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我和JY上个星期六给Jeff和Iris在教会举办了他们的Baby Shower。
我们团契的传统是上一家给下一家办。上次是Kaibo和Helen给我们办的，这次轮到我们。
主办人的责任主要是煮饭，布置及主持。
我和Jay约好先到教会布置。我从几家商店零零总总买了一大堆布置用的东西。Jay提供了总体设计。 我们鼓捣了近一个小时，终于有了个样子。有件糗事，BabyShower的主人公Jeff和Iris在我们来了不久也到了，还是Iris帮烧的白饭。我还忘了带相机，只能打电话给Ender求助。Ender答应了，所以下面的照片都是他拍的。
我的岳母和JY花了一个下午做了四菜一汤，都是正宗的上海菜，包括熏鱼，夜开花蚕豆，万年青拌豆干，烤麸，以及上海素菜汤。他们累得够呛。好在大家对蔡和糖的反应很好，不枉了费这么多时间准备。JY还做了一个豆花甜品，很好喝。
等到大家都吃完了，我们玩了两个游戏，一个是让Jeff和Iris介绍他们的恋爱结婚经过。原来Jeff谈恋爱时非常健谈，跟我们所认识的有点区别。他还是缅甸语专家，对缅语文化的了解深刻。
我们后来又玩了个量腰围的游戏，结果出人所料的是Ender猜得最接近。
接着是拆礼物，因为都是过来人，大家都给他们买的都是他们需要的。希望Jeff和Iris已经准备好了baby的降临。愿神赐福他们全家。
下面是一些Ender提供的照片。
人血应该是略微成碱性，PH=7.35-7.45. 如果吃太多酸性食物，人细胞的酸碱性会被破坏，导致疲乏和生病。
我最近看了一些网上的文章，因为我母亲胃不好，我想多找一些碱性食物给她吃。
在找的过程中，我发现一个很好的网页。但由于我母亲不大懂英文，我只能帮他翻译成中文。下面是我的翻译。
英文网页：http://www.rense.com/1.mpicons/acidalka.htm
以下的每一种食物是按照从碱性到酸性的顺序排列的。
| 非常碱性 | 柠檬, 西瓜 |
| 深度碱性 | 甜瓜, 芹菜, 干红枣, 无花果, 海带, 芒果,番木瓜, 荷兰芹, 无核的葡萄(甜), 荸荠 |
| 比较碱性 | 苹果(甜),杏子, 香蕉(成熟), 无核小葡萄干, 新鲜红枣 , 无花果(新鲜), 大蒜, 葡萄柚, 葡萄(较不甜), 番石榴,莴苣, 油桃, 桃子(甜), 梨(较不甜), 豌豆(新鲜甜), 南瓜(甜), 苹果(酸), 圆白菜,花椰菜, 姜(新鲜), 葡萄(酸), 莴苣(淡绿色), 桔子, 桃子(较不甜), 豌豆(较不甜), 土豆(与皮), 南瓜(较不甜), 莓, 草莓, 南瓜, 甜玉米(新鲜), 白萝卜, 醋(苹果汁) |
| 轻微碱性 | 杏仁, Brussel-sprouts, 樱桃, 椰子(新鲜), 黄瓜, 茄子, 蜂蜜(未加工), 蘑菇,橄榄(成熟), 葱, 萝卜, 海盐, 香料, 蕃茄(甜), 醋(甜棕色米), 烤栗子, 蛋黄, 橄榄油, 芝麻, 黄豆, 豆奶, 豆腐, 蕃茄(较不甜), 酵母 |
| 中性 | 炒菜油(除了橄榄), 酸奶 |
| 比较酸性 | 香蕉(绿色), 大麦(黑麦), 蓝莓, 黄油, 粗糙谷物, 乳酪, 薄脆饼干(未精制的黑麦、米和麦子),干豆(包括kidney), 煮鸡蛋, 果糖, 蜂蜜, 番茄酱, 牛奶, 糖浆, 多数坚果, 芥末, 燕麦(黑麦, 有机),白面, 酥皮点心, 李子, 爆玉米花, 土豆, 干李子, 米, 南瓜子, 葵瓜子, 酱油, 全麦面包 |
| 非常酸性 | 人造甜味剂 (Sweet N Low, Splenda，Equal/NutraSweet)、牛肉、啤酒、面包、红糖、碳酸化合的软饮料、谷物(被提炼), 巧克力、香烟和烟草、奶油, 鹿、非法药物、鱼、白面粉, 果汁用糖, 果酱、果冻、羊羔、酒、糖浆, 白面做的酥皮点心, 猪肉, 禽畜, 海鲜, 白糖, 食用盐, 红茶, 白色面包, 白醋, 全麦食物, 酒, 酸奶(甜) |
It’s been a hectic month.
