY

2011-08-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

When an animal is injured it will lash out and prawl.....
I got clawed today.

http://youtu.be/oxHnRfhDmrk

LIFE!

2011-08-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

Another crazy, crazy day, started with !!! A parent came to get refund, and a teacher forgot to put on a shirt and came to school! I was helping with the refund and finding the shirt, so I didn't turn on my radio so I didn't hear my Boss calling me. They said he was very angry for me to not answer the radio. Then we found out the A/C's out. I spent much time with the technician understanding that it is a computer monitoring system, got the email to the top top people. He seems OK. Then we failed the audit because the lady in the front didn't check in the official from my boss' boss' boss. Last year, we had the same problem, he is now furious. Top it off, we are now over two hundred thousand dollars in the hole. We are still short 67 from enrollment. He said he told the couns. that their job's on the line. So we met to strategize how to do home visits, incentives, coax students to us. Lordie!!!!Then we found 5 boxes that were dropped off without anyone knowing what the heck they are. He got so mad at the Sec, she nearly cried. Then he wanted to cry, he indicated like he doesn't want to work here anymore. I tried to console him. I also gave him idea on how to rectify the issue with his boss on the failed audit. To end it all, PO didn't get the gate open again even though the sec and I both reminded her. PO got a conference. Mann.......aren't we stressed out. I put in another 12 hours day. LIFE!

EAST COAST EARTHQUAKE

2011-08-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

A rare 5.9 earth quake shook the east coast.
Well a big earth quake shook our school!
That's the shortage of 89 students: $3367 x 89 is over three hundred thousand.
SAD!!!
Boss named 3 on the chopping board, not me but I am scared.
So depressed lah.

MY WOK OF CURRY

2011-08-21T12:40:00.001-07:00

So here is my wok of chicken curry to support the solidality of Singapore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhLozqBqPMk

STRESS STARTS AGAIN

2011-08-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

OK usually at this time of the year, everyone is stressed out. Yes indeed. Again, this year. Especially boss. He showed that he was very upset all day, when I told him that Y seems reluctance in doing the character ed, he said we went through so much to save the program, they are so ungrateful, just quit their program. His mom who came to help out also got into a fuss with the PO. I for sure is extremely upset with C. She is definitely not living up to her job, blaming the fact that she didn't have enough help. Well, I am glad that I cancel my Galveston weekend trip so I can really lay in bed and rest. I was super, super tired. Went to the Mall shopping with Bo. Very happy. Bought 2 pants, 1 suit and 2 blouses. This evening I'm making chicken rice and ketchup shrimp. We had a delicious and enjoyable floating dinner. Very satisfied. Tomorrow is the big "Cook a Pot of Curry" day. Over 60 thousand people is going to do it already :)

Cook A Pot of Curry!

2011-08-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FMhLozqBqPMk&h=1AQCV_umOAQBjNPbmVYMILWsBzQ7Y69aGpYb3cTy2Ks-7ig

News : PRC "People's Republic of China" mainland Chinese ( new citizen family ) asks a local Indian family not to eat curry or cook curry
...-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As of recent, in the news, a report came about that a PRC family told our local Indian family "not to eat curry" and not to cook curry. This came about becos online website Temasek Review wrote about this case. .

To make things worse, the govt appointed "mediator" - a certain Madam Giam actually got the Indian family to cook curry ONLY when the PRC family is not at home. ( ie it is a sort of * binding settlement or agreement)http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC110808-0000102/Number-of-neighbour-disputes-hit-high ( this is the link)

I am disturbed when I read of this. How can a govt appointed mediator side with a so-called " new citizen " against our local Indian family? Or any other local family who practices a cultural lifestyle that we have all made our own? In this case, Curry has always been part of our culture since the 1800s. It can be anything else that you or I hold dear.
There is a native Malay saying: please allow me to quote Mr Zubir Said ( the composer of our National Anthem). Zubir cited the Malay proverb "Di mana bumi dipijak, di situ langit dijunjung" ("You should hold up the sky of the land where you live")
They ( the new citizens - or any new resident) who come to our country and, unfortunately, there are those who instead of assimilating / integrating into our social fabric and culture, they "demand" we speak their language and conform to their likes and dislikes. ( isn't it so?). They speak Mandarin to our Malays/ Indians and Eurasian and Chinese (ok, not all Chinese here are fluent in Mandarin for many reasons) counterparts.
You have to understand not everyone here speaks Mandarin. This is not China or a Chinese province. When the new immigrants arrive here, we wish for them to respect the cultural and linguistic norms of this nation. We wish for the new immigrants to tolerate and respect the cultural aspects of the various ethnic minority groups.
This is Singapore and we are part of Malayan culture. Our hinterland previously was not China, it was Malaysia and the Indonesian archipelago. Our ancestors came and met and mingled and through an adventurous and open mindset, created something unique and beautiful... ( thus our local culture as such- curries/ spices/ a vast melting pot of people and mixed heritages)
You come and live in my country, it is not unreasonable to ask of you to integrate into our local culture and making attempts to assimilate and tolerate the various multi-ethnic cultures we had built up so painstakingly over the decades? Because at the same time, we are definitely open to taking the best that you have to offer, and to create new and beautiful Singaporean things.
*We Singaporeans are basically nice and tolerant people. We will accept the new citizens as citizens PROVIDED they integrate into our local culture and not the other way round ( ie we conform to them).
Thus, I hope that every Singapore Citizen/ or true-blue natives and even Friends of Singapore can COOK a pot of curry all over the island on this date (21st Aug 2011- Sunday) and let the aromas of CURRIES permeate and waft through the whole nation!:)
(If you are overseas and cannot cook - can support us in spirit by clicking 'Attending' too lah!)
We are mainly upset with the "Community Mediation Centre's" action of actually allowing such a mediation agreement to be legally binding. It is the right of the Indian family to cook curry at whichever time they wish to. It is a basic human right to cook curry or whatever dish that is important to them, in their own home.
Every Singaporean should just cook a pot of curry and eat it ( regardless of race / language/ or religion). We are Singaporeans and we LOVE our curries - be it chicken curry/ fish curry/ lamb curry/ beef curry/ beef rendang/ lontong/ mee siam/ laksa/ Petai sambal belachan / ayam buah keluak etc
Thank You Very Much for supporting "Cook A Pot of Curry" Event!
_ from the Admin Group

A Foot Note: (Important - Please read)
_____________________________
That said above, let us all calm down and just take it to a quiet civil level of cooking curry as a form of civil movement on the 21st of Aug 2011 (* sunday). Just cook curry to assert our rights to cooking curry anytime we want! :)
and please, PLEASE, do not use expletives, vulgarities and no talk of violence please. It is to be a quiet civil movement:) to cook curries on the 21st of Aug. That is all.
Further thoughts:
-----------------------------------------
You can see from the attendees that not all are what we would have expected at first thought to be 'native' Singaporeans (based on ethnicity and nationality).
Paraphrasing what S Rajaratnam said so many many years ago, being a 'Singaporean' is something that you have as a conviction - a frame of mind - an outlook in life - I am glad that we have so many Friends of Singapore, some who may be living with us on this small island, and some who are far away, supporting this event, with a spirit of solidarity and understanding.
In a multi-ethnic/cultural environment, we need to learn to understand each others culture, respect the differences, and also be open enough to know how to take the best of each others culture and make it part of our own - to enrich our individual and collective lives. So, in this case, CURRY, it is not just an issue of our Indian fellow citizens, it is a beautiful symbol of what co-existence can create - of being Singaporean in spirit!
From someone who is away from Singapore but cooks curries when he can, to remind him of home.

VERY HOT OUTSIDE

2011-08-11T16:50:00.000-07:00

Houston is still very, very hot. 110 degrees outside. We have not seen rain for a while. Today Bo and KK come to my school to help stuff the bags for teachers and staff. Later the Sec's daughter also come. She is the most adorable child in the world! Sec has to take a friend to the hospital today. She treats her friends well. We ate at Ninfas, it was delicious! Boss was out at training today, heard that Ms. B is very sick, in the hospital. Debbie's hubby is still in ICU in the VA hospital. We got home around 5pm, I need to talk nicer to J, sometimes I feel that I don't talk nice naturally, and I have to step back and correct myself. He fixed rice and chicken and yet I am critical because this morning he missed the repair of my car's oil cover since he didn't get there till 10am. But I should be kinder, especially when I talk.

