Month: October 2006

Vince insisted on getting this Superman backpack. It is huge. Such a pain to get it in and out of the car – but Vince loooovvveess it.

Nothing much is happening around here, so I’m just writing a knitting update.

Apparently, Mr. Bean has a teddy bear with a floppy head. He’s my next knitting project although he’s not going to be brown and he’d not going to be very big.

Crazy Aunt Purl is a semi-famous knitblogger. I got this from her.

Four jobs I’ve had:

* Package stuffer for SWAK
* Front Desk worker for a dorm.
* Implanter of time-released drug discs in cute little lab rabbits (never again!)
* As a process engineer, made photomasks, disk drives, and the orange strip of plastic that you see on inkjet printer cartridges.

Four movies I can watch over and over:

* Big
* The Sound of Music
* Clue
* Cinema Paradiso

Four places I have lived:

* Rockville, Maryland
* Hsinchu, Taiwan
* Wappingers Falls, New York
* Austin, Texas

Four television shows I love to watch:

* Law and Order
* CSI
* House
* Oprah

Four places I have been on vacation:

* Bisbee, Arizona
* Kenting, Taiwan
* Evian, France
* Puerto Rico

Four of my favorite dishes:

* Spaghetti
* My mom’s cooking
* Fish tacos
* I do love a good meal at McDonald’s.

Four websites I visit daily:

* Pink is the New Blog
* NY Times
* Salon.com
* Gmail.com

Four places I would rather be right now:

* I’m pretty happy here in my house with the kids asleep and Jeremy and I are simulsurfing.
* 1993 (just to go back and say hi for a few days.)
* Would love to be hiking somewhere beautiful.
* With good friends eating a good meal and laughing!

Four bloggers I am tagging:

* You.
* And you.
* And you, too!
* Oh yeah, and you – the one staring at the computer screen!

Well, I’m back in SF now.

The funeral was as well as one could go I suppose. I can’t say I was very teary-eyed, as I wasn’t as close to him as some of the family and cousins. Some people came up to speak about Grandpa – Joseph, Margaret, Caroline, Liz, Arlinda, and Jopesh, Margaret’s husband.

Since I never spent a lot of time with Grandpa, I found out a couple stories about him, that I never knew before.

During WWII, he was offered a job to spy on his own people by the Japanese. He thought a long time before rejecting the offer, since it was a pretty hard time and money was scarce. But in the end, he thought it was wrong to spy on your own people, and that was the main reason for turning it down. So apparently, a family friend took the job, and was found out, and executed. Apparently the guy that was hiring them was a double agent and ratted the friend out. It was pretty sad since Grandpa knew him and he had a family.

Another story, was from Taiwan, when one night, the family was robbed in the house, and the thief took a lot of money. Later they were caught, and the thief turned out to be a neighbor’s son. Grandpa thought about pressing charges, but if he did, it would mean that the son would be executed. He thought for a long time, and decided not to press charges. The son’s family was poor, and he thought that he was in hard times, and thought that the execution was wrong. Uncle Joseph recalls the son stopping by the house some time later, screaming thru the door (Grandpa didn’t let him in the house) thanking Grandpa for sparing his life.

I also didn’t know that Grandpa was a Jehovah’s Witness. Apparently, he, Grandma and Caroline would go door to door trying to convert people I suppose. Apparently nobody could denied them, since they were super friendly.

He really missed Grandma when she passed. He either wrote, or sang a poem about Grandma, but nobody seemed to be able to remember it, or know if it was written down at all.

Arlinda remembers the abundance of Sunkist, Coke and Juicy Fruit at Grandpa’s house.

Joseph, Margaret’s husband, made a funny remark about how he has to live with the genetic legacy of Grandpa all the time – aka the lengendary Lee stubborness. While at dinner, I asked all the cousins if they thought that they were stubborn, and pretty much all of them were like, “Yeah.” Cassandra added that she thought she was always right all the time too, which I found to be pretty funny, cause I’m exactly the same way. Laff.

Oh yeah, Uncle Robert smokes, is diabetic, is overweight, and doesn’t exercise. I didn’t know that either. Cassandra pretty much chewed him out about that.

