Author: Doris

The family had a nice weekend, very busy which is how we like it. On Saturday, we went to the Botanic Gardens for the first time. Ruby’s allowed to come to the Gardens, it was very nice. Edda loves plants and spent almost the whole time walking around, which is a big deal for her. She made her way up and down various hills (very small) and some uneven terrain and made efforts to not eat any of the plants which was nice. Ruby also was on her best behavior. Not too much barking at other dogs.

Then Edda had a nice therapy session and I went off for the evening with my friend Kate and Jeremy and the kids went to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in our local park. Kate and I spent the evening at Holland Village at a pasta place and shared a bottle of wine and had a nice time, talking and gossiping. I was on my third glass of wine before I remembered that I was suppose to drive home from Kate’s house.. So I didn’t do that, I took a cab home and I went over this morning to pick up the car.

As for Jeremy’s evening, Vince wanted to leave the play as soon as the wicked witch showed up, so they left early and watched some kids playing soccer near our mall.

Today we dropped of the kids at Gowri’s house and went to have lunch and walk around a nature reserve. We saw fish, birds, a crocodile!, at least 3 monitor lizards and a big ass spider (it was as big as my hand).

Fast moving lizard:

We didn’t get close enough to the croc to take a picture of it. I was a bit scared of it.

Danald asked how much my father influence me on the choice of majoring engineering. My answer is not at all.

My Daddy was in Taiwan when I graduated from HS- the high school you all visited. I communicated with my Daddy by writing letters. The letters must go through Hong Kong through the Big Brother who helped us for over 12 years to keep my family in touch. We did not have telephone or computer then. My Daddy wrote us probably 4 times a year. In one of them he mailed us a check of $100 or $200. It was more than enough for three of us to live for a year. My Mom was a very good budgeter. My Mom could read my fathers letter, but she could not write. So, my Mom asked my to write letter when I was only 9 or 10 years old. Even all the neighbors asked my help to write letters to their sons or daughter in Shanghai, just across the river.

My uncle – my Mom’s younger brother had the best education in our extended family at that time. He was a high school graduate. He did not have chance to go to college due to family financial difficulties. After he graduated from HS, he became a pharmacist since he knew a little bit English. He always wanted me to go to college. As a matter of fact, he wanted me to go to Soviet Union for further for studies in 60’s. I was very happy and eager to learn Russian when I was in high school and college. I majored Engineering because it had good job prospects at that time.

Life sometime is hard to say. Few years later I left Mainland and went to Taiwan to learn and finish my college education. Then I came to the USA to earn my graduate diploma.

– You have to bike to work in 95 degree weather cause your car is broken
– You hit a car on the way to work. (I nudged it. nothing serious)
– You get to work and find out you forgot your underwear
– Find out that the tape system you were planning on using is even more complicated and headache fill than you originally thought.
– You find out that the Stanford Bookstore doesn’t sell boxer shorts.
– And the zipper is broken on the beloved day pack that your sister and brother-in-law bought you a long long time ago.

In other good news however. It’s Arif’s birthday (Friday) and we went the Planet Granite where we took a lesson. It was nice. I think I might have to pick up climbing…hrm

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Well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. My clutch just died today. Yup. Nothing to do about that. I guess it’s had a good life as I’ve put 135k on my car. In a way, it’s actually really good timing cause I’ve been having problems starting my car lately. It’s either the starter or, hopefully, just the battery. I’ve been puttingoff calling the repair shop for that too, so now I can do it all at once. Wow. Maybe I’ll be nice and give my car it’s annual car wash now too!

Also, it’s good incentive to bike into work tomorrow. I watched An Inconvienent Truth, the Al Gore movie on global warming last week, and today I went by a sign that said, “Spare the Air, take Transit tomorrow”.

I will do just that.

When I first started dating Jeremy, we used to go on hikes around Los Angeles and he
would pack a crusty loaf of bread, a tomato, an avocado, cheese, a
roasted chicken and a knife and cutting board. Then we would head out
in his old Toyota to a beautiful spot and walk in the woods for a few
hours and he would pull out this feast and start preparing a
delicious lunch for me. It was very sweet.So today when I told him that he needed to pack snacks and lunches for the three of us, he sprung into action and this is what he produced:

The tower of Tupperware! It was all very good and much appreciatedsince we were running around all day.
Edda’s whole school went swimming and Vince and I tagged along.