NEW FRIDGE

2011-08-10T18:22:00.000-07:00

Finally broke down and bought a brand new, stainless steel, ice making refrigerator. Just got delivered today. My fridge now becomes the centerpiece of my home, ha ha :)

U.S. CREDIT DOWNGRADED

2011-08-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

This is the news report on U.S. downgraded credit rating, first time in history:

PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global leaders on Saturday arranged a round of emergency calls to discuss the twin debt crises in Europe and the United States that are causing turmoil in financial markets. After a week that saw $2.5 trillion wiped off global stock markets, they are under pressure to show political leadership and reassure markets that Western governments have both the will and ability to reduce their huge and growing public debt loads.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who chairs the G7/G20 group of leading economies, conferred with Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of a call planned for this weekend by G7 finance ministers and central bankers.
"They discussed the euro area and the U.S. debt downgrade. Both agreed the importance of working together, monitoring the situation closely and keeping in contact over the coming days," a spokesman for Cameron said.
Standard and Poor's deepened the urgency for action late on Friday by stripping the United States of its top-tier AAA credit rating, a move that over time could ripple through markets worldwide by pushing up borrowing costs and making it more difficult to secure a lasting recovery.
It cited the acrimonious debate in Washington on raising the debt ceiling and near political paralysis over the best way to reduce the its $14.3 trillion debt, which on the current trajectory could climb above 100 percent of U.S. national output this decade.
President Barack Obama called on lawmakers once again on Saturday to set aside partisan politics and work together and to put the nation's fiscal house in order and stimulate the stagnant economy. But the most immediate concern for financial markets was the debt crisis in the euro zone, where yields on Italian and Spanish debt have soared to 14-year highs on political wrangling and doubts over the vigor of budget cuts.
The European Central Bank was scheduled to hold a rare Sunday conference call. Markets are anxiously looking for the central bank to start buying Italian and Spanish debt on Monday to stabilize prices, a move that has split the ECB governing council.
Investors saw the ECB's failure to include Italy and Spain in a relaunch of its bond purchases late last week as a sign of the depth of political divisions over the role of the euro zone currency. German officials want to see stiffer austerity programs in place before the ECB would shoulder more Italian and Spanish debt. The danger is that further pressure on Italian and Spanish bonds could undermine an already damaged European banking system and lock Italy, the world's eighth largest economy, out of the market.
Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, his government weakened by infighting, ruled out early elections to stem market panic. "This has never been an option," Berlusconi said. Instead he has pledged to bring forward austerity measures and balance the budget by 2013, a year ahead of schedule -- steps the ECB will consider to gauge whether to buy its bonds.
S&P's one-notch downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating to AA-plus, while not totally unexpected, adds another level of uncertainty. Loss of gold-plated status for the world's benchmark interest rate risks pushing up borrowing costs on everything from car loans, mortgages and corporate debt to government bonds worldwide.
"However justified, S&P couldn't have picked a worse time to downgrade the U.S.," said Rabobank in a note to clients. A senior European diplomatic source said the U.S. downgrade, coupled with Europe's problems, raised the need for international policy coordination. G7 finance ministers and central bankers of the major industrialized nations were to hold talks by telephone on either Saturday or Sunday, the source said. Their deputies from the broader G20 were due to hold a call on Saturday evening, a Brazilian finance ministry source said.
A U.K. official said "senior officials" also would talk late on Saturday. There was no indication of whether a statement would be issued by G7 or G20 policymakers, the usual method by which they lay out policy steps designed to soothe markets or provide them with direction.

DEBT ADDICTION
China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, took the world's economic superpower to task for allowing its fiscal house to get into such disarray. It also revived its calls for a new stable global reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar, gaining a sympathetic ear in the United Kingdom.
"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," China's official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary. Xinhua scorned the United States for a "debt addiction" and "short sighted" political wrangling. China, it said, "has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets."
China and Japan have called for coordinated action to avert a new worldwide financial crisis. India's Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters: "There is no need to unnecessarily press the panic button." Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said: "I am in constant contact with colleagues in other countries and am following the development of the financial markets closely."
Recrimination flew thick and fast among U.S. politicians over its debt downgrade, with each side seeking to blame the other for the impasse over how to solve the fiscal crisis.
Senator Jim Demint, a Republican, said Obama should demand the resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
In contrast, French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said France had faith in the United States to get out of this "difficult period." Friday's U.S. unemployment numbers were better than expected and so things were heading in the right direction, he said.
"One should not dramatize, one needs to remain cool-headed, one should look at the fundamentals," he told France's iTele. "There is no need for panic," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. "We will see in August, and maybe more intensively in September what the effects for the world economy will be."

This is one of the responses that I like:

It's almost shocking how our form of capitalism has been distorted to represent a failing economic model in the world. The sad thing is, we haven't practiced true capitalism in America for over 60 years. In addition, what we have become is a corporatist structure. Large Corporations and wealthy elite donors pay for the political campaigns. They basically buy off votes that in return, get "paid back" with government regulations, laws, entitlements, contracts and money.
In the meantime, most of the money has been borrowed, (and stolen from government ponzi schemes like social security) where you are forced to contribute, and your money is stolen as soon as you earn it - all with the promise that you'll get something that really isn't there. These things combined with crony capitalism are what has accumulated most of the $14.5T debt, and up to $120T in deceptive promises.
Meanwhile, back in China, their pool of 300 million laborers living under the grand Communist model of economic slavery and poverty, have become the catalists of the world socialist economic model? Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture other than they are basically slave labor, who produce cheap goods, and most have a desperately impoverished standard of living?

The reality is that America is the greatest nation on earth when it's resources are unleashed. Small business and entropeneurship in this country can turn this around if it is unleashed. We have hundreds of years of energy and resources. We grow a large majority of the world's food. We still have the technological edge in innovation and development. (I know China has technology, but it's mostly been pirated from us in the first place). This country can turn this economy around.
In order to do so, we're going to have to get the government, politicians, unnecessary regulations, crony capitalism, and fallacious mindset of people who think capitalism doesn't work. It works best when everybody is allowed to participate, not just the big corporations, social elites, and the politicians they buy off. The pursuit of happiness should include economic opportunity for anyone that has something they want to make or sell. The definition of this is actually called freedom.

THE RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

2011-08-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

Bo attended Bobcat Express at the school, paid for her parking. Then we went to IHOP to eat with 3 of the other school friends. At 3pm we watch "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes." 2 words: TOTALLY AWESOME!

WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK

2011-08-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

Sec. on vacation this week, only boss and I at work. On Monday I totally overslept, it was so embarassing but boss was very understanding. He didn't need me to make up the time as he said that I have worked over 40 every week. My stomach finally recovered on Monday. I was so glad to learn that the grant I wrote for the after school program got accepted and we were awarded the money. Very happy. Now I just want to wait for the "big" one. Yesterday boss was out all day and towards 5am, the transformer blew and the A/C motor burnt out. It created a thick smell and smoke and set the fire alarm off. 8 firemen came, it took the electrician a long to get there. I didn't leave till 7pm, the PO stayed till almost 8pm before the electrician came. The chillers were down. This morning boss called and asked me to come in late because there was no A/C at the school. Later it came on and I went to the scheduled lunch meeting with the SBMs as planned. We talked about the new boss Carroll is getting, how the evil lady block T from getting the job at CLC, what the princ. at AHS did to get fired, what the SIO told Ann's boss about not needing SBMs........etc. very interesting. When I got back to the school I advised my boss that we need to get a nice website and to talk to those teachers who took money for bereavement etc....Then the AYP results came out and we met! A lot of schools missed though, they are in bad shape. We thought Cici would apply for the sec job at elementary school, but no-she said if J wants her she would have called her. I did not offer any advice, staying out of it. Oh I learned that today Debbie's hubby is going in for heart surgery, hope he gets well soon. OK, that's my week folks!

:(

2011-07-30T15:23:00.000-07:00

This morning after we drove Bo to Chinese school, I slept so soundly at their lounge area. I was really really sleepy, the jetlag has not let up yet. In addition we were up till 2am last night watching "The Last Emperor" and it is meaningful after our trip to China. I am also reading the "Shanghai Girls." What irritates me is this stomach virus or whatever I contracted - I have been back a week already but I am still having problem. I can't have anything solid coming out yet and each time after I eat, I have to go immediately. I really think there is something wrong with either my kidneys or intestines. Then we got the disappointing news that our house did not appraised to the sale price, it was much much lower. As we are not willing to go that low, the sale will therefore not go through. Not happy. In addition the fridge died.

