shark fin gwa

Mom has been growing this "shark fin gwa" in a bucket outside my apartment. Even with only 4-5 inch of soil, the plant has been growing pretty well and even have flower buds all over. My mom has been wishing the flowers to bloom and eventually have "gwa" to eat. But the flower buds just get bigger and bigger and haven't opened up yet. A couple of flower buds, instead of opening up, at the base of it... have started to swell up, looking like a "gwa." But I kept telling my mom that it is not possible to have "gwa" without the flower in bloom first. And my mom kept saying, it has skipped flowering and gone right to the "gwa-ing" stage. So this morning, I used an analogy to explain that a woman won't get pregnant without having sex, which is why you don't have gwa without the flower. Then she replied, "of course you can! Mary was like that!" I was like... arrrgh...

Anyway, my allergy has been pretty bad this week. I think it's a combination of cold and allergy.

I really need to study for the PE exam which will be on Oct 26. I'll be taking a review class up in Schaumburg starting Sept 10. There are a lot of topics I don't know and not familiar with, like structural and transportation. I am a little worried now. I don't have all the reference books I need yet... you know, those codes and stuff. Anyway, I'll try my best and see what happen.

On poverty

Come across this article on Washington Post.
On Poverty, Maybe We're All Wrong

Interesting idea. I'll post some graphs later to look at this idea further.

weekend

Took Friday afternoon off to go get a set of new tires for my subaru forester. Cost me an arm and a leg. But now the car runs as smoothly as ever. And no more squeaks turning tight corners. These new tires have 60k tread warranty. Nice...

A walk along the lake shore was nice... Saturday night turns out to be perfect, weather-wise. Much cooler, sharp contrast with the steamy and raining days for the past 2 weeks. The sad thing is... a night like that won't happen again for at least a month, or maybe more...

experience with words

Have you ever had the experience that when you write down a word, all of a sudden that word seems so foreign to you and you are not sure you have spelled it correctly? Even after you've looked up the word in the dictionary, you still puzzle with the spelling. Happened to me tonight with the word "thorough." Weird, isn't it. I do the same thing with Chinese words too. Strange.

Start of the week

Kinda under the weather for the past couple days. Got a cold I think. Just not wanting to go to work. Maybe I am more work sick than sick sick. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

My boss just refused to take Pedro home. Well... I guess he doesn't want to take care of it, though his daughter has requested him to bring Pedro home. Oh well... I guess I better start raising some crickets too...

I got three pairs of shoes from Kohl's Sunday. All on clearance. Only for $50 total. Not bad huh! Should have gotten my running shoes from there too.

Egg tart

Mom made "snow dove cake" egg tarts. I have never heard of such a thing. Must be a first! But as usual they taste really good.

tunnel

Come to think about it, we are in a dark tunnel most of the time. Fortunately we have friends and family who hold our hands and guide us, or sometimes a flashlight or two may be available so that we don't get lost. It'll be nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But even we don't see it now, it doesn't mean that it's not there. We just have to keep walking. Be patient and trust your friends and family who've been there. And always have faith.

Chicago Botanic Garden

Uploaded pictures I took at Chicago Botanic Garden couple weekends ago. Enjoy.

Chicago Botanic Garden

trout

Mom made steamed rainbow trout tonight. She asked why I didn't go for the eyes. I asked why. Then she said when I was little, I would always poke at the fish eye. She would ask me why and I would say, "To eat lor! It's so good!" Then I would put the eye in my mouth and spit out the eyeball. I really don't recall that I like fish eye.

young chicken

Mom: This chicken doesn't expire till september!
Dad: It's a young chicken (as read from the label).
Mom: ?!?!?!
Mom: So an old chicken will expire sooner then?!
Dad: ......

Mom: Go chop up the chicken meat.
Dad: (chopping)
Dad: Done!
Mom: What?! I asked you to chop not mesh the chicken!
Dad: I didn't mesh it. Just that it is a young chicken.
Mom: ......

Just stuff

Went to Mokena this morning and played 18 holes of frisbee golf. This was the first time I ever really played a real course this year. I was never really good at frisbee golf. But I just love seeing the trajectory of the disc as it flies through the air. It is always a beauty when you throw it just right. I was surprised how much progress my dad has made from a year ago, even my mom was throwing pretty well (at least she can keep the disc level and get about 60 to 70 feet in distance).

Then we headed to Costco in Orland Park to get grocery and stuff. We had lunch there. Ha... yup... $1.50 polish sausage + pop. My mom had a slice pizza which she thought it was pretty bad. Oh well the lunch was cheap, though.

Got back home b4 2:30 and I went to church to help out with blood pressure and blood sugar testings. I was in charge of doing the blood sugar. First time ever to use the machine and to draw blood from ppl. I did 6 people altogether. Will do that again tomorrow morning.

And I made dinner tonight.. well sort of. I cooked 2 steaks. My dad cooked the vegetables. Dad was complaining that the steak was too raw and he ruined it totally by "dinging" it in the microwave! What a shame to a good piece of steak. And he kept saying how good it was after it was nuked in the microwave.

