Things on my mind
It’s been a strange summer, I must say, weather-wise. There’s been days when it was completely sunny, not a cloud in the sky while there are days like today, cloudy sky with an occasion sprinkle. I hate those days, it makes me feel completely blue and sad. Continue reading “A Dream Tunnel to School” →
I remember a very funny and joyous situation happen to me during my Senior year of high school. Continue reading “Mysterious Secret Admirer” →
I don’t think a lot of people would go through the trouble of naming things that don’t move and don’t talk but here I am, six years later and still trying to name my elderly car. Continue reading “The Car’s Simple Name” →
Second opinion always matters, no matter what situation we’re in. I just so happens to be very insecure when it comes to trusting my own gut. Continue reading “Second opinion always matters!” →
Happy Monday, everyone! How was your weekends? Mine was horrible. Just kidding! But seriously. It was even more horrible than that weekend without internet! Continue reading “The Weekend’s Series of Unfortunate Events” →
I graduated from college two months ago. I thought I wouldn’t have to look at another textbook or take another test, that it was time for me to go job hunting. Continue reading “The Aftermath of Recent Failure” →
I have been wondering whether or not I should write this post but now that the question is burning a hole in my mind, how can I not? At least let me rant a bit. Continue reading “Competitive or Underpaid?” →
Happy Monday, how were your weekends?
Sorry it took me so long to post something. I guess I’m just overwhelmed with laziness and frustration. Last weekend started so well with July 4th and all. On Saturday, mom even took me to Costco and I finally purchased a new computer! Then on the way home, at Home Depot, I bought the shelf I’ve said in my post that I needed. I was super excited.
The moment I got home, I immediately went into assembling the shelf. My brain went into high gear and I put together the shelf in no time. I moved the shelf along with my new computer into my room.
Then trouble… Dung Dung Dung!
The internet went down. Well, not down like last time but it became snail-like, even slower than before I switched to cable. The only place in the house that wasn’t slow was anywhere but my room! Can you believe this?
So I’ve been messing and tweaking the modem and router (resetting and moving it around) for the last two days. However, nothing changed. This morning when I could barely get online, I became angry and called up Comcast (the company I signed up internet) and asked what’s going on. No one could answer my question. Instead, the lady reset my modem and I lost her because my phone depended on the internet (no internet, no phone 😦 )
I re-installed everything again and three hours later, everything’s still the same if not slower than before. Pissed, I called Comcast and they insisted I need the change my modem. So I went down there and stood in line for 30 minutes, came back with a brand-new modem. Still, the internet was still so damn slow! WHAT???
The thing that finally went right since I got the shelf was swapping the router 30 minutes. The internet finally became normal-ish again but it just doesn’t feel the same anymore. I don’t know, maybe after two days of irritatingly slow internet and constantly disconnecting, I’m just afraid it might do that again.
Anyway, I won’t write too much today since it’s kind of like my final hours. My GMAT is less than 24 hours. So I have to go panic!!!
Just kidding, I have to do some last minute study though. EEP!!! I’m so excited until it ends tomorrow. 🙂
I DON’T KNOW!!! Continue reading “What did the doctor say?!” →
In the past two months (mostly), blogging has been a sort of an escapade for me, temporarily escaping work and study to go to another world, the world of blogging, that is. 😀 However, with two weeks away from my GMAT, I realize I need to buckle down and study. Continue reading “The Near Impossible Task of Multitasking” →
I don’t ever remember a case where I needed the internet as bad as I had this past weekend. Sorry, that sentence came out sort of weird. I guess I’m just a bit off my rhythm from not blogging or writing for two days straight. It might also be the fact that I’ve been staring at Chinese characters so much that my English is starting to deteriorate. 😛 Continue reading “Sometimes, I wish the internet and I are strangers” →
I wonder, for once, can I just have a nice, peaceful, enjoyable weekend? I mean, is it just thinking about it wrong?
This past week This past weekend had just been awful and full of drama. First, my neighbor did a good thing for us and it backfired on me. Then the internet modem broke. What’s next??? In the midst of all this, guess who is getting blamed?