CHINA 12 DAY TOUR

2011-07-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

Back from the 12-day tour in China. I must have contracted a stomach flu, went to the restroom from almost 20 times on the last day flying from Shanghai back to Houston.
7/12/11 Tue
3 pm, taxi came to take us to the airport. Debbie and Stanley got there at the same time. The plane took off at 7:10pm. It is a 3-1/2 hr flight and we boarded Asiana Airline at LA. I slept about 8 hours on the plane, watched 2 movies and arrived at Seoul at 5am the next day. At Seoul, we got some meals, then got on another Asiana Plane to arrive at Beijing in the morning at 9:40am.

7/14/11 Thu

We spent a day on the plane and lost a day, so it is now Thursday. The tour guide Jessie met us and took us to the hotel in a van. I didn't realize that this is a private tour, it turns out better than my expectation. The hotel is Tian Tan Hotel and we will spend 3 nights there. After we settled in the room, all of us decided to sleep for the afternoon. We awake at 6pm and ate dinner at the hotel. After dinner, we took a taxi to look at the Watercube and Birdnest. the view was beautiful. After that we took the subway back to the hotel, around 10pm.

7/15/11 Fri

We got up at 7am and got a hefty hotel breakfast buffet. We met Jessy at 9am. The weather was not too hot. We visit the Tiananmen Square where there are lines of people everywhere. After that we visited the Temple of Heaven where the ancient emperors went to pray. Noon we had a 10 course vegetarian lunch. In the afternoon we visit the Tong Ren Hun with the doctor's briefing on Chinese healings. The herbs they recommended are very pricy, we didn't buy any. Thereafter we visit the Forbidden City. The entire area is just huge, consisting of 9,999-1/2 rooms. Only 1/3 of those are opened to the public. We are amazed at the fabulous architectures of the palace and Jessy does a good job of relating the history of china's dynasties. Later we were entertained with an exciting acrobatic show. The authentic Peking Duck dinner is really fresh and delicious.

7/16/11 (Sat)

Happy Birthday Bo. She gets to climb the Great Wall of China today! We got started at 8:30am this morning, the ride to the Great Wall is 2 hours. Prior to that we stop at a Jade Shop for jadette presentation. I bought a pendent, a bangle for my aunt, jade doggie and pendent for Bo. Debbie bought a very expensive pendent, the jade color is magnificient. At the great wall, there are lots of hills, the atmosphere is still very greyish. The Wall looks too high for me to climb so I stayed behind with J in the coffee shop whereas the rest of the crew go up, up and up. It was about 1-1/2 hour later, Bo and Jessy go very high to the top, may be 40 storeys. Deb and Stan go half the way. I think the coffee is too strong for me, I feel nausea and vomit several times in the van before lunch. :( After lunch we visit the Summer Palace (Yi Her Garden). It has a large lake and we took a dragon boat ride in it. Dinner is at a western restaurant (with Chinese food). We returned to the hotel at 7pm but Bo is very tired with the Great Wall climbing.

7/17/11 Sun

Deb, Stan and I went walking around the hotel in the morning. There is a wet market and a park. We meet Jessy at 11am and he took us to the airport. We had a light lunch of chicken rice at the airport, the flight Air China is delayed for 2 hours. The flight itself from Beijing to Shanghai is 2 hours. When we arrive at Beijing at 4pm, another tour guide Jacky meet up with us. He makes us walk a very long way to Terminal A to meet another tourists and it was 9:35pm by the time we arrive at the hotel in Shanghai. I am very pleased with at this 5 star hotel.

7/18/11 Mon

As usual we have an extravegant hotel breakfast buffet the first visit is at China's Chinatown! We are warned of the fake money and precaution with people in this area. J sat at Starbuck while we tour, didn't buy anything. Most stuff are things you can find at the flea market or dollar store in U.S. After that we visit the famous Suzho Garden. I got to say that I am disappointed. No flowers, just a lot of greeneries and shrubs and of course everything looks very old. No improvements are made, maybe there want to maintain the original accent of the garden, but since this Garden was described with such lavishing beauty in poems and songs, the physical look of it sure disappoints me. It is said to be 500 years old. We had a good lunch and move on to some Lingering Garden. Next we visit the Jade Buddha temple and see the Jade Buddha that's made of 100% jadette but we cannot take a photo of it. After dinner we checked into the hotel and it is very, very nice and spacious. It has a raindrop kind of huge shower head. Bo and I visit the internet but no facebook.

7/19/11 Tue

I got up at 5:30am and ate a big breakfast buffet as usual and take off at 8:30am. We visit the silk factory and see how they make 100% silk blanket. The blanket is 490 yuan but it doesn't include the cover and the cover is like over 1,000 yuan. The silk blouse and all are also very expensive. Next we have lunch and then take a 3 hour drive to Nanjing. At Nanjing the local guide is Alice and she speaks good English. She gives a good history of how the Chinese people built the Yangtze Bridge because the Russians pulled out and left in limbo. At the tower of the Yangtze Bridge is Chang Fung - the artist who draws inside of a bottle. For dinner we have salted duck, not very impressive. After dinner we shop at the Confucius Temple which is not a temple, it is a shopping street. We bought 3 t-shirts there. Very late, almost 9:30pm by the time we get back to the hotel.

7/20/11 Wed
Today we visit the 600 year old city wall built by Zhu Yuan Ti. Then we were taken to the jade factory and learn all about jade again - we had one session of this in Beijing already. Everybody was buying like crazy, yah I think we got so crazy. I spent $200 on my pendent - that is so unlike me. Deb paid 5 times of my price for a pendent. The color green is very sharp but wow... too much for me to digest. Next we visit the WuXi Lake. It is only 6 feet deep but it is so huge, it is 4 times the size of the entire Singapore! We walk for about an hour, then we go to another lake again. After that we had a delicious dinner. So far all dinners are 10-course. Tonight the hotel is by far the lowest - 4 star Ramada.

7/21/11 Thu

After breakfast, we head towards the pearl factory. The presentation is very nice so a lot of people are buying them. I bought 2 pearl pendants for Norina and KK and a pearl bracelet for the sec. Thereafter they take us to the government control museum for purple sand tea pot. At this place not a lot of people are buying, I guess not that many are interested in the teapot. After a big lunch, we have a long 3 hour drive to Hungzho. Hungzho is famous for pretty girls. There we visit the West Lake and a boat ride. We also tasted the "beggar's chicken" it was not impressive at all. The "Tong Ball" pork is quite good, each of us is served only 1 piece. After that we move on to a phenomenon show. It includes 3 stories of the warrior, Yuet Fai, the Butterfly Lovers and the Snake Lady. The laser lights are spectacular, the costume colors are very bright and actors coming out from different direction - the back, the top and the side. Then there is a huge pour of water for the part when the Snake Lady flooded the "Kim Son" Temple. The stories are not very nicely tied together for foreigners, I understand it because I have already known the fables. It is a quality and vegas style show. Now the problem is getting in and getting out of the show. The place is packed like sardine, people skin against people skin, flesh to flesh. We are all sweating like rain. Then one guy from the tour got lost for a while. Almost 9:30pm by the time we get to the hotel but it is a very nice hotel.

7/22/11 Fri
We start out at 9am this morning to go towards the tea plantation. OK from this point on our health will go down. J and I started to have serious stomach problem. We drive through the tea plantation and view the tea presentation of "Dragon Well" tea. This is supposed to be green tea and not fermented so it is not caffinated. All the people go crazy with tea. We also get the tea capsule, we ended up spending U.S. $300 alone on tea only. What has possessed over us? Well after a drink, my diarreah stopped. I have been having it for 2 days now, I feel that the tea either made it stop or it has taken its last course. After lunch it is a long 3 hour drive to Shanghai. In Shanghai they took us to Tong Ren Hon (went there in Beijing) and received the foot massage. The people there were not that nice, as soon as they find out we are not buying the chinese medicine they give an excuse to not to the massage for Bo. I didn't let them get away with it but the persistence was not pleasant. We had dinner at the same place, After that we had a cruise of the Shanghai River.

