gag gift pillows

'Nough said! see pics below, no explanations needed. Boyfriend pillow, Girlfriend pillow, Shrimp Sushi pillow, plus a whole assortment of other sushi pillows... makes perfect gag Xmas gifts.. =O

7 habits (part I)

This week I am in training at work, taking the Franklin Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People course, want to share one of today's highlight videos we watched with you all (30 sec Nextel commercial):



The point the instructor was trying to drive through is that when we operate in QII mode, life is much easier just like these dancing guys in the commercial. Enjoy!

Happy Turkey day 2006!

funny turkey song from a friend's forward:
http://www.msn.americangreetings.com/display.pd?prodnum=3081495&path=25200

hilarious embarrassment

tonight I am happy for my friend, but it's also THE single most embarrassing event in my entire life... =)

new games

Go-Moku - play it online for free!
Odin's Ravens
Triangular
Carcassonne
Da Vinci Challenge Board Game
Ricochet Robot - online version
Settlers of Catan + Cities & Knights
Lost Cities
SET
Tangrams - over 1,000 of these images
CLUE
Taboo
Guesstures
Monopoly
13 Dead End Drive

plus all the classics!
lots of great games to play this holiday season =)

cute Kitty

this is forwarded by "sonofmencius", Not sure what to do with your Mac book? let it confuse a kitty... watch video

Neato closet

This picture was originally posted by "badxmaru". Isn't this a dream closet for a girl though? It must be taken off either one of those home organization store ads or straight from the "Queer eye for the Straight guy" show.

Lion sleeps tonight & FART!

this video makes me happy :P (Oh, and the one below it.. heheehee =)

Amazing Transformation!

I have to admit, I watch "America's Next Top Model"! But I have to say, it's more for the drama than the show contents. It is interesting to get a glimpse of the behind-the-scene techniques and settings that produce all these glamorous shots on the ads. But it's really the display of personality that draws me more to this show.

I grew up listening to my mother telling me about this Chinese phrase "There is always a teacher amongst a group of 3 people." -- meaning, when we are in company, there is always something to be learned from others, whether it be positive or negative attitudes, so that we can improve our own social behaviour.

Watching all these reality shows on TV, "Apprentice", "Amazning Race", "the Bachelor", "America's Next Top Model" ... The editors always condense the daily lives of these people into dramatic settings, extreme happiness and conflicts. I know that these does not represent our every day life, in the real world, people are much more toned down, and extremely embarrassing situations hardly occur after HS. However, the educational value of these shows to me is in the dramatization of each individual characters, so that I can learn to read people as well as observe what are the more appropriate/graceful behaviour in situations.


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Now we come to the transformation part, a few weeks ago, a friend posted this Dove short film. It ties in pretty well with the "ANTM" show in my opinion. It's about the amazing transformation of a regular girl to an amazing image, but is beauty only skin deep? what do we think of these girls when we watch and observe through the lense of the cameramen who follows them around everyday?

to visit China

I did the online world map about a year ago and had some reasonable color coverage, then today I tried my friend's China map by region and this is the pathetic map I got:


create your own China map

Arrhhh!! that's Shanghai, HongKong and Taiwan only! Time to start planning for a trip to my home country. After all, I am not completely Chinese until I step on the Great Wall!

see my world travel coverage here: (note, for China they just color the whole area).. my previous "Visited Countries" blog entry.

Amazing Grace

a friend forwarded this image to me yesterday, amazing. Brings to mind the song "Amazing Grace", which I have been singing since my childhood..

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found.
’Was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.
and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
the hour I first believed.

When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun.

Amazing grace, ohh how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found,
was blind but now I see....

Handbag

I had a long phone conversation with mom this week, during which she reminded me of something that happened when I was a bit younger.

That's when I was still a teenager, and I went shopping for a handbag in Chinatown. If you've ever been there you'd know that there are rows of stalls selling similar merchandise near Canal street, and I was hopping from one to the other. Mom asked me what I was looking for, I couldn't pinpoint it exactly, but I'd point out things and features I liked when I see them. "I'd prefer the shape of the bag to be vertical instead of horizontal." "I like this trapezoidal design." "look, the addition of that extra pocket on the side can be really useful." "Zippers are essential if I don't want little things to fall out." .... so it went on like this for an hour plus, until my mom finally told me to stop being so critical, and just decide on one. She said that it doesn't really matter if I find ALL the things I wanted in one bag, that's just not possible. Unless I custom design a handbag for myself, which then will have carry the perfect shades of brown/gray, and built to my exact specification. But at the price point below $40, that's just not realistic. She told me to consider it from another angle, it'll just be a use and toss bag for a year or two anyways. She does agree with my feature list above, but she said that I will be too exhausted if I lead a life always looking for perfection, not to mention unattainable perfection...

She reminded me of that incident this week, and I had a renewed insight into this. I am wondering if this is now becoming a professional habit, because everything that I build is "virtual", and can be bent and customized anytime. After all, it's just all code, right? I am usually given a spec document, and then I build the code to achieve that. The whole thing is a black box from the beginning to the end, much like the handbag, I design and build it to spec, then the customer is happy because they got everything they asked for (or, yes, hopefully so)... Or we can just delete a certain property and rebuild another module, with improvements.

But real life does not function like this, most of the things we can't simply change at a whim. And even if we can, from the economical analysis point of view, we'd be investing in 80% more resources to reap the last 20% of benefit towards perfection. (mapped out, this would be a plateau contour diagram) Fact of life is, I just can't have everything going the way I want them to be and when I want them to be...

This ties in with another life lesson I learned a while back, "C'est la Vie". Some times we will just have to take what life gives us, deal with the situations, and hope for the best. Even better if we are able to accept with a graceful manner. Here is a famous prayer quoted below:

"Oh Lord,
give me the courage to change the things I can,
the strength to accept what I cannot change,
and the wisdom to know the difference."

- 2c