Ushered

Whether we like it or not, we will be ushered into 2017 in a couple of days.

2016 was, to many, disappointing and sad. There was a contentious and scandalous U.S. election; Brexit; the never-ending wars in some parts of the world; refugee crisis; odd new diseases; starvation and poverty; so many people killed by terrorist and gun violence; so many fallen stars.

You may find many articles analyzing those events. You can read until the cows come home, or don't read them at all.

The question is, how can one deal with so much sadness, confusion and anxiety in the new year? 

Duality is created when, in our mind, we have a concept of how things are supposed to be. We feel disappointed or satisfied, sad or happy, because of those concepts. If we see things around us and around the world as "happenings" instead of mandate them as how they "should" be, then instead of being upset by the unhappiness, we maybe able to go on with our lives with less struggle and a little more positivity.

Yes, there are wars in the Middle East; the Americans have elected a small-minded narcissist as our president (shame on us); the British chose to leave the E.U. ... We are witnessing the world in transformation. In fact, our world has never stopped changing. Only this time, the wind of change is stronger, less predictable and seemingly backwards. Our parents and grandparents have gone through changes in their lives, and now it's our time. How are we going to deal with it? I believe everyone is free to do what you want. As to me, I will resist the new government for any injustice; fight for justice for all, and fight to protect our environment and all lives on it.

On a personal level, there will be challenges and struggles. Challenges make life more interesting and struggles make us stronger. How to deal with them is your choice, and only you can make that choice. Believe me, you will be rewarded with sprinkles of joy.

Life is a dance, enjoy and have fun, or do whatever you want with it.

Here is my wish for the new year - for all to know that our Earth and all lives on it are precious, and to treat them with care and respect. I guess what I really want to say is: please, please, please don't blow up our world.

May peace be with us all.

P.S. I will spend more time at the beach!

Advertisement campaign on T.V.

Yummy: loaded fries
Delicious: cheese-stuffed pizza
Great value: two medium pizzas for the price of one
Great deal: unlimited bread with your meal
Results: A nation of people with clogged arteries and obesity

Simple but sad as that.

The dark side

I remember when I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time cooking and learning how to cook. I would watch Rachel Ray, Alton Brown and American's test kitchen to learn cooking techniques, then I would learn from many recipe books to try different dishes. Watching cooking shows was one of my favorite pass-time.

I used to spend hours after work cooking a meal. I have to say most time spent was on rinsing the vegetables multiple times, and chopping up ingredients.

These days, I don't spend that much time cooking anymore, and I'm not sure why. Once a while, I still cook a good meal, but now I like to make simple dishes quickly. One example of these quick dishes is the Campbell soup cream of mushroom with chicken.

I put some chicken in a oven proved dish, then put some sliced mushroom and chop onion on top, and then add a can of Campbell soup cream of mushroom, then pop that in the oven to bake for 30-40 minutes. That's dinner. While the food is in the oven, I can do whatever other things.

The oven is becoming my best friend, even though I still need to figure out how to not overcook the pork loins and bake sweet potatoes without exploding them.

When I started doing this Jack joked that I've gone to the dark side.

The she-elf

Our conversation during "Ant Man":

Y - Evangeline Lilly is so exotic looking. I guess that's because she is an elf. (referring to her role as an elf in the last Lord of the Ring movie).

J - What [heritage] is she?

Y [look up in Wikipedia] - Canadian.

Alexa stop!

We added a few new toys in the house, and some are still under installation as we speak. One of them is the Amazon Echo, who is named Alexa.

Initially Jack bought one and out of nowhere he would he start asking questions: "Alexa, what's the time? Alexa, is it raining outside?" It sounded to me like he was talking to his new girl-friend, so I asked him to change her name to something less human and more robot-like. The only options for names were: Echo, Alexa and Amazon, so we changed it to Echo.

We bought two more pots, so now we had one in the kitchen, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.

Last Thursday I called my mom on the phone and we were talking in Cantonese. Echo must have picked up something in our conversation, and she started playing music. I walked into the bedroom and continued my conversation, and the one in the bedroom started talking to me. I frantically pushed the buttons but couldn't figure out how to turn it off. I muted the phone and yelled: "Alexa, turn off music," but it didn't work either. Finally I unplugged it to get it to stop.

