My Very Red Family Room

Alas, I'm finally done with the curtains in the family room. Now we can finally sit there at night without feeling like our every move is being monitored. Some pictures to showcase my new family room. I don't think they do the room justice since they seem to be very blurry and dark. I can be an expert curtain maker but I'm no expert photographer.





Is it red or what?

My Mortality

Accidents - you never really give much thought to them until it happens to you. I didn't get into one and never have, but a recent tragedy in my neighborhood prompted me to think twice about accidents.

On Tuesday earlier this week, when Alex and I were driving home from work, we noticed that traffic around on Bothell Way, the main street to our house is unbelievably heavy. The next day, we noticed that the corner of 73rd and Bothell Way was sealed off by a metal fence and flowers were placed. Alex actually saw two women standing at the corner, crying. This made us curious; we googled the street corner to see what had happened and we found this - on Tuesday at about 4pm, a group of pedestrians waiting to cross the street were hit by a utility truck. One of the victims was pushed by the truck and pinned between the truck and a light pole. She died instantaneously. Another passenger was thrown 20 feet; one was thrown underneath the truck.

Accidents - it could happen to you. I could very well be one of those people hit. They were just getting of the 522 bus, waiting to cross the street to the park and ride. Had I not come to Microsoft, 522 is the bus I take every day to and from work. The park and ride they're heading to is the same park and ride I would use every day. It could have been me standing at that corner, crushed to death, remains splattered. The most frightening part of this tragedy is that these people were not doing anything deemed dangerous or risky. Two cars colliding is common, but a standing pedestrian struck, crushed and pinned is not.

You can argue that one of the drivers wasn't paying attention and this could have been avoided. But to me, accidents seem like the doing of fate. I could wake up one day and that could be the last day of my life. There is no way of telling. I panic a little at the thought of this. I panic a lot at the thought of this happening to Alex or my mom. It makes me realize how vulnerable we all are and how little control we have sometimes.

Accidents - I wish I had an answer for them. I wish I could say believe in God and all will be answered. I wish I could say it will never happen to me. But I can't. All I can do is pray that it doesn't happen to me.

My Life Without Access

Week two and still no access. Someone please entertain me.

Apparently there is some problem with the employee requisition system or something here and I am suffering as a result of it. As of today, I still don't have email or intranet access. Last week I was able to kill sometime by installing software and getting my machine up and running. I don't know what I'm going to do this week to pass my time at work.

I am starting to wonder if people forgot about me. Hopefully they won't forget about paying me. Not getting paid would suck.

My First Week at the Evil Empire

It's official. I've gone to the devil's side. I have joined the evil empire. I'm a member of their cult now. I am a Microsoft person.

After over a month of legal and immigration work, I finally started my new job at MS on Monday. First was one and a half days of orientation. Let the brainwashing begin! Maybe I'm just a little resistant to Microsoft, but the name was just everywhere! On the podium, in the slides, on the shuttles. The orientation is basically one giant session to glorify Microsoft. How employees love it here; how the company has evolved to cater more to employees. There's employee testimonials shown, statistics about human resources trends drawn, facts about Microsoft which rank it as a top company to work for displayed. I've never seen a company work so hard to make you like them.

Maybe they know they have a rather poor reputation within the geek world. Maybe they want new employees to be pumped and excited about their new jobs. Or maybe they just really really really believe in Microsoft. It's probably a mix of all three maybes. Some people here are really true champions of Microsoft. They believe in the company and they sell it. Scary, isn't it? I really hope I don't get brainwashed to that degree.

For now, I just want a job from which I can learn and grow. I haven't thought too much about my future career paths yet. We'll take it one day at a time.

My Last Day at Amazon

Last Thursday was my last day at Amazon. After merely eight weeks at the online retail giant, I packed up my things and left. Even though I had been looking forward to this day for a long time, when the time came to say goodbye, I was still a little nostalgic. It's really a shame that things didn't work out there.

I expected to just sneak out of there quietly, since I really hadn't been there long enough to know people well and make friends. So I was surprised when my manager treated my coworkers and I to a goodbye lunch for me. We went to this Japanese Fusion restaurant in the International District. In the middle of our lunch, we saw two employees who had just left our team for another team. My manager told them we were having a goodbye lunch for me and they look quite astonished. I believe one of them even said "Already?"

I had seen people at Motorola quit their jobs before. They would always make the rounds on their last day and say goodbye to everybody. In my case, I didn't think it was necessary for me to do that. First, it was kind of awkward that I was quitting after only a few weeks there. I think that sends a pretty clear message saying I don't like you to the rest of my team at Amazon. Second, I really didn't know anybody yet. So after lunch, I quickly packed up my stuff and sneaked out of the building.