I went to Microsoft National Architect Forum on April 18th, came back two days later with a cold.
I then spent a week trying to recover from the cold. In the meantime, my father-in-law went back to China and we had a hard time adjusting to his absence.
In the meantime, my group at work re-organized while I was gone, there were quite a few changes.
Lauren’s nasal congestion got worse over the days, and I spent quite some time everyday trying to clear her nose. She still spit up milk and then she started crying during the evenings.
I went to the Food Marketing Institute Show 2006 in Chicago, and just came back on May 9th.
We brought Lauren’s to the post-office to get her own passport on Friday.
Hopefully, I’m done with business traveling the whole year, and I can spend more time with Lauren and my family.
Lauren’s doing alright. I brought her to her pediatrician on Wednesday. Our Ped answered all my questions, and could not find anything wrong with Lauren. We were both glad but also not so sure about the advice given because they sounded remarkably like the ones given before. We’ll just have to run with it.
To summarize, Lauren’s doing well, she’s gaining weight, and now spend quite a few hours of the day giggling and interacting with people.
We are looking for recommendation for good nannies in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in the East Bay. If you know any good ones, please email me.
Coming from a software development background, I used to think hard technical skills are everything. I even looked at people without the technical skills with pity, and wonder how anyone can possible do any meaningful work without a deep understanding of all the intricacies of technology.
Fast forward 4 years, my career has taken quite a few turns, now I’m an Enterprise Architecture for a large retailer chain. It’s becoming more and more clear that having technical skills is nice but is not enough.
The problem with moving from programming to other fields is that now I’m dealing mostly with people. It’s not that when I was a programmer I didn’t have the deal with people, but most of the time a programmer spent was in front of a computer thinking up algorithms. I enjoyed it tremendously, and found the work quite satisfying.
However, with programming becoming a commodity with the influx of foreign talents and offshore-outsourcing, development looks less and less like a viable option.
I’m glad I made the decision into going into application, solutions then enterprise architecture. It’s been a long road where I learned a lot of things. But only recently, in the past year have I seriously focused developing my soft-skills.
By soft-skills, I meant non-technical skills. These are mostly skills dealing with people and non-technical situations such as leadership, decision making (rational and intuitive), negotiation, influence, emotional intelligence, public-speaking, communication, and time management. There are also character traits that one can learn to develop such as persistence, optimism, conviction, self-confidence, etc…
I now understand one can not succeed without the soft-skills. Because success comes much easier when you surround yourself with the right people and choose to deal with the right people.
On the surface, soft-skills do not seem so important, what if you are an extremely shy but steller programmer, you’ll still be fine doing what you do. However, if you ever want to move to another job that requires dealing with people on a daily basis (as simple as team leads or architect), having the right soft-skills are absolute crucial.
There are two attributes to people skills that make them more valuable to technical skills.
People may argue those two points, and I can just imagine someone saying “yeah, you are saying that only because you are doing architect work now”. But sooner or later, they will realize the value of soft-skills unless as well.
I’m doing saying technical skills are not important, on the contrary, they are very important, and my work depend a lot on it as well. What I’m suggesting is that you spent time developing your soft-skills as well. As I’m developing them, I keep finding new and exciting things to learn.
I hope you will become more success when you master the soft-skills that can make your better at what you do.
More on the specifics of the soft-skills later.
By now, I’d imagine most people with any interest in books have heard of Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
I forgot where I heard about it initially, but couldn’t be happier that I found it.
I’m a scientist by training, have a Computer Science and Engineering degree from University of Pennsylvania with a minor degree in Psychology.