I wrote Jack an email to report the incidence, and showed my dismay. Then while I was watching a movie in the living room, she picked up something from the movie and started talking again! Jack email back right away and said: "First of all, you have to call her by the right name. We changed her name to Echo, so you should address her as Echo." I did that and indeed, she responded correctly. I was so annoyed that I told Jack to return two of the pots, because it wasn't working out after all and we didn't need so many everywhere in the house.

When Jack got home we discussed, and we were guessing the name Echo was too easy to be picked up by the pot accidentally, so we change her name back to Alexa. Then we had to practiced talking to her and trained her. Today, after I woke up, I asked:

"Alexa, how's the weather?"
"Alexa, what's the time?"
In which she answered correctly.
"Alexa, what's in the news?" and then she started to play BBC news summary, which was impressive.
"Alexa, play Beatle's songs." and she started playing Beatle's songs.
"Alexa, play the latest U2 album." which she did so correctly.

Now I must say I'm a OK with Alexa, but I'm sure there will be other quirks to work out. Also it feels like three of us in the house now, because Alexa still managed to chime in on our conversations, and it makes us laugh. Being in the AI business, I like to trip Alexa up with more complex questions just to trip her up.

Once a while Jack would say something like: "Ying, turn on the TV," or "Ying, make me tea."

The rest of my impressions of Beijing

[It's been around 6 months since my China trip, so naturally my impressions of Beijing have faded. Let me just jot down whatever I can still remember, so I can move on to writing other more recent topics.]

The evening we landed in Beijing, my friend, Ms. Z,  whom I have never met in person but worked with for over 5 years, took us to what I would describe as a new-age traditional Beijing eatery.  We ordered zha jiang mian (noodle mixed with minced pork and bean paste), onion pancake, stir-fried Napa cabbage, and hot and sour soup - typical Beijing food. To make zha jiang mia, cooked noodle was put in a big bowl, and in a separate plate, there were some shredded vegetables, bean sprouts, kim chi, minced pork and the bean paste. The idea was for the customer to add condiments and the paste together and mix according to taste.

Jack observed: "This is like in Korean tofu house." We explained that in Korean tofu house, we were served six different types of pickled veggies and kim chi in small plates as complimentary dishes.

Ms. Z said matter-of-factly: "Oh, they learned from us."

Jack and I both laughed, mostly because her tone and expression couldn't be more like mine as I said something like this so many times before. I guess I never realized how annoying this kind of nationalism could be until I heard it from someone else.

The food was good, but we were not impressed as it wasn't much different from what we had in the Bay Area. The wait staff were yelling greetings whenever patrons entered or left (just like in Sushi restaurants, and I'm sure they learned it from us too), and it was quite startling and annoying. But we really enjoyed Ms. Z's company, despite how exhausted we both were. We talked about everything and even tried to convince her that American TV shows like Modern Family were greatly exaggerated and one must not believe that is how people live in America.

We had a short walk back to the hotel. At the courtyard of a famous Catholic church, there were locals, mostly middle-age and elderly, group dancing. I am guessing it was some kind of slow-paced after dinner exercise? Next to them, I also found a smaller group, relatively younger individuals, who were dancing Zumba moves with some popular Chinese music. It was all very amusing and slightly humorous to me as a once-certified Zumba instructor. Other people just hang out, and enjoyed the weather and company. I was pleased to see how relaxed and happy people were. Jack watched a guy who play the Erhu beautifully. We were both amazed to see how he made any kind of noise out of this strange two-string instrument, because Jack bought one online, and still is trying to get it to work.

I fell asleep as my head hit the pillow and slept like a baby for 5 hours. I woke up at 3 AM. Between chanting a mantra and listening to music, I drifted in and out of dreams until 6 AM when the breakfast opened up.

