Christmans Party and Din Tai Fung

Who would know that SLS kind of having the tradition of going to bowling and Din Tai Fung as their Christmas celebration party? I just found out this great news last couple days when RSVP to the Christmas staff party. After figuring out the dumpling house they meant, I couldn't help but got so excited through out the weekend.

There is only one Din Tai Fung restaurant in the States, which is actually pretty close to us. Bowling is fun, but Din Tai Fung is even more amazing. I kept telling my boss and other staffs how cool Din Tai Fung is and how excited I am. Several friends also got my phone calls "showing off" that I get to go to Din Tai Fung for a big treat!

Twelve of us went bowling in the morning. Bowling to me is like a college activity. I still remember going bowling in the late evening, and then having night snack afterwards. When being a student, time doesn't seem like an important issue. We always feel that we have plenty of time to spend and going to bed early is not something to worry about. The friendship flowing between interactions probably is the most attracting thing in the late night bowling event for us. Those good old time...

Ok. back to topic. So, twelve of us divided up to three teams to have team competition. After the first round, our team got rewarded for 100 handicapped for the real game. Now you can get an idea how "good" we were. ISO has Sam, who is the expert of bowling. SLS happens to have "powered up" version of Carmen. We have Keith, the only guy who can help raise our point. However, when the second run started, our team started firing up! Strikes and spare kept coming. We laughed this was a team job and we prayed before the second run. At the end we were couple points less than ISO team. However, with the 100 handicapped point, we were the champion!

Din Tai Fung is right across the bowing place. People were all starved. The manager who helped us order kept giving ideas and pretty much handling the whole order process. In the middle of ordering, the manager told Ruth that Americans won't like chicken with skin on it, so they can just skip chicken soup, and order sour and spicy soup instead. " I want a chicken soup!" I can only find a little spot to yell out what I want as I see them going to pass it. The managered stopped and mumbled, "oh, Asian may like it." We had juicy pork dumpling, pork and shrimp dumpling, shrimp shaomai, shanhai fried rice cake, shrimp fried rice, fried green bean, bok choy, red bean dumpling and red bean rice cake. Oh, and my chicken soup which I had one and with one to go as well!

Not sure what made Allison started wanting to learn Chinese, we spent much time practicing writing "love" and speaking "I love you" in Chinese. There was even time that the whole table stopped and just listened to us. And I offered the explanation of my last name- eight thousand female ghosts, which was used by Allison this morning to greet me when she stepped into office.

Anyway. Din Tai Fung in the States not only fed my belly, but reminds me of my family. That was the first meal they took us to when we went back this summer. I thought about Dad's face during that meal. I think, as quiet as he was, he still loves me so he treated everyone with a great nice dumpling feast!

Flyer

It has been the sixth flyer after starting my current job. Every time I feel really stretched to come up with a nice design. However, so far, every time I'm done, I am pretty happy with the outcome.

With no exception, today is another day that I feel my ideas look great in my mind, but not good at all in the software canvas. I have different ideas of how I want to outline the picture, using different stokes, but I can't even figured out how to bring a picture to front from the background.

Having been absent from work make yesterday the last and only day to work on this flyer. Fortunately, editor said I can turn that in later. Will try to get it done by tomorrow!

The 3rd day of work

Got up at 5am. Got home at 9:50pm. Working is not a funny and easy job!

Spent half day in a meeting with my boss. 2pm to 5pm-ish. My original flyer plan didn't get anything done. I then made a decision that I will overwork today, since it's only 1hr difference, but I can have 2 more hours in office. Coming out of the meeting, I finally realize how naive I was before. I used to tell people meeting is fun and nice. You don't need to work but you get paid! Now I understand the pain that your old work didn't get done because you were in the meeting. However, your to-do list gets longer from the meeting!

I need to relax myself a bit. Even though my current/future tasks sound a bit scary and huge to me, it should be ok! See, I just fool everyone that I am a design expert, while the reality is I keep trying to catch up by myself. I did get things done! Now I am also more eager to learn those software. (How can I survive if babe's not there backing me up?)

Not sure how I am going to tackle all the tasks. Can't imagine how my life will be like after school starts. I can't really do anything after work and before work everyday. Not enough sleep. Can't really write on the train. Sometimes super sleepy, not even sure how I drove myself to the station...