On a side note, I still have Pedro the tree frog. My boss hasn't taken it home yet. He jokingly asked me that if I wanted to keep him as a pet in the office... hmmmmm

Pedro and Rib-Eye Roast

Pedro is doing great. I cleaned his tank over the weekend, replaced the bedding and put in some moss and got him a dozen more crickets. He's a big eater. Last weekend I got him a dozen and he finished them all in less than 5 days. I took some pictures but he was always hiding. I'll try to poke him out of the moss tomorrow morning and get a nice picture of him. Boss comes back tomorrow.

I made rib-eye roast tonight. A little too well done for my taste but my dad loved it. He doesn't like raw meat. Next time I'll cook it to just 130­F instead of 140F. I brushed on some Dijon mustard... and sprinkled on some pepper, rosemary, and thyme... and salt and garlic powder of course... Only took about 1.5 hours. I also made a red wine sauce for it. Turned out pretty nice.

Pedro

iPhone

I got an iPhone today. Finally I buckled under peer pressure... well actually more of my own desire and couldn't resist the temptation to own a phone that I had been longing for for so long. Anyway...

iPhone is cool. The ONE concern I had was with the reported low call volume. BUT, I don't think that's the case. Well.. it isn't very loud even I turn the volume all the way up. But I don't have any trouble hearing at all. The headset that comes with phone works well too. The speaker is very limited however and is not very loud. So the speaker phone function is kinda useless if the background noise is loud.

Otherwise... everything works as advertised. Typing is actually not too bad. The software does a very good job of correcting errors. The browser works well... except for some websites. Navigation and interface are just short of amazing.

I got the phone working in less in 5 minutes. Got my gmail set up in less than 1/2 min. I am very happy with the phone so far.

Dad's apology

My parents hadn't been speaking to each other for 4 days. Finally my dad redeemed himself today with a letter to mom. At the end of that letter... his sign-off. Hahahaha!!!!!!!

Do we know?

Do we truly know what we want?
I doubt that is ever true.
Yes, maybe, for an instance,
we know what we want for a moment
and we get what we want;
but the next moment,
we want something else or
what we have wanted is not enough any more
and we want something greater and better.

Pedro the frog

I have a frog in my office now. My boss is gone for vacation... fishing in Canada with his entire family and relatives. And I have to take care of his daughter's tree frog--Pedro. I got a dozen of crickets from Petco yesterday and dumped all of them in the little aquarium where Pedro lives. Pedro only comes out in the evening and at night. During the day he just hides under the moss. I'll take some pictures of him later. He'll be with me till next Monday.

On relationships (2)

Continuing from a previous post...

Then in the secondary school, which I thought I could start over, making new friends... But I seemed to run into similar problems. I found that I didn't fit into any of the "groups" in school. One of the problems was that I didn't get to hang out with them. My family was poor -- I didn't have the means to go out with them. I had a couple of really good guy friends though whom I regret that I didn't really keep in touch with them. But if I look for them now, we'll be still be good friends. Anyway, other than those 2 friends... the rest of the classmates didn't really like me all that much. But as I remember right, it was ok. Life was good, most of the time. Then after the HKCEE exam, I left Hong Kong for a student exchange program. And I came to the States.

To be continued...

Running

I never liked running. I remembered back in the college days... ooh.. the number of times I did any serious running can be counted with one hand. But I have been running pretty regularly in recent weeks. Hurt my foot when I started about a month ago coz I didn't have proper shoes. Now that I bought a pair of Nike... I run about every other days for about 2.5 miles each time. I run about very slow... a little more than 10 min/mile. I think I have gotten better now. My breathing is better now, except my legs still get tired towards the end. My goal is run a half marathon, oh, maybe next year... just maybe.

I start to like running... coz it gives me some quiet time that I can think and meditate. I realize that you don't have to sit still to meditate, you can run while you meditate... hah... I never sit still and therefore could never really do any meditation. But I found that running gets you into this trance state that you can actually forget that your legs are hurting and your lungs are running of the air. Anyway running really helps me to clear my thoughts and get me focus on my priorities again.

Blueberry Picking

Took a day off yesterday and took my parents blueberry picking. We got 7+ lbs of blueberries. I have been munching on them since yesterday at the field. Mom made blueberry muffins. Yum!

Blueberry Picking 2007

On relationship with others

I was never a person who was well like by others. Even when I was in primary school, I knew some of the classmates really didn't like me. Part of it was probably because I always did well in exams... and ppl thought that I was a smart-ass... always wanted to show off. I was probably a smart-ass then, and probably still is. But I never intended to be one and I certainly don't want to be one. The consolation was that in primary 6, a group of girls accepted me into their circle. I know... sounds weird... for a guy to be with a group of girls... yeah I was attracted to one of them but that was another story... nothing really happened. The friendship with those girls were genuine, however. They told me that they thought I was arrogant, but then once they got to know me... they told me that I was actually quite nice to them. Yup... that was my consolation of being rejected by some of my peers at that time. And I knew I was arrogant at times... and I tried really hard to be humble and meek and be really nice to ppl I know. Whether it worked or not I wouldn't know.

To be continued...