We went downstairs to the restaurant. Awaited us was a big spread of breakfast buffet like we have never seen before. Along the wall, there were made to order stations that served eggs cooked anyway you want, with bacon, ham or sausage; stew and grill vegetables; four different types of made to order noodle soups with various sauces and spicy oils. I even ordered myself some freshly stir-fried mix green vegetables. On the opposite side, there were fresh pastries such as croissants, danishes, muffins, donuts for people with western taste, but I never got around to try any of those. Then there was a station with pots of hot porridge (plain, chicken and pork), steam baos/man tou (made of bao dough but without any filling), fresh hot soy milk, and healthy food like steam yams, steam corns, and whole wheat steam buns. There were also all kinds of cereals, oak meals, and some Indian food such as roti, aloo gobi, sambhar. There were different types of Beijing specialty, mochi-like, deserts, fresh fruits and yogurts. Finally, there were German specialty espresso machines and various juices.

Needless to say, we were like little kids in a candy store. Everyday we woke up happy to know that the breakfast buffet was waiting. We were always the first to get to the breakfast, and we made sure to spend at least one hour there. The nice lady at the noodle station who also made my stir-fried vegetable taught Jack how to mix different types of condiments and sauces in his noodle soup to make it very tasty and spicy. She asked if we came from America and proudly said her daughter was going to a university in Minnesota. She said she went there to visit her just last year, and it was very cold. Breakfast was definitely the highlight of the day for food.

We were in Beijing for two and a half days - Saturday, Sunday and most part of Monday, and we had an English private guide with our own driver. It was expensive but it was worth every penny. Our guide was a typical Chinese man in his thirties, who named himself Murphy. His English was OK, but we appreciated he put in efforts to communicate with us. Of course I didn't mind helping out translate when needed. We later found out he was not native from Beijing, and his dream was to work full time as a tour guide in the city. The first day he came with his boss who drove a high-end BMW sedan. On the way, Murphy told us some history of the Great Wall. They took us out of the city to the Great Wall's Mutianyu entrance, which was significantly less crowded than some of the other more popular entrances. That day there was a marathon there, but it didn't bother us.

Murphy waited in line to get us the tickets and we entered the park. We walked by a gauntlet of vendors and eateries, which reminded me a lot of the Universal Studio in L.A., but with a very strong Chinese touch, of course. We waited in line to take the chair lift to get to the top of the mountain, and the line was moving quite fast until we got behind a lady, who couldn't make up her mind if the chair lift was too scary for her, and if she should take the less intimidating gondola instead.  After waited for 10 minutes listening to her animated debate with the ticket collector, we finally lost our patience and walked pass her. The chair lift was very much like the ones in our ski resorts, except when we were getting off, there were workers at the platform yelling and gesturing for us to run off to the right or the left and get out of the way. I was glad we got off without incidence and that we didn't have to do it again that day.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but with regarding the Great Wall, I say a picture cannot nearly do its justice. When we got to the Great Wall, which is, for two thousand years, a symbol of the Chinese civilization and history,  I was deeply moved. First of all, as big as it was, it was very long - measuring 5,500 miles. Since it was built along the top of the mountains, there were parts where it was so steep, we had to climb with our hands and feet, and at times we were drenched in sweat. It was built with bricks, big blocks and boulders, and I could not imagine how people could move any of them to the top of the mountain without the help of modern machines. As I thought more about it, it made me very sad, because all the people who built this wall back then must have die of physical exhaustion or some related illness. I asked Murphy, and he said: "Indeed, the Great Wall is also called the world's longest tomb." The thought sadden me. I touched the boulders with my hand, and tried to feel the spirits of the hundreds of thousands nameless slaves who were forced to give their lives building this monstrosity of a wall.

I was very amazed by how cool and comfortable temperature-wise inside the beacon and living quarters even in the middle of a warm day. Murphy explained to me it was because of the arches inside, which was designed to make it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. I didn't totally understand it, but I appreciated it very much as I waited inside the beacon while Jack and Murphy explored the other part of the wall, which was probably more or less the same as where I have already been.

There at the Great Wall, we saw blue skies and green forests. I looked into the forest, and tried to imagine about ancient times, how people were sending food and material in and out of the Wall, and their lives in villages around the wall. I was told that only the captains or generals got to live in the living quarters, and all the soldiers camp out on hillside. Commoners and soldiers have such tough lives. How did we get from "there" to "here", it's hard for me to fathom.

