Fruit Creme Cookies

I have an unhealthy addiction to cookies in the workplace. 

I normally manage to stay away from them when I'm at home but in the workplace, I just can't stay away. There must be some sort of connection between the two...

Heroes

There are some benefits to working at Fairchild. 

For example, I get 15% off at St. Germaine Bakery (30% for mooncakes). If I don't fancy a St. Germaine mooncake, because you know, life (and mid-autumn festival) is too short to eat stunted traditional mooncakes and non-inspiring icey mooncakes, I also get 30% off for De Fresh mooncakes and Pine House mooncakes.

I also get 20% off (30% if I play my cards right) at Chic Label - my new favourite boutique. 

I work next to a food court that serves 雞蛋仔

Anyways, you get the idea.

I was going to say, that one of my favourite benefits of working at Fairchild is that I get to do the Arts and Culture Segment. Occasionally I get horrific stories that my boss makes me cover (honestly, does anyone care that the 東莞同鄉會 is staging a talent show to showcase its children's choir, painted on rosy cheeks and all?), it's usually stuff that I love and am interested in seeing. Last month, I got to visit the UBC Anthropology museum and spent 2 hours looking at Buddhist art. And if I really like the stuff, I actually get to ask for free tickets.

So tonight's one of those nights where 鄭少 and I took advantage of this benefit and saw Heroes, an engaging play for "three older gents" (as they call themselves). More than a century's worth of acting expertise congregating on a stage, held together by an engaging and hilarious story is a great way of spending the evening. And although the story was about three WWI veterans in the 1950s stuck in a soldier's home, I can't help but resonate with some of the things that they were saying and identify with the feeling of being stuck.

No one likes to be stuck. But if Henri could, in the end, see the poplar trees, I'm sure I could some day too.

Now listening: Porcelain - at17 (Yes, my music selection is the same after all these years). 

It's been a while

Hello Blogger,

It's been a well since we've connected. How are you? 

The last time we spoke, I was 21 going onto 22. Now I'm 23, almost 24. 

The last time we spoke, I finished my 4 years of post-secondary education, wrote my LSAT, was hoping to get into law school, thought Fairchild would be a 3-months thing and knew I was going to China soon. Now I am thinking of writing yet another LSAT after a 2 year hiatus, think maybe not all is lost with law school just yet, am still at Fairchild (making the same wage I might add) and hoping I can go to China again soon.

The last time we spoke, I am pretty sure I weighed under 130lb. Now I'm pretty sure I'm over.

The last time we spoke, I didn't have a lot of confidence in myself or in the people around me. Now I have even less confidence in myself, in some people that I used to have a world of confidence in, but more confidence in the people that I used to have less confidence in.

How have you been? I missed you.

my birthday wish

I wish that all my fears would be gone:

my fear of failing,
my fear of underachieving,
my fear of passivity,
my fear of mediocrity,
my fear that my fears will come true,
my fear of not getting into law school,
my fear of wasting time,
my fear of wasting my youth,
my fear of fear itself,
my fear of living a passionless life,
my fear of a life without purpose,
my fear of loneliness,
my fear of not getting a great career,
my fear of not going anywhere,
my fear of being stuck,
my fear of being content,
my fear of boredom,
my fear of falling into a routine,
my fear of fear.

Pale Blue Dot

I found this on (where else?) Wikipedia today with the accompanying description:

"Pale Blue Dot" is the name given to this 1990 photo of Earth taken from Voyager 1 when its vantage point reached the edge of the Solar System, a distance of roughly 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometres). Earth can be seen as a blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right. The light band over Earth is an artifact of sunlight scattering in the camera's lens, resulting from the small angle between Earth and the Sun. Carl Sagan came up with the idea of turning the spacecraft around to take a composite image of the Solar System. Six years later, he reflected, "All of human history has happened on that tiny pixel, which is our only home."

So when you think about this - the fact that "all of human history has happened on that tiny pixel, which is our only home", this insignificant pixel in the whole of things - why do we still bother with wars and conflicts? I mean, natural disasters cause human suffering and death, ok, we can't avoid those, but the results of wars are man-made suffering and death of our fellow human beings.

Lest we forget.

I'm back with a prayer challenge

After a prolonged absence (mostly because I didn't really have much to say and got lazy), I'm officially back.

My daily routine now is that of a (as I call it) multi-part-timer. So everyday I wake up around 7:20 and head to the appropriate work place as needed and get home around 7ish. Then I have dinner, watch No Regrets, make cards/cross-stitch as required, tutor if necessary and study lsat (because, unfortunately, I'm retaking it in December at Everett since all the Vancouver spots are filled up).

Recently, I've been thinking about the things I pray about. Usually I start of with "Thank God today for _____________" and then I list some stuff that happened today that I'm thankful for. Then I go on into a long list of needs (recently it's been better LSAT scores (preferably 165), getting along with coworkers at new jobs, ability to save money, divine inspiration for upcoming music-related what-nots, church, motivation to read more and love people around me, etc).

But last week I some how came across the idea of trying to pray just praises to God. So I'm going to try that for a week starting today.

And already the first problem I can see is to differentiate between thanksgiving and praises.

Enneagram

Couple years ago, I did one of those online Enneagram tests (the ones that tell you what kind of person you are out of 9 pre-determined personality types). I am pretty certain that I was a hardcore Type 8 ("The Leader: The powerful, aggressive type.").

I did test again just now and somehow, I have changed into someone else: split-even between Type 1 (The Reformer: The rational, idealistic) and Type 7 (The Generalist: The enthusiastic, productive type.)

Either way, I still scored the lowest in Type 2 (The Helper: The caring, nurturing type.) and Type 9 (The Peacemaker: The easygoing, accommodating type).

Eh. guess I'm still the same.