Last Thursday, around 10 am, the internet modem suddenly shut off by itself. I reset it a couple times and it seemed to work alright since.
Later that day, my neighbor came over to look at our basement to see if a bathroom can be built down here since my cousin’s coming and I don’t want to share a bathroom with him. He even replaced a bad GFCI outlet. You know, the one with the reset and test button but he only made things worse.
Now, not only the outlets in the bathrooms don’t work but the outlets in the kitchen are also not working anymore. Mom went berserk and began insulting me as soon as I told her the news. As always, I held back my tears and ignored her until our neighbor showed up and the two of them talked on and on about god knows what.
Then on Friday, mom suddenly went on a frantic search for the 4G hotspot wall-charger which she “evidently” left it at work. For some reason, she wanted to return the hotspot device she purchased a week ago because the data rate is draining too fast. Apparently, if you go on sites with a lot of ads, Your data goes like water. I thought it’s pretty obvious but apparently mom doesn’t pay attention to ads.
On Saturday morning, I was woken up at 6 am. The internet modem failed just like on Thursday except there wasn’t a miracle like on Thursday. That day, no DSL, no internet, no phone! As usual, mom thought I could fix anything or call customer service at 6 am on a Saturday morning.
That entire day, I felt exhausted and weird, like I was miles from civilization. I still do even though we are in possession of the 4G hotspot (thank god we have a car charger) but I cannot watch anything on the internet. I’ve never felt so limited in my own home. 😦
Anyway, I called the customer service 3 hours later and the guy was no help at all. He said he’s dispatched some techs to come out here but he doubt the problem will be resolved at least not until the end of Tuesday. I’m like TUESDAY! Are you saying I’m not going to have internet until Tuesday?
The guy responded calmly, “yes.”
I responded calmly as well, “Okay, can the techs be here sooner?” I don’t know, like today?!
“I’m sorry, ma’am but techs don’t usually work on Saturdays unless it’s an emergency.” Oh and you don’t call this an emergency? Hello! I have to work here.
There are just no talking to customer service agent, they’re just so freaking calm like they’ve just taken a chill pill, literally. I got off the phone with nothing resolved. Fortunately, I’ve set up an appointment to have new high-speed internet installed on Thursday Tuesday (the highlight of my week, yay). 🙂 Then I’ll be 10x faster and no more limit.
For the past two days though, I’ve been trying to conserve the data usage (with 4 1 days to go and <3GB of data). I’ve only gone online for about 5 minutes at a time every 4 or 5 hours or so on Saturday but yesterday, mom was pushing me to work, so I’ve been online all day but I didn’t do anything except work.
Ugh, this limited data thing is making my life boring as hell and it’s slowing me down to reach my goal of 100 posts this week. Life isn’t so bright when there’s too many things happening at the same time.
Thanks for listening to my droning rant. 🙂
It’s been a slow and frustrating day so far. I woke up at 7-something this morning, eager to start the new semester for my Masters program only to find both of my classes incredibly difficult to get in, the websites that is.
What is the deal with the teachers running these online classes? Are they trying to give the students enough headaches and hope they’ll drop the class the first week?
Seriously, I have taken plenty of online classes before and never had I have such a headache with an online class before. Sure, the syllabus said the course would be a piece of cake and blah blah blah but it doesn’t say anything about accessing the course. I’ve already paid the tuition plus a bunch of expensive small fees for each course. Shouldn’t you at least make this tiny thing easier for me? For everybody?
Just getting into the course part took me almost two hours and in the end, I still couldn’t get in. I had to call the customer service. The customer service! I’ve never had to do that before! For all the engineering and history online classes I’ve taken as an undergraduate. What, now I’m a graduate, you decided to up the computer difficulty level?
It’s just an economics class, not a computer class. Don’t make it so complicated.
Another frustrating thing is I used to be a computer nerd, now I can’t even figure out a simple website?! I feel like my patience level just went from way up there to way down here. Hmm, I wonder, am I getting old?
Just looking for some place to vent my frustration, thanks for listening.