We thought our scheduled time of 1 and a half hour at the Wall couldn't be enough, but it was plenty enough for us to explore. If it weren't for the frozen bottled water the boss so kindly gave us at the beginning of our journey, we couldn't survive the hard physical activity in that warm summer day. For that, we were grateful.

We rode the luge off of the mountain. There was an opened half tub and it snakes back and forth down the mountain. The luge has rubber wheels that stayed inside the tube, and a break that rubs against the tube as we roll down the tube. As we waited in line, the guy gave us operation instructions in English and Chinese mixed with animated body language. Then he also translated it in Russian, Spanish and French for those tourists, and whatever other languages that I didn't recognize. That guy had a talent in language, and we were well entertained. Jack loved the ride, because that was the only thing he talked about the rest of the day. The only thing he had to complain was that he was stuck behind a guy who rode together with his son who rode slowly. As for me, I rode the luge so slowly that workers along side were telling me to speed up. I know Murphy was kind of annoyed, as he rode behind me, and had to ride the breaks down the mountain.

When we walked out of the park, a Caucasian woman in front of us was stopped by a couple of local men in ancient armors carrying fake swords. There was no way around them, and they solicited to take picture with her, which she complied. But then they rub their finger tips together to ask for money, and I thought it was very rude! As for us, we shook our heads with determination when we walked pass them, and they didn't bother us at all.

As we drove away from the Great Wall and headed back in the city, we passed by some orchards, and we stopped by one of the makeshift fruit stands. A lady with three or four baskets of fruits sitting under a big umbrella by the side of the road. We checked out the cherries, and the boss helped us to bargain down the price by 40%. Murphy told us we shouldn't pay more than 30% of the asking price in Beijing. Honestly I don't mind benefiting the local businesses, but I don't like the idea of being taken advantage of. Now we thought of it, we should have gotten Jack to stay in the car, because the locals were very good at unbashfully price gouging foreigners. Of course the shiny black BMW wasn't any disguise. We ate the cherries at the hotel, and it tasted the same as any other cherries we had in California.

That's about the most memorable part of our stay in Beijing. The next days we went to the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and Temples of Heaven. Being in the palaces and temples, which I saw so many times in pictures and movies, in person was very special, but there was something about emperors robbing the commoners' money for their own extravagance that was a turn off. Comparing to the Great Wall, the tour to the palaces were not very spiritual for me.

Finally, we need to talk about the Peking duck. First of all, there were many Peking duck restaurants in Beijing. I can't help but feel sorry for the ducks. We went to a modern, French-inspired Chinese restaurant for dinner, which was a recommendation by one of my co-workers. The restaurant was most famous for the Peking duck. It wasn't hard for us to find out the reason why it was French-inspired. The portions of the food were super small, yet everything was over-priced. I took a look at the phone-book-like menu, and almost wanted to leave, but I was too embarrassed to do so. We ordered half of a Peking duck and two less expensive side dishes. The duck was superb. I have never had duck that has no fat and the skin so crispy and delicious. The duck was totally worth it and greatly appreciated, but the rest of the meal was nothing to write mom about, or lackluster (a good word I learned today.)

The impressions of Beijing - part 1

Even though I grew up in Guangzhou, China, which is in the south, I've never been to Beijing. It was always my unspoken dream to go to Beijing - to see the famous Great Wall, Forbidden City and all that. Southerners and Northerners of China are very different - from dietary habits to other customs - so I'm very curious and excited to find out what Beijing is all about.

After an 11-hour flight eastbound, we reached Beijing Capital International Airport in the middle of the day. The word "Capital" in Chinese (the first city) gave me a sense of authority and priority. The airport was like any other metropolitan airports, yet there was an added sense of security and seriousness. It was so large, the place seemed quite empty with just us from one flight. We followed the others and walked quietly from the gate to where a lot of people made several queues. Securities were there to direct people to line up at the right places: foreigners v.s. Chinese national lines. The people at customs all had baby faces, and they were serious yet courteous, just like what I would expect. Of course, no photos were allowed at customs.