It’s so much work to bring 40 kids to the swimming pool. I gotta
hand it to the teachers at Edda’s school, they know how to pull it
off. Vince overloaded today. He does love doing things, but when
it’s too many days in a row of new experiences, he just kind of
crumbles emotionally.

Wow. Everyone’s going crazy over the World Cup. I just walked into Tressider Union which is where the main eatery is. They have 2 large screens that usually just broadcast the news, but today, it was all World Cup Action. I swear it was packed more than I have ever seen in in there today. Nice. I think I’ll have to TIVO a game. Apparently the Brasilians are good.

So we are all curious…what the heck do you do?!? A secretary and an assistant, hmmm – whoo hoo! You go girl! We think that you gotta be a lawyer in a rocking law firm, I think that it also could be sales or marketing . Maybe running a medium size business? It’s gotta be something that you have to dress up for and have working lunches at nice restaurants. It seems like a lifetime ago that I thought I’d have a secretary and an assistant, but it turns out that I’m not well suited for any of the jobs that I listed above. I tend to be a quieter worker, I like to do behind-the-scenes work and I hate meetings and convincing people of anything, that they should adopt my plan, accept my offer, invest in my company, or listen to a plea bargain. I love work which a lot of people disdain – it has taken me a long time to admit that because many, many people have taken my school aptitude and translated it into potential which I’m always trying to live up to (go to law school!) and I think in order for me to be happy, I just have to realize that those high-visibility jobs are just not for me. I’m such the little worker bee. I love being part of a collective hive and doing my little part competently. I love to find hidden bugs in programming code, to be part of a team of engineers fixing a manufacturing problem together, to have a charismatic leader to follow – I’m great at follow-though, not so good at initiation. Right now, I’m not even so good at finding paid work, but I intend to go back someday, dammit.

So secret pal, did we get anywhere close to what you do for a living? Or are we totally in left field?

Sorta a busy weekend.

Friday night was games night at my place. Everyone came over and we played Taboo, Mah-Jong and Go. People were really excited about playing Go for some reason. They also sampled some of my cheesecake as it was Ghim-Hong’s birthday and he requested that it be made.

Saturday was working at the shop and they handed out an employee manual which doesn’t allow blogging about work. 😛 ha Saturday nigth was nap time since games night didn’t end until 3am.

Sunday was Father’s Day. Lindsay had a BBQ up at her house in Castro Valley. I biked up there for the hell of it. Of course Linz lives on the top of a fairly large hill. I’m glad I rode up it once at least. We ended up watchin the Mavericks vs the Heat and again, played mah-jong till the break of dawn (10pm).

This is the last week of summer vacation for Vince. He’s decided to attend Edda’s school, he calmly told me that as soon as I put Edda down to wander around her classroom.

I felt that since now I have 2 kids in Ms. Eden’s class, one of which is a freeloader, I should do my parental duty and help out. None of the kids in Ms. Eden’s class are really capable of following complex verbal instructions, so helping out is generally needed and appreciated. This is how I found myself at 10:30 in the morning knee deep in green fingerpaint. Argh! I swore to myself when I became a mother that I would not become a room mother and hover around my children’s classroom. Oh well, I should just never say never, because as soon as you say never, you just end up doing whatever it is that you said you were never going to do.

But, just for now, I’m doing what I thought I’d never be doing and I’m fingerpainting with a bunch of little kids. I even wore new pants to school today and I promptly got both curry sauce and paint on them within 2 hours of putting them on.

I hate crafts that involve paint and I hate having the kids doing painting at home because it makes a terrible mess and I hate having to watch them like a hawk so that the paint doesn’t get on the walls and sofas. Ms. Eden laughed and said that I have “sensory issues” (lots of autistic kids hate getting their hands dirty because they have “sensory issues”) and practically made me dip my hands into a bucket of gross finger paint. Bleh!