Happy Saturday, Everybody!!! Continue reading “The Weekend I’ve been waiting for” →
It’s hard to believe May just flew by and it’s June already. May has been an over-productive month for me Continue reading “Last Day of May” →
Last night, as I tossed and turned, kept awake by the lack of air conditioning and wind, I had an epiphany. Continue reading “An Epiphany” →
This picture is so right, blogging is a journey. After more than a year and 50 posts later, I think I should dedicate this single post to tell about my journey to blogging.
One day, I was in the university’s coffee shop having lunch. I noticed the guy sitting next to me was eating a bagel. Of course, at the time, I thought about food and eating more frequently than usual. Then a completely unrelated thought hit me. My mom always said that bagels are the most traditional American food she’d known.
At once, I opened my laptop and googled “bagels” and clicked on the wikipedia link. As I read the article, I was surprised that bagels came from Poland and not what my mom said at all. I immediately opened Microsoft Word and began typing. I didn’t know what I wrote at first but after a short while, it was starting to come together like a jigsaw puzzle.
After researching two more different foods (Fish and Chips and Pizza), I became convinced that this was my 7th speech for my Toastmasters Competent Communicator. The different varieties of foods influenced by different cultures. (Need reference? Look back at my very first article from last February!)
I was beyond excited and believe me, in those days, I don’t get excited about writing. So I finished my speech about two weeks ahead and all of the sudden, I wanted to write MORE!!! But what should I write about? Also, I wanted to not only write everyday to improve my writing and communication but I also need some feedback from someone other than myself, from total strangers perhaps? 😀
A few days later, while I was doing my homework, my mom came in and asked me about microblogging, you know, what it is, how to set it up, and whatnot. The term blogging collided into my brain like a meteor. This was it! This was how I was going to get my feedback. I’m going to share my writing with the world!
As I waved my mom away, promising her I would research it later, I quickly googled “blogging websites.” A bunch of links came up but the one that caught my attention was wordpress. It sounded familiar like I used it before and I was right. I had to turn in a blogging assignment more than two years ago for my American Economic History course.
I signed a blog and posted the essay I wrote about food. Within a couple days, I noticed people were liking it and some even became my followers. Not a lot, I might add but it was progress because I never had anyone like anything I did before. I’ve been told I’m flawed at many things but maybe I’ve finally managed to find something I’m good at.
However, with my busy full-time schoolwork and two-hour exhausting commute trips between home, school, and work, I didn’t have the time to keep writing. So I went into a long blogging hiatus until last September when I suddenly thought of blogging again while sitting in my empty classroom. I began writing again.
Since then, although I’ve been spotty with posts, I managed to keep up, writing about my observations, my daily life, and most importantly, about what I know. As I posted my own articles, I was reading other people’s posts to get a sense of how can I improve in my blogging and writing.
It was a good journey for me to be able to reach 50 posts and more than 100 followers in a little more than a year. For the past three weeks, I have been persistent with my blogs and writing almost daily even though I’ve hit many bumps along the way. Like work and slight writer’s block now and then but I have fun though and I’m looking forward to reaching my next goal.
Next goal: 100 posts and 500 followers!
For about three weeks now, I’ve been looking at this piece of land with my mom. For some reason, she can’t make up her mind about purchasing the land. For me, it doesn’t really matter since I may or may not live there.
In these three weeks, she’s been coming up with excuses after another.
After once again going out to the piece of land a few days ago as well as looking at a model home, another set of excuses were made.
After her colleague/potential neighbor told her that there are snakes in that part of the neighborhood, it scared my mom out of her wits. She has been terrified of snakes ever since her high school classmates placed a tiny snake in her dresser as a prank. I don’t know if that’s the true story, although I doubt it, her classmates are way too serious to pull any sort of pranks.
Anyway, I think that’s the silliest excuse I’ve ever heard. There are snakes everywhere, does that mean you’re not going to live anywhere?
I also don’t believe in snakes just popping out from nowhere. There has to be something that lures the snake to its destination (i.e backyard, garages, house). I told her, if you see a snake in the house, you would’ve been the luckiest person in the neighborhood.
That turned out to be the ultimate deal breaker, right after she demanded the agent to lower the price. I think the agent might have a melt down after he tried so hard to negotiate the price. She doesn’t want it!!!
