Aunt Lily and Uncle Jim's accident

They got in to a bad car accident on Tuesday, March 14 2006 in Laytonville CA, about 200 miles north of us. I am not sure how information was passed around but when it finally go to Judy, she quickly remember that I was close by and proposed that I can go there to help them. I found out too late on Wednesday night so I didn't depart until Thursday morning.

Driving to Santa Rosa wasn't too bad. I think we might have been to this region of CA when we went to Calistoga. Driving up to Willits the next day was a bit more then I can usually do. However the opera on ipod help the drive easier. I am glad to see both of them. They keep on saying they don't really need people here because the hospital staffs are great and that they sleep all the time. However, I just think that if I was in their situation, I would love to see some familiar faces and know that someone is near to help me and take care of things I am worrying about. I don't want to interfere with their recovering so I think even just visiting them a little bit each day can help with their spirit.

Driving this much makes me realize how much Dad drives each week. He drives between north and south of Taiwan once or twice a week for business. While he says he's used to it, I can't help but think it still gets tiring for him. This also makes me realize him driving so much increases his chance of accident. I guess one must do what one needs for work but I will remind him to be more careful.

I am very glad I am making mom happy too. She's glad I can help her sister in their needs. Plus she's been seen as the black sheep of the family and always someone that people worry about. I am glad I can be useful which makes her look good.

I am also glad Sylvia and Liang are coming to help out. More then one person would make it easier to take care of both of them so far apart. While driving the round trip is doable (it's similar to us doing the manhattan to hamptons drive with the guys in the city) but doing it daily might be too much.

Thank goodness for someone with higher power looking over them. I am so glad they are recovering well. They are so sweet that they worry more about each other. I do my best to keep each other informed and ease their minds. They would be marry 35 years this June. How wonderful and sweet...

The Academy Award Message

It's been said the whole Acamedy award was on an anti-dvd-pro-movie-theatre campaign through out the show. I don't disagree that some movie is best experienced in the theatre, but dvds (legal or not) is not the reason I haven't been going to the theatre. Hollywood makes crap these days. They needs to stop pushing movie out like cheap products. They need to make quality stuff. Yes, I love Ang Lee. Yes, partly because he's also Taiwanese. I love how it takes him a while to produce but he produces good stuff.

They make so much money already. They need to step back and realize that. Stop the whole cycle of "I need to make more money right away!" Enjoy a little. Relax a little. Then go back to make some good stuff.

I want to make a list of favorite moments in movies. They give me similar high as my favorite moments in opera...

So many things, so little time

I just feel so overwhelmed by everything I want to do. I need to back up of the computer working. Need to get knitting stuff update so the info are not in so many little pieces of paper. And there are other to do's too...Knitting and reading are just in the way of doing those too...

I finally connected the newly bought seagate external backup server. While the sales person said "yes" to my question: "Can I back up all my computers at home (mac and pc) to the same drive)?" , I am finding out the real answer is other wise. After puzzling over the instructions so many times and experimenting on my own:

I learned that if the drive is formatted for microsoft file system, my laptop can pick it up and show it in the windows explorer properly. The mac will be able to read it but it won't be able to back up to it. If the drive is formatted to mac file system format, then the mac will be able to back up to it but my laptop won't pick it up. And apparently I cannot divide the drive to different partitions and format each partition differently.

So I decided the right thing to do is format it in microsoft format and back up my laptop because it's the oldest and needs backup the most. After making it the proper format (via mac help), the program told me it would be take an hour and half. I don't like why it will take so long but that makes it difficult to backup on the regular basis. I just can't figure out how to back up specific directories in the pc (it makes me back up the whole drive). This is puzzling because I am able to do that in mac.... *sigh* Another reason to get mac for my next computer...

I want to blog about all those other things. I want to start putting my knitting stuff in the blog along with the photo, but I am just so discourage to do that because I just don't feel safe making all those effort and not be able to back up the work. I still need to figure out how to do category in the blog so I don't have to keep ten thousand blogs. Wish google blogger does it already...*sigh*

I owe so many people pictures...*sigh* so many things to do....

Beethovan's struggle

On fighting custody of his brother's son:

He wanted to be the father he never had, but he turned out to be the father he had.


It's hard for us to not become the parent we did not like because we only learn parenting from the subtle things we encounter with our parents. The only way to break the mode is to not focus on what you want but what the child needs.

TV is evil

TV is evil.

I am so unproductive after I turn the TV on. Even when I am all TVed out it's hard for me to turn it off. It's like a drug. I've learn to combat that somewhat with watching educational stuff (History, Discovery channel) and switch to the music channels (it's really neat, like radio without commercial). But for most part I just get so addicted.