7/23/11 Sat

I cannot believe how bad the stomach virus had got into. All throughout the plane flights from Shanghai to Houston I was constantly going to the restroom. The final plane Seoul to LA was the worse, at least 20 times just on the plane. I was feeling very very bad. Coming back to Houston on the plane, I couldn't sleep much but I am happy to be home by 7:30pm. Gained a day. Time just go by so fast. Will rest 3 days and get back to work on Wednesday.

Bo's B-day

2011-07-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to Sweet Tomatoes to celebrate Bo's 17th. J acted up the last minute and didn't go. Bo was understanding, she said J is probably sad because Richard passed away this past Wednesday. Susan came with her mom, Benny and the newly arrived sister from China. She and family gave Bo a really big Ang Pow. KK made Bo's name with playdoe and Pokemons and put it in a really big box, I was glad it wasn't a kitten in it :)

In addition, Anna, Coco, Amy and Ellen also came. We had a very enjoyable meal and interesting conversations. The kids played cards after eating and they all had such a wonderful time. My big girl!! We were there for almost 4 hours.

FLOATING DINNER

2011-07-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

Had a nice gathering with Norina, hubby and kids yesterday. We had dim sum and then cake at Jungle. She's going to take my phone calls while I'm in China. We also went to exchange money at Travelex. $100 is equivalent to $17. J likes to talk and talk to Paul. We finally got home around 6 and jumped into the pool. Bo and I ate our floating dinner in the pool. We enjoy our mother/daughter floating dinner concept.

UFO
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/video/virals/3685102/UFOs-exit-Arizona-dust.html

IN AUSTIN

2011-07-08T18:01:00.000-07:00

After staying here in Austin for 3 days reading grant apps, this afternoon we drove back to Houston. The drive is about 3 hours. The hotel is very nice, Bo and J like the relaxation. My back was in pain due to the long sitting but I learn a lot from the grant apps. TEA paid for the lodging, food and mileage. The tenant showed some interest in buying our house. We will do if he gets financing.

MY BFF

2011-07-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

Today is the 5th year of Lay Chin's passing. I still miss her. I remember her as my best friend, sharing and not judging my younger days' ruthless life. Days when we laugh till we drop when we stuff paper in the toilet rolls. A friend I can trust. My bridesmaid. A cheerful personality. Strongly believe she helped me with her spirit 5 years ago to get a job. Truly appreciated! LOVE YOU MY BFF.

TRANSFORMER IS AMAZING

2011-07-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

Wow what an amazing show! Totally action-packed. I love the way the shinny big trucks transforming into engine aliens. LOL. Must have a million explosives. The flying men! Love Bumble Bee. We watched it IMAX and 3D. I don't think we can find another action movie to top this. After the movie, Bo and KK went to play at Dave and Buster while J and I went to do our hair. We are getting close to the trip. 10 days more, yeah! Then I got an email invitation to be the reader of the TTIPS grant. Going to Austin for 3 days next week. I wasn't sure if I want to go because of the tight schedules but J said go, so I agreed.

RUMORS

2011-06-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

Rumors are flying around. At least 7 people come and tell me that Boss is leaving to another school next year. IDK. The pool is finally clear and sparkly for dipping this week. We have a good swim this evening ah..........Nice! I think I like the pool better than a lake.

THIS AND THAT

2011-06-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

We weren't able to get rid of the algae in the pool, so finally we have to drain out all the water and put new water in.

Birdie is singing really, really loud and pretty and looks really happy.

Boss is in China now.

Work 10 hours and nice to be off on Fridays.

Bo is enjoying her new car.

Just looking forward to the China trip.

FRIDAY OFF

2011-06-17T15:31:00.000-07:00

It is nice to have Friday off. The pain on my back is miraculously gone on Fridays. Still got up early and went to clean out the garage with Bo. It is a big job. There's still lots of "junk" in there and it is hard when J wants to keep everything. Luckily the idea of her new car sitting in the garage really motivates Bo. At 9 we dropped off the new car at the dealer to instal the remote keyless in it, then met a client at the 31 units apartment. Spent about 2 hours there, J and I went to eat curry at the Thai Restaurant. By 12:30pm after a hearty meal, the car is ready and we both drove home. I was sleepy so I caught up with an afternoon nap. It was nice. It was a luxury that I never had. Bo and J are taking one too. All of us 3 lazy people. Hee hee.

FINISHED GRANT

2011-06-15T17:56:00.001-07:00

Worked on the grant till 11pm last night. Their template is Word document instead of Excel...Really tired. I put in the $30,000 bonus for my boss and $15,000 to the APs. I didn't put in for myself because I want to do this as just part of my job. I also want to show my appreciation to my boss when he made a choice to eliminate the AP's position instead of mine. So I am grateful even though I have not mentioned to anyone except J. Well Bo loves her car! Really really loves it! 1 more month-can't wait to go to China. Ha.

NEW CAR FOR DAUGHTER

2011-06-12T07:53:00.001-07:00

After weeks of pondering and 2 solid days of car shopping we finally bought a 2011 Honda Accord yesterday for Bo. She was estatic. Friday we went with Lee to Toyota, the Camry at $22,700 was quite attractive but they won't go down to $22,000 (I would probably take it at $22,500) but they didn't get to that. In the end Lee bought a RAV at $24,000. Then yesterday after Chinese school, we went to see Super 8 with Cici and her mom. Super 8 was SUPER!!! I love it! and J didn't even sleep. Pretty good! Then we went back to McDavid to test drive the 2012 Honda Civic, but it was kind of small, so we switched to a Honda Accord and got the price of $22,700 with an addition of $899 for the remote pre-temperature setter. It was neat, you can pre-heat or pre-cool your car from the house before you get to the car. Color: Silver. Beautiful! Then we went to eat at PF Chang when I officially presented the keys to Bo. She was totally amazed because we had bluffed her that she was getting my old Camry. But I told her: WE GIVE THE BEST TO THE BEST!

SUMMER AT GALVESTON

2011-06-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

I had a really good time at Galveston. It was rough to start with, but the waves are very relaxing. We booked the really nice hotel San Luis but it was very disappointing that we had to wait over an hour for check-in. Yet the room was beautiful and the ocean scene was exquisite! I was having a great time in the waves while Bo did the jet ski with J and he fell into the water. He was quite upset because it was very hard to get him back up again since he is so fat. But he was not too mad about it to spoil the mood though. After that I suffered a very severe stomach pain with diarrhea - almost 20 trips to the toilet. Luckily that only last an hour, after 3 pepto bismore, I was good. Bo got us some food from Landry. It was wonderful after a terrible stomach pain. The next day we played in the wave some more, then ate at Fishtale and bought crawfish home to eat. We also stopped by Nissan and Honda to look at cars. This weekend I really enjoyed myself!

GOING TO CHINESE SCHOOL

2011-06-04T18:04:00.001-07:00

Got up early on a Saturday morning to take Bobo to her Chinese school with adults. Cici also went. J went to the doctor while we stayed in class to observe. Bo doesn't seem to be very serious but she is talking a lot about what to take in college with reference to her future career. It looks like she is going to drop Engineering and go into Vet. At noon we went to eat at the Tofu soap, missed that long knife fish. We stuffed ourselves. Then we want to watch a movie: the X-Men. At the toll booth because they didn't have ez tag, they couldn't catch up and so they ended up not going to the movie. But Bo and I enjoyed the movie. However we kept having to hit on J to stay away. He would snored so loud that it woke himself up. LOL. After that we ate at Red Robin and Bo went on to a party with the Debate team friends and KK. It is a nice day.

END OF SCHOOL YEAR

2011-06-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday went with J to the End of the Year party at Crown Plaza even though I wasn't planned on going in the first place. But Sec. wanted me to get an award for Boss. So I did. We did make Recognized 2 years in a row so everyone is happy. Not many showed up at the party though. Wow Ms. B was upset these 2 days, don't know why. I am super super tired! Cannot type any more.............

ZOO VISIT

2011-05-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

Went with the kids to the zoo yesterday. It was really hot, wow I really haven't sweat like that for a long time. It does have a lot of shades and seats so it is not too bad. Kids get to see more because they can go faster than us older folks J, Ellen and I. The kids are Bo, Gwen, KK, Amy and Ana. Bo got all commended on her TAKS. I am so happy with her. In the evening Bo went to a party with KK's family. Very rich home, Bo was impressed. J and I went to eat Japanese food. Today is a good resting day. My back's been killing me. Talked to my sis-in-law on the phone for 2 hours. Mainly on child rearing, it is not easy and the deal about my sis on feeling bad and not being successful in parenting. I think I am sort of lucky too, you can't ask for a better child than my baby. I feel bad for my sis, so deeply injured by her childhood. Me too, but going far and away allows me to heal and widen my horizon. Life.......I don't know why people are so intense on life, I see it lightly, perhaps I never really have a "good" life. REST! I want to rest for this life actually. I JUST WANT TO REST.