I feel a little bad for the agent now. 😦 On the other hand, I kind of have a feeling from the get go that this wasn’t going to work out no matter how gorgeous the view is and I have no interest of getting in the middle. The middle man always gets blamed whenever something goes wrong! I remembered how well that worked out when she purchased our current home.
More or less, I think her latest excuse is just the same as excuse #2. She just might not like the view no matter how high the house goes.
This was it! For the past week, just about every other night, my mom and I have fought and fought leading up to last night’s little rounds of slamming doors. Continue reading “The Unwinnable War” →
Graduation is one of the most memorable days or nights in anybody’s life whether you are graduating from high school or college, the ceremony itself just somehow makes you feel like for just this one day, you are the most important person and nothing else matters. Continue reading “Most Memorable Nights of a Lifetime” →
Every parent dreads the day when their son or daughter is leaving home to find a life for themselves. They may try every way possible or maybe even give up everything to get their children to stay a little longer but sooner or later, they know they have to move on. In fact, I believe that is exactly what is happening to me right now. Continue reading “Moving on” →
Yesterday was officially the last final of my academic career. I could feel my brain sagged just a little the minute the TA collected the test papers from my hands. I was like, “Yes! After 20 years, I’m finally done.” Continue reading “A Life of Endless Learning” →
As I sit here at my desk thinking and thinking and I realized, it’s almost the last week of February and I still haven’t written a single post for this blog this whole month. It’s strange to think I’ve done so much this past week let alone this past month. Hmm, what to write about? Ding, a light bulb lit up in my head, let’s summarize how 2014 has been for me so far; sort of like a timeline I can look back at the end of the year.
January:
First of all, 2014 started on a light note. On New Year’s Day, I had the house all to myself as I sat on the couch in my pajamas watching the Rose Parade which I enjoy watching every year. Then on the second week of January, school started and I was incredibly excited to see my friend Laura, who I haven’t seen since we took the FE back in October. Speaking of school, it started that same week at Layton Christian but I wasn’t back at work until the last week of January.
Of course, there’s happiness in life but it has to also have some anger and sadness to even it out. So there wasn’t much sadness during the month of January but there was plenty of anger that went with it. You probably know this from my post at the end of January, on the eve of Chinese New Year, I called home to China and well, got into a bit of an argument with my grandparents. Now, I’m betting that they’ll never want to speak to me again.
On to February:
February was and is still a bit of an annoying month for me. The Winter Olympics seemed to taken all the joy of watching television
from me. Everything’s on rerun and there are hardly anything to watch. Guess that just leaves me more time to do my homework and work on my writing. The most annoying thing of all is my mother, she got into a little mess at work and she felt she has to tell me not once, not twice, not three times but repeatedly every single night for the past week.
I’m like, I know already. Just stop talking about it, please. But still, I find her muttering the same thing to herself every night while cooking dinner or just surfing the internet. Otherwise, February’s been an interesting month for me, a bit slow but good.
On another note…
Earlier this month, I’ve finally decided to just hell with it (pardon me) and posted the entire fantasy novel I’ve written last summer onto booksie and hopefully receive some comments. You can view it by clicking here.
Also late last month, I’ve posted a supernatural romantic novella I’ve written at the end of last year. It’s basically the prelude to the fiction series I’ve been doing on this blog working titled “Fiction time.” You can read it by clicking here.
Best news of all, at least for me, I quit my tutoring job and found a so much better substitute, translation/quality control. I don’t know how long this one will last but it’s so much more stable than my job with the Li’s family. Hopefully, I can rack up enough hours these few months to buy myself a newer used car. My current car is almost 20 years old and it’s dying.
As for school, well let’s just say I don’t want to jinx it. I’m doing so well right now and hopefully I can keep it up and get a good grade. Let’s just say I want to graduate from my program on a high note.
As for this blog, I will try to post more than one post next month or maybe I’ll even start perhaps next week. Who knows? I’ve been itching to write a post about money or maybe a snippets of a new fiction I’m working on. We’ll see.
This is Another Story