I've been resisting turning it on. Convinced myself to turn it on later and later each day. Tell me self to resist the urge each time. I am just amazed how productive and how much I accomplish when the TV doesn't get turned on. I think I've finally got it under control.

Plus I always feel dumber after watch TV for more then an hour and half. I can physically feel I got dumber.

Vivian is mad at me

I found out she was reallly mad at me today. She was mad at the fact that I call her a "freaking child". I realized I call her that when we were talking about her situation with this guy where she is the other women. He clearly doesn't treat her right. He's still involved with her but about to marry his fiance. Vivian keeps on hoping that he will see she is the right one even though she is the other woman. She deparately needs him to do that to erase the fact she was betrayed by her ex-boyfriend who did leave her for the other woman.

I was just speaking my mind. I was trying to help her see the one right way out of this sticky situation was to leave him and get herself out of this bad cycle. She was talking about all sorts of things like ruining his life by telling his fiance. That's just a childish tactic (revenge) and will not help her heal. So I was honest with her and I told her she was being childish.

She took it to heart. She was very much hurt. She says she did not yell at me when I was being unreasonable complaining Noel doesn't call me everyday.

On the hind side, I wish she did. Perhaps I would wake up earlier and realized I was being unreasonable (I did realized my problem lies else where). On the other hand, I might react as defensive as she is.

What has this whole interacting taught me?

Was I being too honest and not consider the other person's feeling?

I do know I am not tactically enough. When I see the answer to something I just tell the other person. As I learn in the psych class that's not the way a child (or adult) learns. They don't learn by you giving them all the explaination at once. They learn by you giving them little hints and explaination and time. A lot of time to digest and then perhaps they will ask for more explaination.

Realizing the answer is far more powerful then taught the answer. Please remember this Jasmine.

Perhaps that's what went wrong with the conversation with mom. I was too eager to share answer with her. So it's not her fault she got defensive. I should not tell her not to get defensive. I need to stop being so offensive in my speaking and attitude.

I still don't like how she accepted the apology. I still think she is rude. But I have right to my opinion.

She might be kinder and polite and not offending and speaks with her guy everyday, but Noel is the one that married me and helping me find myself better.

I hope this is the right choice

I hope we can get the apartment at cypress point without problem. I hope the land lady will fix the things in apartment and I hope Noel can safely bike to work without me worrying much. I hope I will learn to like the appliance in the apartment, not complain of it not being the newest but appreciate it's durable and usable and not creating unwanted garbage in the landfill. I hope I can do a good job finding good place for all our belonging (including the iron shelf) and make a beautiful, peaceful living environment for anybody that visits.

I need to stop worrying like Rick says. He's a great guy. I guess I worry because it's my comfort zone. What would my Behaviorism class professor say about this situation?

Thank you for watching over me, my mom, our family and rest of everybody.

What to focus on

I might not completely and whole heartedly understand the realm of Behaviorism, or believe it can solve every world problem, but I do admit it helps me to know myself better and work with myself better.

I realized I am more sensitive to punishment then reinforcement. It must have to do with the chinese upbringing. It's a world revolves around punishment. I guess knowing that is good because it's half of the battle.

Now I can tackle on what I need to do. I realized I dread my to-do list because I just focus on the not-fun part of it and not focusing on when I finish how great I feel. My todo list needs to change from the process to emphasis the result. After all, isn't that what marketing people do with all the ads? That should be enough to motivate me, to get me going instead of procrastinating.

Let's change "Go through bookmarks" to "Knowing your favorite bookmarks and be able to access it easily! :-)"

I need to be my own cheerleader!

Anterior Cingulate

I understood the idea of behaviorism after the first lecture, but I certainly had a deeper understanding after few more sessions. Professor Hall argues it from many different point of view and that certainly helped deepen the understanding. However, I find myself forming the opposite stand from him. He think that if any field of psychology should be eliminated, it should be cognitive psychology. I think if there's any branch of psychology I am mostly interested, that would be it.

Why?

Well, there isn't much to behaviorism. Yes, it's all based on the very straight forward concept of Law of Effect by Thorndike. But that's not magical. So what if you can explain "anterior cingulate by the following:

"Although the functions of the anterior cingulate are very complex, broadly speaking it acts as a conduit between lower, somewhat more impulse-driven brain regions and higher, somewhat more thought-driven behaviors. The Stroop effects sensitivity to changes in brain function may be related to it's association with the anterior cingulate." "The Stroop Test provides insight into cognitive effect that are experienced as a result of attentional fatigue"

Yes, you can explains the whole "Stroop Test" by saying because we are conditioned to read the word instead of the color of the word, but how does that help me refer to what's happening in the brain. Yes, you can explain everything by "it's doing this because it's used to getting that result", but that doesn't give me a specific of referring to the brain function.