Goodbye Amazon! Goodbye!

My Homemade Curtains

Curtains, curtains, curtains. Ever since moving into the new house, curtains, or lack thereof, have become a major headache of mine. None of our windows came with any kind of covering, so we had been debating how to best cover them while still preserving the beauty of this house. Almost every single house I've been to over the course of my life use venetian blinds, which I hate. Although they're cheap and easy to install, I just think they're bland.

I wanted draperies. Silk curtains. Colorful fabrics. I wanted to turn our home into one of those makeover projects on HGTV. Alas, everything on TV looks easier than it really is. Who knew curtains were so expensive? It's just fabric! After months of research, going to stores, looking at catalogs, I simply gave up on the idea of buying pre-made curtains. First they are really expensive, more than $200 if you want a decent design and choice of fabric. Second, most of them don't even fit the windows we have. But I refuse to succumb to those white blinds. No plastic strips on my wall. If I can't buy my curtains, I will make them myself. Needless to say, four months since moving, our windows are still bare.

I overestimated the amount of effort it takes to make a curtain. There's fabric selection, length and width measurement, curtain rod installation (of course I don't do that :))...etc. After we had decided on the kind of fabric we want, we found out that we had to special order them because the store didn't carry the amount of yardage that we would need. I had no idea that special ordering meant it would take forever for the fabric to arrive.

This past weekend, after eight weeks of waiting for the fabric, it finally arrived. So, with the help of my mom, I bunkered down and began making my first set of curtains. We first measured and cut the big roll of fabric I got into equal length sections. Since the width of the fabric is not wide enough for one panel, I had to join to pieces of fabric together to form a wider piece. While that sounds easy to do, just sewing straight lines, it is not. I must have sewn and de-threaded, sewn and de-threaded about 10 different times before giving up on perfection. I had to settle for my not so straight lines and sometime scrunched up fabric. I have new found respect for seamstresses.

So after a day of pinning, sewing, and ironing, I finally had one panel made. It was actually quite fun after I got the hang of things. I think things would go much faster if I wasn't such a perfectionist or if I actually had any sewing skills. Unfortunately, after I hung the one panel up, I realized that the color I chose, dark red, is way too overpowering for our small sized media room. Back to the fabric shop to order some lighter colored fabric - light gold. Red and gold, royal, I know. Luckily, I was able to save the red fabric for our family room. Otherwise it would have been heartbreaking for me to waste over 200 dollars worth of fabric.


If this software engineering gig doesn't work out, maybe I can make curtains full time. Then again, maybe not.

My San Franciscan Heart

Most people who know me probably know that I spent a good number of years living in San Francisco when I was growing up. From the age of ten through seventeen, the city by the bay was my home. When I moved to Canada in 1999, the definition of me was San Francisco. Even though Vancouver was a beautiful city, I never warmed up to it because I was always occupied with memories of San Francisco. When people asked me where I was from, I would proudly say "San Francisco!" I guess you could say "I Left My Heart in San Francicso."

Since I left, I went back to visit a couple of a times, each visit a memorable and heart warming experience. It felt comfortable to be back in a familiar city. A little more than a month ago, I went with Alex to Mountain View for a week when he was down for Google new hire training. This trip was my first trip back to the Bay Area in four years. I was excited to see the city again, anxious to show the town to Alex. I looked forward to stepping back in time momentarily and revisiting all the places I once called home.

But this trip was anything but heart warming. Something changed within me. I felt extremely sad and depressed when we drove past the street on which I used to live. Suddenly all the bad memories of life in San Francisco began to pour in, flooding my mind. My dad's depression. My mom's burden. Our struggle to stay. I saw my mom with bags of groceries fighting the crowd when Alex and I walked through Chinatown. I saw my dad walking back home on Van Ness Avenue as Alex and I drove down the busy street. I saw myself hanging around the Marina district as Alex and I ate dinner there. Bits of the past were flying towards me, overwhelming me. I didn't know how to deal with them. I didn't know how to deal with memories I didn't want to remember. I felt like I was being sucked back into the past, except I now knew how different life could be beyond the past. I felt like I was thrown back to live those seven years again, except I now knew the conclusion of that life.

As I revisit each part of my old familiar grounds, I realized how far I had gone since I left. This time, I went back as an adult. This time, I was visiting instead of coming back home. I guess at some point during these eight years, I left my San Franciscan home, and left my San Franciscan heart.