SALIVARY GLAND STONE

2011-05-22T14:35:00.001-07:00

I was eating a mango and suddenly I felt that my left face was hardened like a rock. I pressed down on it and it was swelling really big. I thought I was getting a stroke or bells palsy so I called the Nurseline and she asked me to go to the doctor immediately. It is Sunday so I can only go to the Emergency Room at Steepletop.
Diagnosis: Salivary Gland Stones
Cost: $650
This is what it is: "A salivary gland stone -- also called salivary duct stone, salivary calculus, or sialolith -- is a calcified structure that may form inside a salivary gland or duct and can block the flow of saliva into the mouth.
The majority of stones affect the submandibular glands located at the floor of the mouth. Less commonly, the stones affect the parotid glands, located on the sides of the face, or the sublingual glands, which are under the tongue. Many people with the condition have multiple stones. Salivary stones form when chemicals in the saliva deposit. They mostly contain calcium. The exact cause is not known. But factors contributing to decreased saliva production and/or thickened saliva may be risk factors for salivary stones. These factors include: dehydration, poor eating, and use of certain medications, such as antihistamines, blood pressure drugs, psychiatric drugs, and bladder control drugs. Trauma to the salivary glands may also increase risk for salivary stones.
The stones cause no symptoms as they form, but if they reach a size that blocks the duct, saliva backs up into the gland causing pain and swelling. The pain, which is usually felt in a single gland, may be intermittent and get progressively worse. Inflammation and infection within the affected gland may follow.
Salivary Gland Stones Diagnosis and Treatments
If you experience symptoms of a salivary gland stone, your doctor will first check for stones with a physical exam. Sometimes tests may also be ordered, such as X-ray, CT scan, or ultrasound.
If a stone is detected, the goal of treatment is to remove it. For small stones, stimulating saliva production by sucking on a lemon or sour candies may cause the stone to pass spontaneously. In other cases where stones are small, the doctor or dentist may massage or manually push the stone out of the duct.
For larger, harder-to-remove stones, doctors usually make a small incision in the mouth to remove the stone.
Increasingly, doctors are using a newer and less invasive technique called sialendoscopy to remove salivary gland stones. Developed and used successfully in Europe for a decade, sialendoscopy uses tiny lighted scopes, inserted into the gland's opening in the mouth, to visualize the salivary duct system and locate the stone. Then, using specially designed micro instruments, the surgeon can remove the stone to relieve the blockage. The procedure is performed under local or light general anesthesia, which allows the patient to go home right after the procedure.
For people with recurrent stones or irreversible damage to the salivary gland, surgical removal of the gland is necessary."

CAGED

2011-05-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Well this bird has hurt itself 3 times. I feel so bothered by it that I dreamed that I dropped it a long way down, then I went to look for it, really really worried. My whole night sleep was in this dream, looking for the birdie.
In reality, it got hurt 3 times already. First it dived into J's butt and got sat on. Then it got caught in the curly fluorescent light bulb, hanging almost upside down. We thought it broke its legs but after a few days, it was walking fine and happy again. Then one day when I closed the door, it attempted to dive through it and apparently hit the door quite hard, fell and since then it doesn't seem to be able to see. It closes its eyes a lot and can't fly much so we determined that it has become blind :(

So finally we went to buy a bird cage and as much as we didn't like to restrict its freedom, I feel that it is the only way to keep it safe from hurting itself again. Like a child - too much freedom does hurt.

It is furiously chirping at me right now.

SLEEP DEPRIVED

2011-05-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

Never feel like I am ever getting enough sleep.

FIOA GRAS

2011-05-17T15:38:00.001-07:00

On Sunday I did an interpretation for a mentally ill Chinese man. He cried a few times, he hit someone but other times he kept talking and talking. I went through the group therapy with him and the social worker. I feel sorry for him, after that I bought a cake home for all of us to enjoy our happy life.

On Monday, Sec. did 2 things that made me mad and boss did 1, I was so upset I called in sick today. OK, OK I know that is childish, but I don't regret it. No work today and I feel so relaxed. The poor birdie got stuck in the curly flouroscent bulb and its leg was twisted. We thought it was broken, but it seems OK today. So glad! Went with J to a French restaurant for lunch. I had wanted to try the fioa gras for a while already and got my wish today! It is so very, very rich, it is like biting into a big chunk of cheese. After that we went to 99 and bought fried fish for Bo's dinner. Here I am relaxing..........ah.

GO FOR THE GOLD!!!

2011-05-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

GO FOR THE GOLD!!!

UPDATE OF THIS WEEK

2011-05-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

Friday we had 3 fights, the kids are acting from bad to worse. Fights, drugs...ghetto!

We gave the teachers free breakfast Monday, a special design cup on Tuesday, a flashdrive/pen on Thursday, the "Energy Bus" book on Friday and PTO provided lunch on Wednesday for this past week's of Teachers Appreciation Week. No thank-yous. Boss even got a nasty note from Mr. N. Like CC said, all they care is what is in for mememe, regardless of all the effort we have to put in to save enough funds to buy these gifts for them because we cannot use school budget to buy them. Oh well.

Singapore election completed and PAP won! Like Lee KY said the younger generation never knew the hardship it came from, all they see is current trend of "freedom" they cannot perceive what it was like, this is a generation borne with everything already handed to them.

Ah York called, she said Kok Kok is going Kung Fu, I might get Bo the class.

Saturday I attended 2 hours interpreters' forum. It was very constructive and I like the interactions with all the people from around the world. After that I bought food back for the family.

Bo had to work hours for NHS and now she is studying hard for the AP Biology test.

Birdie is doing good. It is so fun, flying on all parts of us, mostly on the hair, on the shoulder and pulling on my necklace. It nibbles with its sharp beak and digs its sharp claws into us. LOL.

Today is Mother's Day. I called my aunt, she sounded happy. She said her leg hurt now and then but the doctor's fee is high. I told her not to worry about money and she need to take care of the pain. I had sent her a card and $100. I wish I have more money but I just don't have the energy to pursue with real estates anymore.

I am so tired, I can't even go to the gym today. But we will eat at Tokyo One.

2011-05-02T16:24:00.001-07:00

This spring has been eventful................................
March 12 - Deadly tsunami and nuclear tragedy in Japan

March 19 - Supermoon

April 27 - Dozens of tornado ripped through 6 states from Alabama and killed 300 people.

April 29 - Royal wedding

May 1 - Osama Bin Linden is dead

OBSESSED WITH MY BIRD!

2011-05-01T15:09:00.001-07:00

HAPPY EASTER BIRDIE SAVED

2011-04-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

About 10 days ago, 2 baby birds were kicked off the tree nest by don't know what. One was dead and the ants were eating it. The other one was totally naked with no feathers but it was moving. So Bo picked it up and put it in a box. She googled to see what food to feed it and miraculously nurtured it back to health.

5 days later, some of its feathers'd grown. Bo or J had to feed it every hour. We even took it with us when we went to the beach for the weekend. Bo demonstrated her "motherly love" completely :)

Here is 10 days later:--all the feathers are grown. Still opening that big yellow mouth to ask for food every hour. Bo doesn't mind.

Now it is all healthy, chirping so happily!

Today it is learning to fly. It caught us by surprise when it suddenly rested on Bo's head.

GOOD FRIDAY

2011-04-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

This week was really stressful for everyone. My boss' boss was threatening him and hinting that he is not doing a good job. Boss was very sad. One of the AP sent a nasty email to the 8th grade teachers and made them all mad. We have improvements in our Math result which came out but compared to the 7 or 8 middle schools in this region, we were the lowest! So boss was very upset. I was also upset because he kept listening to some people who I don't think put the school interest first, they were self serving and he doesn't seem to see it.Anyway, good for GOOD FRIDAY, (which was yesterday) that we got the day off. Time we can retreat to stop killing each other (getting on each other's nerves). We got started kind of late, then J kept going to the wrong side of the beach, I was yelling and scolding him quite badly actually. I feel very bad after that. But we try to have fun.