Behaviorism criticize mentalism's use of mind, intelligent and other things it cannot observe and considers unnatural. If all other philosopher were like that, not using their imagination to explain the observed, then no other science would have been burn. As the technology advances, we can see that some of the assumptions by scientist were able to be proven correct. Did not Einstein form his theories before they were proven able?

To answer the question Professor Hall asks in class: How much of what a person becomes is nature vs. nurture? I think it's more nature then nurture. How do you explain things like attention to detail? How do you explain some people's brain just cranks slower then other? I just think nature has more of an impact then nurture.

I just find it more interesting to know human nature and use that as a tool to uncover other things then working to change people's behavior. Perhaps it's because it's usually harder to change people's behavior? Unless you have a great dominance of people's environment. But knowing people's nature will aid as a tool to change that person's environment then behavior.

Ultimately, in my opinion, the law of effect and other behaviorism ideas is just a small equation in the whole world of psychology.

In the mood for love

I saw "In the mood for love" for the second time on IFC. I was very impressed by 2046 and couldn't believe how boring I though the "mood" was. Wanted to see what I missed. I realized I wasn't impressed by the "mood" first time because I did not get it. That's why I thought it boring. Everything was very subtle. So delicate that you miss it if you weren't paying full attention.

I learned to love the subtle things this time around. For example, I love the simplicity of buying noodle soup in that era, where they bring their own container. So much more intimate then the disposable containers we have now that's creating too much garbage. I love Maggie Chueng's figure. Loved how chi-pow looks so great on her and how the neck of the dress was just a bit longer to accentuate her beautiful elongated neck.

Beautiful. I would consider owning the movie.

Still has New York time..

My watch still has new york time set....can't get myself to change it yet. Enough things around here that has local time anyway.

Just can't quite let go yet...

One Way Ticket

I know it would hit me some how. I started to feel small nostalgia through out the house. Took picture from my favorite spot in the house. Miss all the things I used to do in the house. Have to remind myself that my work schedule did not allow me to do more of the things I like to do. For every good thing I had to remind myself the not so good things, so it's possible for me to leave the house.

Mom came to see us off. She was emotional when we the car was driving away. I was surprised that I did not get as emotional. Maybe it's because I've trained myself to not show emotions around mom?

I thought the take off of airplane would be the time that hits me, but it did not. I was a bit busy feeling nervous. I always get nervous and reach for Noel's hand when the plane takes off or land.

Then we watched a sappy girl movie on the plane. I shet some tears for the movie. At the end of the movie was when I lost it. It just hit me that we left our house. That thought hit me like big truck. The image of the empty house was just too much for me to handle. I think Noel noticed something wasn't right, but he let me kept on crying. A minute later I told him why I was crying; that we had left our home.

I felt a bit better after we step off the plane. Everthing was nice and pleasant. The weather was beautiful (make the new life feel promising). A bit on the cool side. The temp apartment was nice also. It help us settle down.

Everything will be okay. We are starting to know our way around and soon we should find our ways okay(the roads and the life here).

Get together weekend

It was great to have people come over. I made simple things but put them in pretty bowls and they look fancier all of the sudden.

It was great surprise for Carin to come with the kids. Would have been great if John came too but the two girls more then make up for John's obsense. They girls have grown so much. Skye doens't wear glasses any more and she's such a beautiful girl. Sierra is beautiful and so grown up. Does a great job taking care of her little sister.

David and Joanne came. Noel's ex-coworker from OpenLink stopped by: Simon and David. Very nice people. We celebrated Tony's birthday on Saturday. Joanne got a yummy chinese strawberry cake.

More people came on Sunday and Monday. Dean and Cris, John and Eileen. Makiyo came over too. She gives such approving tone of the house.

We saw Stacy in the city. She treated us to a healthy buffet place. I wish we had stay in tough more.

Saw Melinda and Andrew too. Too bad didn't see Mark and the dogs. But I'll see them next time I visit new york.

Knitting as of late

I seem to spend more time thinking about knitting then actually knitting. I have so many projects I can do and still I go to yarn stores to see what I can find. Hoping to see some good quality yarn on sale or find the new project to work on.