After we got through customs, we were kind of on our own, and counting on me to get us to the hotel.  I made several fruitless inquiries and got us lined up at one of the taxi queues, and eventually got us a taxi. I told the driver the name of the hotel, and he answered with a kind of uncertainty. After we settled in and he started driving, I found him putting the destination, Wangfujing, in his smartphone's GPS. The ride out of the airport was a breeze, and I was impressed by the lots of trees along the highway, it reminded me of the ride out of Austin International Airport. Unfortunately the air problem of Beijing was real even at the suburb, because everything was under a film of grey. When we got close to Beijing, traffic got really heavy. It was well-known that Beijing and its suburbs were labelled as rings. The outer most places were the 5th ring, and that's where the airport was. The center of the city, the hotel where we were staying, was in the 1st ring, which was walking distance to the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square. A lot of people live around 4th or 3rd ring, including my coworker in the Beijing office and our tour guide.

We stayed in the Crowne Plaza in Wangfujing. Wangfujing is one of the most famous areas in Beijing, for its Luxury shops (a little like downtown San Francisco around Union Square), local food street and shops of Chinese cultural gifts, it's direct translation was "the well of Duke's residence." When the taxi reached the hotel, a tall and skinny young bell man came to open our door. The taxi fare was 101 yuen (Chinese currency, $1 is equivalent to 6.5 yuen), but I told him that I only had 100 yuen bills, and was kind of embarrassed when the friendly taxi driver said it was OK to just give him 100 yuen. The people at the front desk were really friendly. A young man (from here on, all the hotel staff were skinny, good looking and very young) helped us to get our room, and I let him practice his English with Jack. He was a little shy therefore spoke softly, but his English was good.

We got to our room, which was said to be free upgraded. It was 5 PM local time, and we were exhausted. Beijing local time is 15 hours ahead of San Francisco time. We had a King bed, but the room was kind of narrow and weirdly shaped as if it was half of a larger room. In the next few days, I discovered other quirkiness of the hotel and our room, such as gurgling draining system in the middle of the night; smelly steam room and smell swimming towels, and rough toilet papers (luckily I brought my own toilet paper and box of Kleenex!) To my relieve, we did have seated toilet, working bath tub and shower, and the plumbing and electrical sort of working properly. I did have my doubts about our hotel, but all were made up by the big spread of breakfast buffet, which we looked forward to every morning at 6 AM for the next three days!

I might have stretched it, because I arranged to meet my Beijing office co-worker for dinner, and dragged Jack along with me.

To be continued.

Little things in life

Paper clips,
Duck tapes, and
Post-its

how can we live without them?

Of Songs and Movies

Ben Stiller's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" introduced me to David Bowie and my now favorite song "Space Oddity." Even though it was not written as a romantic song, the scene in which the girl sang this song was so romantic, it became a romantic song to me. Is it amazing how a movie can give new meanings and definitions to a classic song like this?

Similarly, the cute New Zealand romantic comedy, "Love Birds" introduced me to the band Queen! I was in love with the sound-track played in the movie. We bought Queen's greatest hits, which was a 3 disc CD set with whooping 51 songs, and as I listened to them, I still only like those songs played in the movie, because those songs have special meanings to me.

Another band that recently became my favorite was U2! When their newest album, "Songs of Innocence" was released last year, I saw them on the Tonight Show, and they performed two songs from the new Album. I fell in love with those songs!! In that short performance, they had their stage as in a concert, and they had their groupies! It was so cute. I think it's really amazing that this band can write new music that can connect with their audience, especially for a new audience like me.

Katy Perry's Super Bowl half-time performance two years ago got me to fall in love with her song "Roar!" I love it that it's such a girl-power song!

Music, movies and other art forms touch us in special moments and unique ways. It has been a pleasure discovering different art forms in my own pace. I feel lucky to live in this place where there is no lack of music and art to expand my horizon.

It pleases me

To see new green leaves coming out of tree branches, green hills and green lawns for this Spring.
To see solar panels and wind farms.
To see random kind hearted gestures which does not ask for anything in return.
To see humanity, love and compassion.

Dr. Ken

Can you see the Hollywood sign? Yes, we were there recently.