The water was too cold. The 5 kids have a lot of fun. Thereafter we ate at Rainforest. The others went home but we checked in Baymont Hotel. It was quite nice. I slept really early. Saturday - we were going to spend time at the beach, but ended up talking back and forth with the vendor and the sec because one of the ladies who was supposed to pick up the 900 tshirts at 10am failed to do so. See! that is why you can't depend on people who are unreliable. This is the difference between a professional staff and a non-professional staff. There, it took some joy out of my beach outing again. At noon we brought crawfish to go and head home.

Then J took Bo to Ana's birthday party and I am laying here typing and - ready to sleep too.

SINGAPORE SONGS

2011-04-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

Found some cute, cute Singapore songs: http://youtu.be/8chA_lVl3Gs Give Way; http://youtu.be/6QRzvOtLbs8 Flood Song; http://youtu.be/ch-z5s2JabY We live in Singapura; http://youtu.be/VONV2-04Nj4 Perfect Singaporean; http://youtu.be/JoS8Wy0YUzI Will You

THE REALITY

2011-04-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday driving home, I was just thinking about stuff happening at the school, and then I thought- oh my gosh! what a ghetto school - environment I am in - day-in and day-out. If my old friends from Singapore would have known what an environment I am in now, I think they will faint. I used to paint, write, sing, recite poems....we were so culturally inclined; but now? we chase after students, catch them in attics, yell and scream at them, see them take drug, drill holes in their skin, break up fights in the streets................WHAT A LIFE!Seriously!! and things I can't talk about here nor there.Sometimes I look back and say to myself - WHY??????

J GETS BALLOONING

2011-04-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

Took a day off work today to take J to the hopital at 6am. They began the procedure at 8 and was done in a couple hours. The doctor said he is plugged up 50% and his native vessels are bad but the by-pass was doing good and he would not need a stent. He can be treated medically. I am very happy. J is still under the influence. At noon I went home because they cannot release him till 6pm. I went home to get the tax paperwork ready to take to the tax office. Bo rode in to school with her friend KK. At 6pm we went to the hospital to take J back home, then I took Bo to JCPenny to get a suit. She gets extra bonus if she wears a suit to school tomorrow. My beautiful girl!

HECTIC WEEK

2011-04-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

This has been a very hectic week. I hit my dreams beginning around 8:30pm each night, but in the past few nights, I got wide awake at 3am for an hour or so before I could lure myself back into sleep. I don't know why. I spoke a long time to Ellen today and she said maybe it is subconciously bothering me about that girl I cannot help. Having to stay confident on the case that I work on, I am not able to pursue on to help a girl who cannot understand English, no one is teaching her English in an English speaking country and she is mentally ill. Oh, when I related my first experience at this place I went on the assignment this week, it cracked J up, he thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I think so too but I cannot write out leh. Today is super busy. The grant I am writing is due today, inventory is due, get ready for TAKS, pep rally for TAKS, soccer, dance after school, election for teacher of the year is due today, celebrate my boss' b-day and AP's last day. SBM from the high school called and told me she got the pink slip and everyone at her school has been laid off. I felt sad for her, she is going back to Florida. Yesterday I had a bad meeting with that lady from CM with my boss and today I told him that I have never seen a "p" being told what to do by a vendor! I also thank him for keeping us from pulling each others hair out yesterday, he responded in a nice manner, well after he said "he can't ask for any SBM better than me" I feel grateful already. It is sad to see AP has to leave. Anyway J is going to the hospital for ballooning of his heart on Wednesday.

I AM TIRED

2011-03-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

I am so tired every night but I am so glad I still have a job. I still need to hang in there because Bo needs to go to college and a car and vacation...Our school is one of the 37 schools on the hit list for closure but I cannot worry too much now. AP's last day is this Friday and they said it is not April Fool. I spent all day writing the grant for afterschool today, didn't finish it, but close though. Jim looks like he is better this week. But my body is getting more and more tired each day.

2 FAMOUS WOMEN DIED

2011-03-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Taylor died at age 79. Geraldine Ferraro died at age 75. Sec. told me AP is resigning on April 6. The district is considering closing 37 schools and we are on the list :(

CHING CHONG

2011-03-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/embed/pEu1RCc30_M (original) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulEMWj3sVA (song) http://www.youtube.com/embed/6feGp0GQVJ8 (UCLA statement) .................................................................................................................................. FROM NPR: Jimmy Wong: An Internet hero in action It seems like a great time to be a bully. When I was a kid, even the most productive bullies could only manage a handful of victims at a time. What used to take a lot of effort can now be handled with a couple thumbs and some Wi-Fi. A hateful rumor can spread a lot faster on Facebook than it could on the school bathroom wall. And while it used to require a certain set of characteristics to thrive as a bully, the internet makes it simple for almost anyone to graduate from cowering weakling to kicking virtual sand in the face of friends and strangers in no time. If you've spent more than five minutes reading Internet comments, you know that being a cyberbully requires about the same level of exertion and fortitude as screaming obscenities at other drivers while you cruise down the freeway with your windows rolled up. And the bullies have figured this out. Cyberbullying has become so prevalent that several states are considering the enactment of laws targeting its perpetrators. The federal government even has a site dedicated to the troubling trend. The connection between bully and target is so seamless that hate speech can often spread more rapidly than its originator ever intended. One assumes that's the case with UCLA student Alexandra Wallace, who recorded a three-minute rant against Asian students, in particular those who use cell phones in her school library. In the video, which she posted on YouTube, Wallace shared her version of the Asian language (including several ching chongs and ling longs), urged Asians who come to UCLA to first adopt "American manners," and for good measure even managed to work in a reference to the tsunami in Japan. (The original video was pulled from YouTube. The video went viral. Its contents and the reaction it generated made it all the way to the pages of The New York Times. In a previous era, it would have taken Alexandra Wallace several lifetimes to even encounter as many Asian students as she managed to offend in three minutes. I'm sure Wallace regrets posting that YouTube video — and will likely continue to suffer the repercussions thanks to the web's reach and permanence. But the ease with which it was produced and the pace at which it went viral is another indicator of just how easy it is to spread hate in the Internet age. Tomorrow's kids — in addition to facing the usual natural disasters that come with adolescence — will be confronted with the multichannel, always-on, upsettingly viral slings and arrows of bullies. Although Alexandra Wallace is a far cry from the worst of bullies, the whole incident left me feeling depressed about the future. But then I saw Jimmy Wong. Jimmy Wong reminded me that the tools that can be deployed by the so-called cyberbullies are also freely available to those they harass. Wong, a 24 year-old singer, and up-and-coming YouTube sensation, wrote and recorded The Asians in the Library Song in response to Alexandra Wallace's video. "I pick up my phone and sing...Ching Chong, it means I love youLing Long, I really want youTing Tong, I don't actually know what that means" The lyrics are funny and good-spirited, and effectively turn the tables on the original rant. And the song itself has a catchy hook, has been viewed about 2 million times, and is now for sale on iTunes. When I was a kid, here's one thing I never thought of saying to a bully who was about to pummel me: "Hey, don't mess with me. I've got a quirky sense of humor, a great singing voice, and I know how to code!" But Jimmy Wong and many others are proving those types of creative skills could be a decent way to put up a defense. Modern victims of bullying have a much broader arsenal of tools with which to defend themselves. I'm reminded of those old match box covers that featured a Charles Atlas advertisement with the line: "Tired of having sand kicked in your face?" Back then, the ad was for a muscle building program. A Jimmy Wong era version of that ad could read: "Tired of having sand kicked in your face? Get a video phone, take singing lessons, practice Photoshop, and learn to develop snappy retorts that are shorter than 140 characters." None of this is intended to suggest a future free of bullying or a panacea that helps all the little guys win in the end. But in some ways, the playing field has been leveled. It's not just about being physically tougher or being the type of person who thrives on conflict. Sometimes it's about being smarter, funnier or more creative. And — Ching Chong — I really love that. Maybe it's still a decent time to be a bully. But it's an even better time to be Jimmy Wong.