I’m always fascinated by hidden connections and meanings presented as the result of carefully designed scientific research. It’s not enough for me to just to know what the result of the research is, but how they came up with the research method and whether it’s a valid method in measuring the variables what they set out to measure.
What Freakonomics provides, is taking scientific research methods and apply them to social-economical situations attempting to obtain the insight of what motivate people to do certain things. It’s indeed about asking the right questions, and use the data available to find answers. A lot of times, these answers are counter-intuitive and against conventional wisdom as most revolutionary ideas are.
The economist Steven Levitt, was an expert at asking the right and interesting questions. The result of his research provides insights into such things as “What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestler’s have in common?”, “How is the KKK like a group of Real-Estate agents?”, “What makes a perfect parent?” etc…
The last topic of the book, “What makes a perfect parent” was my favorite part of the book since I’m a new dad myself.
All these questions are very interesting questions, which weren’t usually asked, and usually not by an economist. What makes these questions interesting are the answers that are so outrageously counter-intuitive yet making sense.
One section of the book was very controversial, it’s the part that links the decline in crime rate to the legalization of abortion. I found the book’s argument well formed, yet think it attributed too little of the crime rate drop to “innovative policing” as outlined in Malcolm Gladwell’s
The Tipping Point and Rudolph Giuliani’s Leadership. I’d love to get my hands on the data set and do a more in-depth analysis of this.
The parenting section is indeed an eye-opener. For instance, these eight factors are strongly correlated with a child’s test scores (either positively or negatively)
And these And the eight that aren’t:
There lies the genius of the book, it makes things obvious when they are not and back things up with solid data. Read the book to find out more details about each one. Since these data sets are based on ECLS, they only indicate testing score. The authors did point out Bruce Sacerdote’s “The Nature and Nurture of Economic Outcomes” paper that made clear that “By the time the adopted children became adults, they had veered sharply from the destiny that IQ alone might have predicted. Compared to similar children who were not put up for adoption, the adoptees were far more likely to attend college, to have a well-paid job, and to wait until they were out of their teens before getting married. It was the influence of the adoptive parents, Sacerdote concluded, that made the difference.” Clearly, good parenting has wide-reaching effects, just not in the sense people thought originally.
Another interesting section of the book was the names people give their children. I’ve actually made extensive use of the information in the book to name my daughter, you can find out more in this post.
Overall, I find the book fascinating the same way Malcolm Gladwell’s books are, they point out things that are far from conventional wisdom, and digs deeper to unearth hidden relationships that are not obvious. However, as the author pointed out in the Epilogue “… The most likely result of having read this book is a simple one: you may find yourself asking a lot of questions. Many of them will lead to nothing. But some will produce answers that are interesting, even surprising…” And indeed the book did just that.
On scale of 1 to 10, Freakonomics scores a solid 9.
Go out and buy the book, you’ll be glad you did. Also check out the book’s website for more articles and detailed information.
Here is the remainder of the story.
Well, this introduces a problem. Out of all the circuit breakers on the panel, none was marked “Main”. That means the main breaker was somewhere else in the house.
I call my good friend Eddie, he’s very handy, and hoped for some advice. It turned out he was still at work, but his wife, Alice, was able to give me the contact information of the electrician they use. Alice also told me to call Eddie’s cellphone. I called him right away, it was just my luck he was on his way home and just passing the exit where I live. Being a good friend, he immediately diverted course, and came to my place directly.
The first we needed to do was to figure out where the main breaker was. Eddie had a slightly older house, and he told me in addition to a switch panel, he also had fuse box. So we spent the next hour and half looking for a fuse box inside the house. I also vaguely remember seeing a fuse box somewhere, it turned out later to be the result of false memory, but I didn’t know at that time.
We couldn’t find any fuse box. We then went to two of our neighbors’ houses to see if they know where their fuse boxes were. It turned out though, they never had the same problem with their circuit, and never had the chance to use anything other than the circuit breakers.