Tomorrow I will have a welcome breakfast treated by the office! Cool! However, again, need to get up at 5am. Work is hard!

Still hope that I can at least read more about the writing book before school starts. I am now not even sure if I can get that done.

New job! Everything is so real and cool! Office, own line, keys, "phob", supplies, business card, name tag on the door, title, office email, employee privileges....in that sense, work is fun! I feel I finally can proudly tell others I know how work is like! (something like lots of phone calls, meetings and lots of things keep pile up. Something like that!)

Job Offer!

I GOT THE OFFER!

Director called me on the phone and gave me the offer. She repeated that she's really interested in having me in the office and wanted to know if I need time to think or will take the offer right away!

As excited as I was, I asked her if there will be some written description about the offer. She then told me all the "benefit" that I can get and agreed to send me either offer letter through on-line hiring system or email. Hee, I got the highest pay in the budget range! And I will have paid vacation! wow! I am like a real employee! :P

I, of course, said I will get back to her on Monday! Wahaha! Though I am so happy about the job and there aren't really anything to negotiate about. Woo-hoo! Maybe I will keep the purse for celebration! hahaha!

My earliest day will be September 2nd or 8th!
Happy REAL work, sweetie!

Debug

Always knew that Michael wanted me to dig into the codes ASAP. After today's free lunch, he stopped my C# fun time and asked me to fix the problem.

I was scared to death that I was not familiar with Delphi's debug, Pascal code, their application, and so on. I even constantly crashed the whole application because I couldn't figure out what should I do next. Soon, I went hiding in the restroom just prayed. With what I heard this morning from the message, I told God because you are great, you are merciful, you love me, you have wonderful plan for me, you listen to prayer, you are AWESOME (the funny modern term *msg joke*), so, here is my request, let me be courageous and face this challenge.

Working hard to thicken my face, I asked Michael tons of questions. He showed me the difference of tracing, which I never really understand in school; showed me how to manually close application but not rebuilding while in the middle of debugging and crashing application all the time; guided me using search while I get totally lost tracing into another thousand lines of codes function. I gradually understand what I first tried to do wasn't really right. However, as knowing more and more, things started making sense. Typing the order number, I was thinking "testing and debugging is actually quite fun."

This is the simplest code. I literally cheered in the restroom and car after I finished the job on time and got problem solved! Thanks God for my first “actual battle“ experience of being a programmer.

Internship

昨天一連收到三個contacts，願意跟我談談internship的事。我興奮的跟陵說。她笑笑評論David的獵人頭公司contact果然很驚人，不過其實這三個都不是head hunter找來的呢，可是我自己從我的contacts裡，不斷寄信連絡找來的喔！興奮了一會兒，想著晚上要好好禱告再繼續跟他們聯繫。

今天又在鼻涕和痰的擁護下醒來，很不情願的繼續灌一大杯水，撥了電話給啾豆，跑到Aliso Viejo，就準備電話連絡工作的事了。一下子是來回的確定時間，和HR director談，再跟另一個CEO談。大家都不意外的問我現在在念什麼，說實在覺得自己丟出seminary一詞時好酷！大致的了解狀況，星期一可能就要跟人家確定細節了，超級興奮的跟啾豆報告，"I am so proud of you",他說。

啾豆說Kyle已經開始做第一個C# build了。"我也不要輸人哪！"心裡吶喊著。

There were three emails waiting in my inbox yesterday about the internship. Telling Lynn excitedly last night, she commented the head hunter David mentioned about is really powerful! Well, however, those three are not from head hunter. I went through several contacts I had and surprisingly got those replies! Anyway, I was so excited thinking prayer is definitely needed before I contact them for further details.

Again, waking up with clusters and snots. After a big cup of hot water, I called Joe and went to Aliso Viejo for the phone calls and studies. Emails back and forward, I finally talked to the HR director and CEO of 2 different places. They both asked me about the school now I attend. Seminary was definitely a cool answer to make them stunned! Pretty Cool, uh? It looks like some details can be confirmed on Monday. Excitedly telling Joe, "I am so proud of you", he said.

Kyle already started his first build of C#. I don't want to left behind!