SUPERMOON TONIGHT

2011-03-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

http://blogs.chron.com/observableuniverse/2011/03/supermoon.html

U.S. and France declare war on Libya

Jessica Tata turned herself in

Knut Bear in Berlin died suddenly

Jun Morikawa from Tokyo, writes: "Never was so much owed by so many to so few," applies to those few courageous folks (technicians, fire-fighters and Self-Defense Forces officers) fighting the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant. No one could ever find the words to thank them for their incredible determination and commitment to save the nation at their own peril.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/japan-s-tragedy-in-60-seconds-24563512

AMYGDALA

2011-03-17T14:14:00.001-07:00

From the Straits Times, this article touched my heart:

ONE lone voice has emerged from the group of heroic workers at Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), which runs the quake-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, where workers are scrambling to cool the nuclear plant and avoid a meltdown.
Michiko Otsuki - a female worker at Tepco - has written on her blog, speaking up for her 'silent' colleagues who remained behind at the plant.
She had been quoted a little in some overseas English reports but The Straits Times Online tracked and translated her blog to find out her full story when she first posted on popular Japanese social networking site Mixi.
By Thursday however, her post had been taken down, but the entry had already been reproduced by several online blogs and in Japanese language forums.
Ms Otsuki is one of the 800 employees evacuated from the plant on Monday, leaving 50 workers behind to battle the nuclear crisis.
On Tuesday, she addressed the growing criticisms levelled at Tepco.
'People have been flaming Tepco,' she said. 'But the staff of Tepco have refused to flee, and continue to work even at the peril of their own lives. Please stop attacking us.'
Tepco, which powers Japan's capital and largest city Tokyo, is one of the main players in the world of Japanese nuclear power, with a history of safety violations.
Even Prime Minister Naoto Kan, frustrated that an explosion featured in the news had not been reported to the Prime Minister's office, is reported to have burst into an executive meeting at the company and demanded what was going on.
However, Ms Otsuki's blog post gives the world a glimpse of the tireless, faceless crew - now dubbed the Fukushima 50 - who are working on the frontline to stop the nuclear crisis from escalating, risking the effects of radiation. In the most severe cases, radiation can lead to higher chances of developing cancer, or even death.
'As a worker at Tepco and a member of the Fukushima No. 2 reactor team, I was dealing with the crisis at the scene until yesterday (Monday).'
'In the midst of the tsunami alarm (last Friday), at 3am in the night when we couldn't even see where we going, we carried on working to restore the reactors from where we were, right by the sea, with the realisation that this could be certain death,' she said.
'The machine that cools the reactor is just by the ocean, and it was wrecked by the tsunami. Everyone worked desperately to try and restore it. Fighting fatigue and empty stomachs, we dragged ourselves back to work.
'There are many who haven't gotten in touch with their family members, but are facing the present situation and working hard.'
Battling On
'Please remember that. I want this message to reach even just one more person. Everyone at the power plant is battling on, without running away.
'To all the residents (around the plant) who have been alarmed and worried, I am truly, deeply sorry.
'I am writing my name down, knowing I will be abused and hurt because of this. There are people working to protect all of you, even in exchange for their own lives.
'Watching my co-workers putting their lives on the line without a second thought in this situation, I'm proud to be a member of Tepco, and a member of the team behind Fukushima No. 2 reactor.
'I hope to return to the plant and work on the restoration of the reactor.'
But her pleas seem to have gone unheard. The original post has now been taken down and she has instead posted an apology: 'I am very sorry, but I have locked the post as it was being used in a way I had not intended it to be.
'Having seen what's happening on the ground, my message to all of you remains the same. But others have changed the contents of the post and used it for the wrong reasons, like fanning fear amongst others, and I have therefore decided to lock my post.
'I am praying from the bottom of my heart for the safety of your loved ones. I am sorry it (the blog post) has turned out this way.'

I think I am suffering from Amygdala.

MID SPRING BREAK

2011-03-16T16:46:00.001-07:00

J's been experiencing shortness of breath, so today we went to the doctor. Just to see the doctor, do EKG, stress test and the nuclear testing, it costs over $500. Then the doctor asked him to come back in 2 weeks. I am kind of skeptical of this doctor because they keep asking us to pay pay pay. Unlike the other doctor we didn't need to pay so much. Last week we went to see "Battle LA." It is sort of confusing, surprised that it is a war movie, not an alien movie. Tomorrow I have an interpretation assignment.

JAPAN UPDATE
Tokyo -- Mid-March is not a high travel season for Japan, but as the nuclear emergency at Fukushima nuclear plant persists, the airports are growing clogged with passengers.
They're primarily traveling one way: out of Tokyo.
Lines at Tokyo's Haneda Airport weave back and forth across the departure terminal. Families fill the seats, awaiting flights to Japan's southern and northern islands.
It's a similar scene at Tokyo's largest airport, Narita International, but with bigger crowds, numbering into the thousands.
Can Japan's economy bounce back?
Tokyo
It is an unprecedented, albeit orderly, mass exodus out of one of the world's most populated cities amid the growing nuclear emergency at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant.
International residents are the ones able to leave quickly, like French citizen Matthew Delboe. "I think when you're praying for the winds to go one way, it's time to go," says Delboe, traveling out of Tokyo to the southern island of Kyushu.
The French foreign ministry says that the first plane of French people evacuated from Japan landed in Paris. The French government says it will have information about additional planes in the upcoming days.
But it wasn't his government's actions that led Delboe to want to leave Tokyo. It's the lack of clarity about the future of the plant, he explains. "Two days ago, I thought there was absolutely no risk. But now I think it's stupid to stay when you can leave."
It appeared many in downtown Tokyo were also either leaving or simply absent from their jobs.
Restaurants say they've had slow business all week. Streets in business districts, normally bustling with people at the lunch hour on Wednesday, look like a weekend or a holiday.
"It's scary," says an owner of a noodle shop, sitting outside his restaurant. When asked if he would leave, he says no. "I have my entire life here. I can't just pull up and leave."
Zach Ogura, a salesman in downtown Tokyo, says he understands why so many people are leaving Tokyo, but believes at this point, it's a bit of an overreaction.
"At this moment in time, I'm pretty comfortable here, doing biz as usual, but I don't know, in a few days or so, I don't know."

On Japanese Behavior
Food and water are both scarce. Electricity in the tsunami zone is nearly nonexistent. Survivors have lacked information about their missing loved ones.
But unlike other disasters where the world has observed looting, rioting and public outbursts of sorrow and rage, it has seen a country quietly mourning, its people standing patiently for hours in orderly lines for a few bottles of water.
This is surprising only if you've never lived here or experienced how Japan's society operates. As a resident of Japan for three years, I would have been surprised if this country's people behaved in any other manner.Across Sendai's tsunami zone, both in the areas devastated and in the neighboring regions, you can see that Japan's societal mores have failed to break down, even if the tsunami destroyed the physical structure of this coastal community.
At stores across the city, long, straight lines of Japanese tsunami victims have been waiting for rations in the city. No one is directing these lines; they're organized by the people themselves.
At the front, which takes hours to get to in some cases, shoppers are limited to 10 food or beverage items. No complaints, no cheating.
No one should complain, says Mitsugu Miyagi, standing in line at a store with his infant, 6-year-old and wife, Maki.
When asked what happens if the city does run out of bottled water supplies, Maki states simply, "What can we do?"
Military and emergency efforts have been focused on the tsunami-ravaged regions or at the nuclear plant in Fukushima.
When it comes to relief, volunteer agencies and impromptu community groups have organized shelters and food distribution.
At the Monterey Hotel in Sendai, two chefs dressed in their signature hats from the hotel restaurant spooned out hot soup for breakfast. All passers-by were invited to eat. For many, it was their first hot soup since the tsunami.
But what's notable is that the people who lined up for the soup took only one cup. They didn't get back in line for a second cup; that wouldn't be fair.
Even among the newly homeless from the tsunami, there is a sense of civility and community that creates pause among international onlookers.
Shichigo Elementary School in Sendai is now home to hundreds of tsunami victims. In a third-floor classroom, families have self-organized themselves on cardboard boxes and blankets. No one family has a larger space than the other, just as you see at any average family festival. Shoes are not allowed on the blankets, in order to maintain sanitary conditions. Food is shared as equally as possible, even if one person eats or drinks a little less in order for everyone to have some sustenance.
Voices, other than the laughter or cries of children, remain subdued and calm.
Japan's Emperor Akihito, in an unprecedented address to his citizens, pointed out that the international community has been "impressed" with the Japanese victims.
"These world leaders also say their citizens are impressed with how calm the Japanese people have remained, how they are helping each other and how organized they are. I think it is important that we share the difficult days and overcome this disaster," the emperor said.
The Japanese from a young age are socialized to put group interest ahead of individual interest--Emperor Akihito
Returning to the "how" question I've been asked by my international friends and colleagues, the answer comes down to national character, says Temple University's Jeffrey Kingston. Kingston is a scholar of Japan and has lived in the country since 1987.
Kingston calls the behavior of the Japanese "remarkable but not surprising."
"The Japanese, from a young age, are socialized to put group interest ahead of individual interest. Many criticize them for deference to authority, abundant rules and conformity, but this is the fabric of social cohesion that keeps Japan together," Kingston said.
Kingston notes that Japan has been struck by disaster since its creation, and it's accustomed to dealing with disaster. The survival strategy, argues Kingston, has been to rely on the group.
I know what Kingston is talking about. The social uniformity and obsession with rules has often driven me, the Westerner, to the brink of frustration. I have difficulty comprehending how Japanese children are taught this in school: The nail that sticks out of the board has to be hammered down. Interpretation: You don't want to stick out, either as a failure or as a huge success, or display your emotions in an undignified manner. You simply want to be like everyone else.
Sometimes, to foreigners, Japan's societal rules seems orderly and conformist to a fault. But no one can argue that in this disaster, it is a tremendous benefit. I only need to think about my own home country dealing with triple disasters in the space of a few days to understand how Japan's society has characteristics that simply don't exist in any other large country.
It would be a mistake, however, to say the self-control of the Japanese means they are stoic in the face of this historic disaster.
Mari Sato is hurting, but as a Japanese woman, she is doing her best to be reserved and dignified, prized by society as admirable qualities.
Sato lived about two miles from the Sendai shore, in a house neighbors easily recognized because of its signature pink roof. Three days after the tsunami, the newspaper ran before-and-after satellite images of her Sendai neighborhood. In the after picture, she says, there's only crushed brown rubble.
"The pink roof," Sato said, and began to quietly cry. Sato shook her head as she pointed to the bare section in the picture. "I never imagined a tsunami could do this."
Sato's tears fell down her face, dropping onto the newspaper revealing the devastation to her home. Sato apologized for her emotional display.
The Japanese victim hurts like any disaster victim in the world but, as she or he has been raised, prefers to mourn as quietly and privately as possible.