We were baffled, and a little bit demoralized. As luck would have it though, Eddie and I went back to the electrical meter, and plied open the box next to it, we thought it was locked, but it really just latched in. Anyway, there it was, the main circuit breaker, and it was tripped. After we turned on the main breaker and all the subsequent breakers on the panel inside my house, electricity was restored. However, the circuit breaker that was controlling the rooms affected still tripped when we try to flip it on. Eddie told me it could be that the breaker was shorted as well.
So the next decision is whether to have the broken circuit breaker replaced professionally or by myself. I’m not that handy around the house, haven’t had the chance to poke around much. Eddie however, has done this numerous times, and he assured me that I can do it, then showed me in detail how to replace the circuit breaker myself. I practiced couple of times under his watchful eyes, and was told I got it.
There was yet another decision to be made. I was thinking of turning off the power to the whole house again, take out the broken circuit breaker and bring it to a store so I can get the exact replacement, making sure I don’t make the same mistake as I did with the receptacle. However, this means the whole house will be without electricity for at least couple of hours, and that will be quite inconvenient for everybody.
I decided I’d actually write down the information on the circuit breaker and call OSH to see if they carry the model. I did just that, however, the gentleman on duty at the time of my call was filling in for someone, and he wasn’t very knowledgeable in circuit breakers. I was told to call back the next day when they have the regular lady (the one who sold me the wrong receptacle) available. I decided to try my luck with Home Depot, and drove there directly.
I couldn’t find circuit breaker on display that matches the model number on my broken one. I again looked for help, and again a lady came to my rescue. She found the breaker easily, telling me I didn’t really need the same model number as long as they were from the same manufacture and had the same rating (Amps). She even showed me the proper way to install a breaker with a dummy panel, which was exactly how Eddie described it.
I went home, turned off the main breaker, took out the broken breaker, installed it and screwed in the wire. It took all of 10 minutes.
However, this is one more thing to do before I turn on the breaker. You see, one should never solve a problem without figuring out why the problem happened in the first place. So I unplugged all the appliances from the wall outlets of the rooms affected. I then only turned on the formally broken circuit breaker. Then I plugged in the appliances one at the time to make sure it didn’t trip the breaker. I was proceeding happily along until I tried to plug in the power cord of the new Dell Inspiron’s power supply. I saw an arc, and the breaker tripped again. So that’s what was causing the problem.
I used a meter to figure out that the Dell power plug was actually shorted out. I then called Dell immediately, they promised to send me a replacement part. However, when I got the replacement parts three days later, I found that Dell sent me the wrong parts! Instead of a power cord and an AC/DC converter, they sent me a heat-sink and a fan for a desktop. I had to call Dell again to straighten that out. But I digress.
At this moment, we have electricity and we couldn’t be happier. I’m sure my yet-to-be-born baby would also be proud of his dad 🙂
So what have I learned:
Anyway, life’s full of challenges, and that’s what makes it so interesting.
I spent a large part of my Thursday night, Friday and Saturday morning trying to fix the electrical problem.
It all started when JY called me at work on Thursday morning, she told me that the wall outlet that’s next to her looked burned-out, and that there were no electricity in two of our bedrooms. My house is fairly new, and I hadn’t dealt with anything so serious (to me at least) before. So I told my wife to stay calm, and told her I’ll take care of it when I get home. JY’s pregnant with our first child, she’s already under a lot of stress, I definitely don’t want to add to that stress.
When I got home, I found just as JY described. The wall outlet had a burned-out face plate. The prongs on extension cord attached to the outlet were burned as well.
I decided the first thing to do is to research. So I brought out couple of those thick home-improvement books, got a crash course on electrical systems. I decided to practice what I learned.
I first gathered some basic tools, removed the faceplate. The receptacle behind looked burned-out as well. I decided the first thing to do is to get a new one. So I turned off the circuit breaker that controls this area of the house, then remove the receptacle.
I brought the receptacle to the closest OSH, I was looking at all the receptacles they had there (there were quite a few), when a nice lady who works there asked me if I needed help, I was relieved that I was not alone facing my problem. She took a look at the burned-out one I brought, and told me to get the professional model, which is supposed to be much better. I asked her a bunch of questions, got the answers I needed, then went home with the shiny new professional receptacle.