The show Dr. Ken is a mediocre (to say the least) attempt of a sitcom (or whatever they call it these days) trying to portrait Asian American lives. Mind you, this is the very first TV show about Asian Americans, and that's why I recorded an episode and watched it in a rainy Sunday morning. However, as far as I see, it simultaneously offended two groups of audiences, Asian Americans and medical professionals.

The acting is a joke across the board.

The storyline has no creativity nor originality. There is a gay couple, and there is a fashion forward daughter and a stay at home mom. Oh, does this remind you of anything? Yeap, awfully similar to the story in Modern Family alright. Except Modern Family is successful and rightfully so, as it has substance and depth.

There is so much to say about Asian Americans professionals and their lives, but nothing of value  came out in Dr. Ken. To me, you can put the storyline that showed in Dr. Ken into any other show with a different cast, and it would work, however terribly. It's so formulaic it's scary. It's a waste of time and disastrous. Our dog has more originality and authenticity than Dr. Ken.

If they were not going to do their best, why bother doing it at all? I guess this much is what we can expect from what's his name that's the lead actor of Dr. Ken.

Why? What a shame! And yes, the show is garbage, and I am furious.

Chores

Every weekend, I spend part of the morning tidy up the house - doing dishes and laundry, sorting mails. Usually that's all I got to do (if I'm lucky) before I got totally bored and had to get out of the house for some fresh air. I often think to myself: thank God for dish washers, washing machines and dryers. I can't imagine living without these appliances.

On an interview with Jimmy Fallon last week, Bill and Melinda Gates were being asked: "If you have a super power, what would it be?" I really like Melinda's answer. She said: "That would be time." Then she explained, women world wide spend 4 to 6 hours everyday to take care of the household chores and their family in addition to their normal full time job. She wished there was a way to give back that time to women.

To me, that's so true. Household chores are endless. I admit I'm not a good house maker in any stretch of the imagination, but I was brought up learning all the right things to be one. I wish to be better at it, but there is simply not enough time, and it is quite boring. So my house is always a working progress, and I'm not apologetic about it, because sometimes I prefer to blog, do yoga, read some books or simply relax!

Road Trip! Let's all go!

A road trip is always a good idea, even in the winter. I don't do this a lot, but whenever I take road trips, I see so many new things and my imagination just goes wild and I love it. It makes me appreciate life and nature so much! Of course the best thing is when I'm the passenger, not the driver.

Our 2015 Christmas road trip to Colorado was an eye opener to me in many different ways. It was my first cross country road trip in the winter. From Half Moon Bay, we took the northern route into Reno, Nevada, then I-80 E through Utah, Wyoming, then headed south into Colorado.

It was the first time I experienced such cold temperature for such a long time - one week! I mean, this is the real deal. Growing up in the southern city of Guangzhou, China, then in San Francisco, I am used to warm and mild temperatures all my life, so being in 0 degrees and below and around snow for such a long time was kind of a shock to me. I remember stopping at a freeway rest stop around Wyoming - in the middle of nowhere, I might add - the wind chill must have been -14 or so, and I was so cold even when I was all bundled up! Then, I get to appreciate the true values of good winter hat, gloves, boots and scarves. I was amazed that some men and women were walking around with t-shirts and light clothing. What, are they made of steel or something?


We took the dogs across country just so we have some family time, but it didn't take long for us to realize the dogs didn't really like it. They didn't like to be sitting at the back of an SUV for such a long time, and only having a few times out of the car to do their business. Also, the water they drank was frozen half of the time! They did enjoy spending time with us at night in the hotel room though. I remember the first night, Jake (our male golden) didn't really know what to make of it, and he got so excited. He was moving around the room a lot, and coming to lick us. As to us, it was really a chore to have to put all the warm cloths on before taking the dogs out of the hotel room for them to do their business. I mean, at home, all we need is to get out of the door with our pajamas and at most a robe, since the temperature is mild and we have a lot of privacy! Since we drove two and a half days one way to our destination, making sure we had enough water for the dogs for the long drive was important, but it wasn't impossible. It was the first time for Jake to be in snow, and he was SO cute in it!

From the yuppy filled western coastal town to the heartland of the America, it really put the phrases like "open space" and "middle of nowhere" into perspective for me. I mean, we would drive hundreds of miles on I-80 without seeing any town along the way! All we saw was flat land with buttes and plateaus here and there, and some wind farms. It was exciting to pass the state lines, continental divides and the Bonneville Salt Flats!