I went to the yarn store in the UES because it was close to the gym. Very nice place. It's kinda place I like to have in my neighborhood, if I was filthy rich. The prices are higher then usual (by a dollar or so) and they sell the kind of yarn I like. Tucked away in a quiet street. I saw the most adorable baby sampler blanket. It's a mix of different patterns. I am sure if I was experienced enough I can use the pattern dictionary and come up with it. But at last I am not yet. The lady made it with two different yarns: merino wool and vintage cotton by Karabella. I was so in love with the cotton one. The sheen on the vintage cotton just shows off the different stitches so well! It's a store pattern they used and while I am not sure how well the instruction is, it's a better start for me then figure them out in the pattern dictionary. But I would have to purchase the yarn, which would cost about $150 ($10 each). They are certainly smart about combat the lowering price caused by the internet.

Poison

Television is really the poison to the brain. At least to mine. I just can't turn the tv off. I just sit there and keep on switch channel to find something interesting. If I do, I stay there and waste another two hours. If I don't, I just keep on searching for another two hours. It's so horrible! Maybe Calvin got the right idea in getting rid of the tv. But I would miss shows like Lost and Desparate Housewives. Maybe I just need supervision. I am like a child like that. It's so embarrassing.

Unemployeed

My first week as unemployeed person wasn't too bad. The whole weight of work seems to have lifted and I was able to start on some organizating thing in my life over the long weekend. I was pretty productive on the first day of my unemployment. Until about 4pm that is. Overall I think it's pretty good. I just need to keep the tv off to do that.

But now I am having problem sleeping. I seem to developed the habit of napping in the afternoon and stay up late to watch tv from midnight to 2am. Or did I stay up late because I know I did not have to go work the next day?

I went to the gym today, Calvin's dance class in the morning. Then checked out a yarn store in the UES (price seems to be higher then most, but expected). Went to Mark's classes. Good work outs. Then went to Serendipity 3 for frozen hot chocolate. I've been wanting that for a long time now. The last time was that first real date with Noel.

I can totally get use to the life of someone who doesn't need to work. Of course this is just a little holiday. I'll need to get back in to straightening things out at home. But it was a great holiday at new york.

Favorite Things

A good corner to read a great book or knit

Organizing things. Make my living space orderly. Makes me feel peaceful

Good cup of hot chocolate (City Bakery, Jacques Torres)

Petunia and Lily. Petunia pushing up against your body when she sleeps. Lily roaming into neighbor's yard and barks at her. Petunia running in circles

Beautiful day in the city. Central Park. Any little piece of undiscovered quiet heaven

Learn a new thing/idea

Cook a good meal for people to enjoy

How I feel ->after<- exercise

Experience my favorite opera

Good cup of tea in a pieceful corner

Good japanese food (presentation, quality, etc)

Getting hair washed by professional (especially Ali from Astor Place)

Noel's new computer

Noel got his new dell computer yesterday. We decided Dell still makes decent PC even if their laptop are problematic these days. Plus he got a $500 off deal so he could get top of the line pc at a decent price. However, it's been problematic for us.

Yes, it connects to cable router without problem. Yes, it boots up very fast compare to Noel's dinasour computer. But it keeps on freeze for unknown reason!

It also came with many "spam" program installed to lure you in to their services. We spent some time uninstalling programs we know we would not use (aol, etc). There were so many other programs that we weren't sure if it's junk program so we left it for now.

I mentioned that this makes me want to get an apple computer. We know that apple will not have a these spam/junk programs. Noel thinks the world is very messed up that we need to pay to not get garbage. I agreed with him. But it also makes sense because while we pay less for pc, they still want the $$. So since they are not getting it from the consumer, they get it from the spam/junk company that are willing to pay them, at the consumer's expense.

*sigh* There's still the need to transfer the photos from my computer. I was looking forward to Noel's new computer for that....I hope it's more promising tonight. Just need to get it on CD....

Lessons from Noodle Soup

Dinner with Noel last night was good. I never liked how Republic was a bit on the loud side but the crowd was thinning and it wasn't unbearable. I order a new noodle soup thinking it has the type of noodle I was craving for. It turned out not to be the case. I regret not ordering my regular (Curried Duke Noodle). But it's a good lesson for me: maybe I don't always need to get what my craving desires. It's not a big deal to have an experience that's not totally wonderful for me.

Resignation

Really nervous about this whole thing. For first time life is not so certain.

It's feel like I will be out of a job in two weeks but I did that to myelf. And what's more, I am essentially putting my life in Noel's hand.

But I must not think that way. It's a new start. I will have time to re-evaulate. To go back to work or to learn a new trade. Start a new career where I wake up every day looking forward to it.

I will experience what it feels like to be away from home for the first time. Every bird has to leave the nest and try to flight on their own. It's my turn now. With Noel's help. Maybe this will help me appreciate mother more. Respect and love her more.