Well, maybe because it was the professional model, the instruction on the box was really skimpy. One thing I noticed though, there were 8 holes in the back instead of the 4 holes on my original one. I was a bit concerned, don’t know which holes to plug the hot and neutral wires into. I tried all eight, none of which will screw tight enough to keep the wires in. I tried for half an hour without much success. The problem was it was the duplex model, it’s meant to be for pairs of hot wires. Anyway, I called OSH again, got the same lady who sold me the receptacle on the phone, trying to figure out why I couldn’t get it to work. Well, it took me on the phone for 10 minutes to figure out it’s not going to work. So I drove back to OSH, got the consumer model that looked exactly like the burned-out one. It took me 5 minutes in total to install it.
By now, I felt pretty handy. It’s the kind of invincibility one feels due to lack of understanding.
I then went to the main control panel, and flipped the switch to the ON position. However, the switch immediately jumped to the tripped position and I saw an arc. I didn’t know what to do, so I flipped the switch one more time, and the whole house went dark.
To be continued…
We spent most of Saturday with JY’s friends whose daughter, Felicia, was having her birthday party.
Actually, we originally wanted to visit JY’s friend Stella and remedy a regret we had. Stella graciously offered her son Bruce, to jump on our marital bed right after our wedding. It’s part of Chinese tradition, because Stella and her husband had one girl and one boy, and that their families are all intact, having her son jump on our marital bed was supposed to be auspicious. By having Bruce jumping on our marital bed, along with dates, peanuts, gui yuan, and lotus seeds spread along the bed, we were wishing we would have at least a girl and a boy as cute as Bruce and her sister Iris. And thanks in part to Bruce, our daughter Lauren will be born soon.
Unfortunately, we lost the photos that I took during the “bed jumping” ritual. I was busy moving stuff around to prepare for JY’s move to my house, and somehow misplaced the photos.
I decided to make up for the mistake, and take some more photos of Bruce jumping on a bed with all the nuts so I staged a repeat performance. I also wanted a chance to test out the Maxxum 5D I bought in anticipation of my daughter’s birthday.
Both worked out well. Bruce was a bit reluctant at the beginning because he was very sleepy, but once he got into the spirit, he was jumping up and down without being prompted. Here are some photos of him doing just that.
After that, we went to another friend’s house for her birthday party. There were four families there not counting JY and me, five girls of various ages, and Bruce, the only boy. We were well fed and had a great time. One thing I can tell you for sure though, having so many children in the same house can sure result in utter chaos. The children had quite a few problems, sometime they were able to resolve themselves, the other time, adult supervision was required.
It all worked out well in the end. JY and I had a great time, and that’s the last party we will attend before the birth of our baby because our baby can arrive anytime now.
I’ve linked to the photos I took at Stella’s place and during the party below. As I mentioned, I used my Maxxum 5D with a 28-135mm Minolta lens, and a 5400 HS flash. Most shots used bounced flahs. BTW, for those of you using Minolta, the 5400 HS flash won’t work in TTL or ADI mode. You need to set the AE to Manual, and change the flash output manually on the flash itself. It’s a pain. That’s why a lot of these photos are from the same distance and the same angle.
Here are the photos from the party.
Keep looking here for updates on my daughter’s progress.
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. JY and I spent lunch with a group of friends over hotpot, we did the usual gift exchange. We got some nice Hershey’s chocolate gift, and exchange with another couple (thanks Jeff and Iris) for another kind of chocolate that JY liked. I spent Christmas eve in Church watching a wonderful performance by our church choir, while JY stayed home resting.
Since JY’s birthday’s very close to Christmas. I bought her a Christmas-cum-birthday gift. A Dell Inspiron 6000 so that she won’t take up all my computer’s time, more time for me to blog! 😉 Truth be told though, she’s been very gracious, and let me use the desktop whenever I ask.
End of the year is always a good time for reflection, and I’ve done a bit myself. Looking back, 2005 has a been a truly blessed time for JY and me. We got married late 2004, since then we’ve worked out our differences, have a schedule that both of us are comfortable with, enjoyed each other greatly, and now we have our first child scheduled for January 2005. We thank you all for praying for us, and would ask for you to keep us in your prayers.
Merry Christmas everyone!