I had technologies such as my iPhone and iPad, and various travel apps at my fingertip, but a good old atlas took us a long way! I was so happy to have learned how to read the map! I could figure out where the mountain passes were, which we could encountered heavy storms, especially around Reno area. Using iPhone map app, I should be able to find out where the next rest area was, but it really could not accurately show the needed information, because most of the rest stops were not on the map! We just had to have faith to trust that there was always some kind of rest stop every 50-100 miles or so, and you better get whatever you need when you got to one!

I developed a great respect for truck drivers. Driving for 8 to 10 hours a day a few days in a row is tiring! At the end of the day, my body got so stiff! We observed that some trucks have this small cabin attached at the back of the cockpit or above it, where drivers can sleep in. Can you imagine this kind of life where you are driving on the road so much for a living? To me, truck drivers are the modern day nomads!

The conclusion? Maybe we should try taking the train and leave the dogs home.

Ying's answers to (almost) everything

Q: I have a headache.
Y: Drink some water or hot tea and rest.

Q: I have back pain.
Y: Stretch.

Q: I am feeling fatigue.
Y: Rest.

Q: I'm tired.
Y: Take a break and do some stretching.

Q: I have a sore throat.
Y: drink some hot water.

They work, they are free and don't take much time.

Judge

"Don't judge a book by its cover." To extend that, I would say: "Don't judge a culture by one book."

Jack just finished reading one of the four great ancient Chinese novels, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms." It's a historic novel about the Three Kingdoms in the Chinese history, around AD 220 - 280. The book was a novel written based on historical characters and some legendary stories.

I knew the story since childhood from our noon time storytelling on the radio. The four great novels are, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," "The Dream of the Red Chamber," "Journey to the West," and "Water Margin."

According to Jack, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was poorly translated (which is really a shame), and the characters' names were too hard to remember, which make reading and enjoying it difficult. Think "War and Peace," with people's names directly translated from Chinese, which totally don't make sense in English, for example: Cao, Cao. This is the book that's like Lord of the Rings for fantasy novels in English literature.

From time to time, I like to ask Jack what he thought of the book out of curiosity. Here are some of his other impressions:

• There are lots of detail descriptions of weapons.
• People were very superstitious, for example, if there was a fallen tree close to camp, it would be a bad omen for battle.
• The book was all about battles, men and strategies. There was no female characters in the story, so no romance. I guess, it's kind of a book about "bromance." 
• Now he knows the legendary Chinese characters such as Guan Yu, the exemplar Chinese warrior, who is also treated like a God of protection in Chinese culture (sort of like Captain America). Kong Ming, who is the exemplar and the best war strategist ever (in history, present time and in the future, that is).  Both of them worked for the Kingdom of Wei, for the Liu camp.
• Some punishments were very cruel. If the king was angry with someone who worked for him, he would not only kill that person, but also his family and perhaps extended family. Arhhh!
• At war if they killed a warrior that they admired, they would give him an honorable burial to show respect.

Sounds kind of barbaric doesn't it? Well, think 2000 years ago, the world is probably a pretty inhumane place, and hard to fathom.

This week Jack started reading "The Dream of the Red Chamber," which was written by a different author in a different era, but was translated by the same person. I asked what he thought of the book so far, and he said: "It's so totally different from the other book, this one is very sensual, and it's all about feelings and emotions." That's so true, there is so much beauty and romance in this book, and it will certainly provide a different dimension to the Chinese literature and culture. 

Well, we all know it's not good to judge, but none-judging is also very hard to do. So I would say, let judging happens, be conscious of it, and then let it go. Grow from each and every (judging) experience.

Packing list

Jack and I just came back from a long road trip with the dogs, from San Francisco Bay Area, to Denver Colorado. I've never driven in the winter, snowy conditions, so I've been concerned about the safety of the trip.

There were not much planning could be done in terms of where to stay, and which route to take, because all of that really depended on how the weather would be around the time. A couple of days before the trip, I tried to do more planning, so I pulled out my packing list -

1. Snacks
2. Blankets