POOR JAPAN

2011-03-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

Earthquake 9.0
Tsunami
Nuclear Meltdown
Radiation

Poor Japan, what is next..............................

No matter how smart, how advance you are, in the end, GOD RULES.

MORE ON THE EARTHQUAKE

2011-03-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

TAGAJO, Japan — People across a devastated swath of Japan suffered for a third day Sunday without water, electricity and proper food, as the country grappled with the enormity of a massive earthquake and tsunami that left more than 10,000 people dead in one area alone.
Japan's prime minister called the crisis the most severe challenge the nation has faced since World War II, as the grim situation worsened. Friday's disasters damaged a series of nuclear reactors, potentially sending one through a partial meltdown and adding radiation contamination to the fears of an unsettled public.
Temperatures began sinking toward freezing, compounding the misery of survivors along hundreds of miles of the northeastern coast battered by the tsunami that smashed inland with breathtaking fury. Rescuers pulled bodies from mud-covered jumbles of wrecked houses, shattered tree trunks, twisted cars and tangled power lines while survivors examined the ruined remains.
In Rikusentakata, a port city of over 20,000 virtually wiped out by the tsunami, Etsuko Koyama escaped the water rushing through the third flood of her home but lost her grip on her daughter's hand and has not found her.
"I haven't given up hope yet," Koyama told public broadcaster NHK, wiping tears from her eyes. "I saved myself, but I couldn't save my daughter."
To the south, in Miyagi prefecture, or state, the police chief told a gathering of disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths was more than 10,000, police spokesman Go Sugawara told The Associated Press. Miyagi has a population of 2.3 million and is one of the three prefectures hardest hit in Friday's disaster. Fewer than 400 people have officially been confirmed as dead in Miyagi.
According to officials, more than 1,400 people were killed — including 200 people whose bodies were found Sunday along the coast — and more than 1,000 were missing in the disasters. Another 1,700 were injured.
Japanese officials raised their estimate Sunday of the quake's magnitude to 9.0, a notch above the U.S. Geological Survey's reading of 8.9. Either way, it was the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan
For Japan, one of the world's leading economies with ultramodern infrastructure, the disasters plunged ordinary life into nearly unimaginable deprivation.
Hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers that were cut off from rescuers, aid and electricity. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and some 1.9 million households were without electricity.
While the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100,000 and sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water and 29,000 gallons (110,000 liters) of gasoline plus food to the affected areas, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said electricity would take days to restore. In the meantime, he said, electricity would be rationed with rolling blackouts to several cities, including Tokyo.
"This is Japan's most severe crisis since the war ended 65 years ago," Kan told reporters, adding that Japan's future would be decided by its response.
In a rare piece of good news, the Defense Ministry said a military vessel on Sunday rescued a 60-year-old man floating off the coast of Fukushima on the roof of his house after he and his wife were swept away in the tsunami. He was in good condition. His wife did not survive.
A young man described what ran through his mind before he escaped in a separate rescue. "I thought to myself, ah, this is how I will die," Tatsuro Ishikawa, his face bruised and cut, told NHK as he sat in striped hospital pajamas.
Dozens of countries have offered assistance. Two U.S. aircraft carrier groups were off Japan's coast and ready to provide assistance. Helicopters were flying from one of the carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan, delivering food and water in Miyagi.
Two other U.S. rescue teams of 72 personnel each and rescue dogs arrived Sunday, as did a five-dog team from Singapore.
Still, large areas of the countryside remained surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations were closed, though, at some, cars waited in lines hundreds of vehicles long.
The United States and a several countries in Europe urged their citizens to avoid travel to Japan. France took the added step of suggesting people leave Tokyo in case radiation reached the city.
Community after community traced the vast extent of the devastation.
In the town of Minamisanrikucho, 10,000 people — nearly two-thirds of the population — have not been heard from since the tsunami wiped it out, a government spokesman said. NHK showed only a couple concrete structures still standing, and the bottom three floors of those buildings gutted. One of the few standing was a hospital, and a worker told NHK that hospital staff rescued about a third of the patients in the facility.
In the town of Iwaki, there was no electricity, stores were closed and residents left as food and fuel supplies dwindled. Local police took in about 90 people and gave them blankets and rice balls, but there was no sign of government or military aid trucks.
At a large refinery on the outskirts of the hard-hit port city of Sendai, 100-foot (30-meter) -high bright orange flames rose in the air, spitting out dark plumes of smoke. The facility has been burning since Friday. The fire's roar could be heard from afar. Smoke burned the eyes and throat, and a gaseous stench hung in the air.
In the small town of Tagajo, also near Sendai, dazed residents roamed streets cluttered with smashed cars, broken homes and twisted metal.
Residents said the water surged in and quickly rose higher than the first floor of buildings. At Sengen General Hospital, the staff worked feverishly to haul bedridden patients up the stairs one at a time. With the halls now dark, those who can leave have gone to the local community center.
"There is still no water or power, and we've got some very sick people in here," said hospital official Ikuro Matsumoto.
Police cars drove slowly through the town and warned residents through loudspeakers to seek higher ground, but most simply stood by and watched them pass.
In Sendai, firefighters with wooden picks dug through a devastated neighborhood. One of them yelled: "A corpse." Inside a house, he had found the body of a gray-haired woman under a blanket.
A few minutes later, the firefighters spotted another — that of a man in black fleece jacket and pants, crumpled in a partial fetal position at the bottom of a wooden stairwell. From outside, while the top of the house seemed almost untouched, the first floor where the body was had been inundated. A minivan lay embedded in one outer wall, which had been ripped away, pulverized beside a mangled bicycle.
The man's neighbor, 24-year-old Ayumi Osuga, dug through the remains of her own house, her white mittens covered by dark mud.
Osuga said she had been practicing origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into figures, with her three children when the quake stuck. She recalled her husband's shouted warning from outside: "'GET OUT OF THERE NOW!'"
She gathered her children — aged 2 to 6 — and fled in her car to higher ground with her husband. They spent the night in a hilltop home belonging to her husband's family about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away.
"My family, my children. We are lucky to be alive," she said.
"I have come to realize what is important in life," Osuga said, nervously flicking ashes from a cigarette onto the rubble at her feet as a giant column of black smoke billowed in the distance.
___