That’s about all I can remember at this point.

Also, Mom is too hip, as now she has a lanyard for her iPod Nano.

It’s been over a year since my secret pal 6, Sneaksleep gave me a beautiful skein of sock yarn. I can’t believe it has taken me a whole year to knit a pair of socks. I started knitting pretty much a day after I got the yarn in the mail.

I started with the standard cuff-down style sock and then after I was halfway done with the 2nd sock, I realized that I did the gusset wrong on the first sock. Should I rip the first sock back or do the 2nd sock in the same incorrect way?

I wanted perfectly knit socks, so I ripped back both the first and second sock. (Why the 2nd sock? I have no idea, I can’t remember.) Anyways, I finally knit a pair for the V-man using the toe-up method. And no, they aren’t perfect either, but this time I just said SCREW PERFECTION and kept knitting.

Vince loves them but, of course, has no need for them as none of us wear any socks in Singapore (except for Jeremy when he goes to work). So much for practical gifts.

Yes, I know he has his shoes on the wrong foot.

This pair of socks also counts for my Socktoberfest entry! Woo hoo!

Finally, Granpa is with Grandmom, side by side. That day, the sky was very clear. We even could see downtown of LA from the hilltop where Grandpa and Grandmom rest.

After the funeral, the family’s discussions about how to … involving 8 siblings went extremely well. That was very good. I was very pleased to say the least.

We are heading back to Aiken, SC this afternoon.

We would appreciate any donations on Edda’s behalf to the International Rett Syndrome Association (IRSA) or to the Rett Syndrome Research Foundation (RSRF). Take a look at both web sites find out more information about Rett Syndrome, new research results and fundraising events.

Well, I’m in LA now. I thought Doris would enjoy this, as we are going to eat tomorrow morning at the Hometown Buffet – one of Grandpa’s favorite places to eat!

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

I’ve decided that my bad mood and slight headache that I’ve been having for weeks is due to the haze. Look how crappy Singapore looks. Ack! Where is the tropical paradise? It looks like downtown LA.
But overally, I’m feeling much better now, the weekend is upon us – the kids are almost asleep and I spent the whole day out of the house!

Well, okay. at least better if not groovy.

Thursday nights are always a lot of fun for me. It’s rock climbing night! While I’m not the greatest rock climber in the galaxy, I enjoy the physical and mental challenge of it. The usual crowd that goes is Arif, me, Mike and Ray. Mike is a funny guy and we like to trash talk each other – so that’s a lot of fun.

Lately we’ve been trying bouldering which is a lot of fun. All these people sit around and you all try the same route and cheer everyone on. It’s great to listen to advice about how to do routes from people who are better than you, which is practically everyone at this point. Also it helps if there is a cute asian girl in the crowd also. 🙂

I like trying to see how the person who lays out the route, thought about what moves to make – kinda like how I like to think about the UI for electronic or interfaces for software – how the designer intended that device/software to be used, how that wall was supposed to be climbed.

We got caught on this one wall tonight. Couldn’t get up after 5 tries. There were like 6 people around us, all trying the wall out. I got to about six inches off the top. Oh well.

Usually my forearms are toasted after climbing, but tonight, they are not too bad. I managed to bike home also. Now that’s getting tiresome. Thank god I’m working from home tomorrow.

I’ve been bummed for a few days as well. Grrr… Watch out. I actually told the kids to tread carefully around me today because my fuse was short. But everything that happened in the house today led to some sort of argument. I know I argue more when I’m down, but it just seemed like Edda was spilling more milk and Vince was covering more wall surfaces with marker than usual. Bleh! Argh!

Jeremy shooed me out of the house after dinner to get away from the kids and watch a movie. So I watched the first 45 minutes of You, Me and Dupree and then I just had to leave because the movie was just too terrible to sit through. Owen Wilson, you used to be funny! What happened? I spent another 30 minutes looking at make up and thinking about using some mascara. Waterproof or washable? Hmmmm…

The crap fair has set up shop in front of our MRT station.