I’m back and jet lagged. I have lots of stories to tell, but as not to completely waste your day away, I will break things down into a couple, more manageable posts. They’re still going to be long, so don’t start unless you’ve got some time to kill.
This trip was planned originally, because of my brother. He got married a month ago, and his in-laws live in Taipei. Well, a dinner reception was planned for him. I figured I might as well make a trip of it and invited Michelle along to experience Taiwan.
(more…)
Well, it’s after midnight, and we’re not prepared for our trip to Taiwan that we have to leave for at 6:00 AM. I am at Michelle’s place right now, watching her pack while talking to herself. She’s delirious from a lack of sleep. After she pulls herself together and gets everything packed, I still have to head home and finish packing myself. It’s going to be a rough travel day tomorrow, but hopefully this lack of sleep will allow us to be right on Taiwan’s time.
I’m sad that I’m going to miss half of March Madness. I seriously don’t know what my brother was thinking, scheduling his wedding during NBA All Star weekend and this Taiwan trip during March Madness. It should be fine though. The Bruins will still be in it when I return. I know they won’t let me down, especially if they decide to deploy a defensive strategy such as this.
(more…)
I think I have my cultural sensitivity training covered. Thai people do not come from Taiwan. I have also told Michelle not to tell people, “I was here just last year. Shanghai and Beijing are cool.” Mao shirts are not being packed in the luggage. Nor is the matching Mao watch and lighter.
I’m heading to Taiwan for a week. My brother’s in laws live there, so we’re doing the wedding reception times two. I’m excited to get out to experience Taipei. I have a whole list of things to do and eat when I’m there from my friends that make frequent trips back and forth. The only thing I’m afraid of is that it won’t be as exciting as all these people make it sound. Taiwan is a second home to them, where they fit in very well culturally. Hopefully I have as much fun as they do.
The gas lines are fixed in the house! We can finally move into the new house!
Here is one of the awesome toys left for us by the previous owner. It’s actually too powerful to look down on the city below. We used it to look at the craters on the moon.
(more…)
Greg is 6′5″, a manly man from the Midwest, and the hardest working man I know. I will often wake up in the morning, and by 6:50 AM I will have half a dozen email messages from him about systems I need to size and quote to customers he has visited in the previous days. It’s also not uncommon for me to receive emails and scans as late as 10:00 PM that I know are coming from our office.
Greg isn’t afraid to go the extra mile for a customer. The reason Coca-Cola likes us so much is because Greg made a trip out there two years ago on the 4th of July to get some parts they needed for their plant shutdown. Greg has told me about how he was looking for more work one summer in addition to his regular job, so he drove half an hour every day so he could shovel manure. Greg has missed one day of work since he was sixteen. He can tell you the exact date. He seemed so disappointed when he told us about that day, and noted that he went to see a doctor to prove he wasn’t just being a wuss.
(more…)
I ran across an article about a gentleman, who made his car look like a police car. Local law enforcement noted that as long as he doesn’t act like an officer of the law, he is not breaking any laws. I could think of a few fun things I could do in a car like that without acting like a police officer.
Still, it’s probably more of a pain than anything to have that car, especially in Los Angeles. It doesn’t matter if the speed limit is 55 MPH. If a police car is in front of you on the road and driving 35 MPH, you don’t pass him. If he is behind you, slow down to 45 MPH. Think about what a pain it would be to have to always drive slow, because people are afraid of getting tickets.
I was referred to this gem of a website. I don’t think a lot of the items are specific just to our light-skinned friends. I think this could be called, “Stuff People in California Like,” because here in California, we are all yuppies. The site seems to be updated pretty regularly, so that means regular reading material.
Angie brought to my attention that Oakley makes a line of eye wear specifically for Asians. If you look at most of the features, they are noting that Asians are shovel faces. What’s that mean? Asian noses look like they’ve been met with the flat side of a shovel. Then you take a look at what they call the stems. At first you might be insulted that Oakley is saying that Asians have fat heads, but this is not the case. Asian heads are simply bursting with things like math and martial arts. That is why they are larger than our non Asian counterparts.
While Oakley appears to be going out of their way for their Asian customers, I’ll tell you that it’s a fair trade off. They’re cost of product is lower because they don’t have to use as much lens surface area in their glasses. The slant-eyed people can’t make full use of the lenses anyway. Don’t believe me? Think back to Biology in high school.
(more…)
The furniture is now all moved into the new house, except for a few smaller pieces of furniture. Everything else fits into boxes, and man there are a lot of boxes. We’ve moved Christmas lights, school awards, photo albums, and toys. I have a box full of comic books, boxes of Transformers, and boxes full of Star Wars action figures. We can’t bring ourselves to toss these out.
Then there are the LEGO boxes. There are boxes and boxes of LEGO blocks and sets. I stumbled across this site. This guy makes a living being a LEGO arms dealer. This almost makes me want to break out the LEGO sets and start building all over again. The only problem is that I would be known as the 27 year old guy that lives at home with his parents, has multiple fish tanks, and still play with LEGO. I think I’ll just stick to being the 27 year old guy that lives at home with his parents and has multiple fish tanks and save myself a little dignity.
I have a deadline to finish up this report for an energy assessment survey that we did for a customer, and I’m up late and just ready to give up for the night. Fortunately I have the ability to skip out on work in the morning to finish up this report. It’s like just skipping out on my 8:00 AM classes, so you can finish up the project for the 1:00 PM class, not realizing you are digging yourself into a hole for the early class as well. I thought the days of having this feeling of adrenaline mixed in with despair were long gone with college.
It seems like just yesterday I was awake in the dorms, delirious and struggling to finish my C++ program and noticing that everyone else online was also trying to finish the same project. Those were good times. Now I must sleep, because in the real world there is no AP (academic probation) or STD (subject to dismissal). There is only fired.
(more…)
