Beethoven In Trance - Episode 61

2010 was a good year.

First, the year started out with Jessica transferring to another department. She first interviewed for a job @ eMarketing, but didn't get it because she was overqualified. Right after she got turned down, another job opened up (and actually a better one), she applied and got it. She even got a small raise for the same level job transfer.

Second, Alice Ai Liang was born on 09/08/2010 at 10:36am. She is healthy, loud and cute.

Third, we both got the green card.

To welcome Alice, I did couple home projects. I rent a carpet cleaner and cleaned the basement and upstairs. Completely cleaned my study room and moved my computer down to the basement. Reorganized the basement so that it's not longer a storage room. I rewired the speakers with the 16 gauge wire and mounted the speakers on the wall. It's my new entertainment room. The old study room is Alice's room now. She has her own wardrobe, and a bed, and a sofa. Jessica spends a lot of time in there.

We also changed the layout in the dining room. We went to Ikea and bought a dinner table, it's narrower than the previous one, which saves us more space. It can be extended out to fit more people though. We moved the old table to the basement. We also moved the dinner plate cabinet to another corner of the dining room. It opens up more space in the dining room which is a high traffic area. With the baby around, space is becoming an issue.

The living room is also reorganized. I bought a set of used speakers from Craiglist (after bought and returned a set from Amazon.com). It was my first purchase from craiglist and the visit to the seller was pleasant. The test CD performed very well, so I didn't get any chance to negotiate the price. Come to think of it now, I might overpaid the center speaker a bit, but oh well. I bought the receiver and subwoofer from amazon.com and a blue ray player from bestbuy. All in all, it costed me about $600, plus speaker wires. It's certainly a learning experience to build the system from the pieces and connect all of them together, calibrate them to maximize its performance. The placement of the speaker is not ideal due to the shape of our living room (and I don't have any space and budget for a rear set either), I will have to live with it. I got a storage rack from Costco to put the TV, receiver, blu-ray and center speaker. It worked well, and it costed only $34.

My first Hi-Fi system performs well to my taste, very bright, suitable for the materials I listen to. Jazz and Classical and vocal come to live with the speakers. The speakers are about 10 years old, but still kicking. The new system also broadened my collection in Jazz and Classical. Pop music doesn't sound impressive in these speakers, but then again, what are you looking for in pop song? There is a huge different between vocal performance and pop song.

To back up all the CDs, I found a new software called EAC, Exact Audio Copy. It works like charm. I went through 100 CD spindle quickly. With the new system, my taste to the music also changed. Classical had a big come back when Alice was born, and I started to explore jazz vocal. So far I came across some favorite artists: Eva Casidy, Melody Gardot, Marelyn Payroux, Stacy Kent, and Shelby Lynne.

For Alice, I also bought a used camera, Canon XT, with a 50mm f1.8 lens. It's a fast lens. After my research of getting better pictures in low light condition, I picked up this one because it's more cost effective for the time. It performs well to the purpose. I brought it to the delivery room, and it took sharp pictures of the baby. With the growing need for space to store pictures and audio, I bought two 1TB harddrive, and gave away the 500G external to my neighbor. I also got a 320G external from my dad.

In 2010, I volunteered to be a board member for the Asian Employee Resource Group in our company. It's been an interesting experience working with other Asians (mainly indians from IT group) in the company. Like any new machine, we didn't start working smoothly, but we are getting better. Also, I went back to Steiner House to be on the board member, and got involved with the house issues again. It's fun to listen to all the old storied again.

We didn't do a good job tracking our finance in 2010. Jessica basically dropped the task because she is busy with the baby. I didn't want to pick up the task, so we left with nothing in the accounting book. I only know that we did all right in the stock market and in our retirement account for the year.

As of this writing, it's July 6th already. I am really late for publishing the annual report.

Last but not least, a list of memorable visuals and sounds:
Top 3 Album: Shelby Lynne: Just a little lovin', Melody Gardot: My one and only thrill, Stacy Kent: Raconte Moi
Top Movie: Up

Beethoven In Trance - Episode 60

Last week when I first started to write this annual report, I found myself out of topics very shortly. There was not much going on, I thought. I only remembered the vacation in CA with my parents, and the family vision statement that we made a few weeks ago. So I decided to check my blog in 2009 to see if anything I can add and soon I realized I have a lot to talk about in 2009.
2009 is the year of living, as I mentioned in the last annual letter. I think it's an accurate statement.
We have undergone some great changes in 2009, as you will soon witness. We are moving away from the 'settle in' phase, and into a time of 'better living'. We start to know better of this country and governing system through a list of documentaries, and change our mind set and modify our life style accordingly.
We challenge ourselves to find a better place than Cleveland for living. We paid off our mortgage to save on interest this year. We try to liquidate our asset and limit our purchase for the house to make future transition easier. We wrote our family vision statement as a guide to our future planning and career development. Meanwhile, we felt compelled to preserve our tradition and culture after 9 years staying here in US.
So, 2009 is in a sense building a sustainable model for the future.

Healthy Living
Food
We continued our request for a better dietary plan since the last writing (2008 annual report). We eliminated unhealthy food snacks, and discarded industrialized sauces at home. We have developed the new habit to read food product labels. The long list of corn based preservatives and additives always bring me laugh.
We also made a series changes to our daily food choices. We are moving away from heavy animal protein to increasing variety of substitutes. We cut meat in smaller size and stocking up different vegetables and grains. We have fish every week, and recently have started to have one 'vegetable dinner night' every week. We are trading in quantity for quality.
Our food vendor mix in 2009 has changed to accommodate our shifting needs for healthy food. We have increased our visits to Wholefoods, and opened to sources that we previously ignored due to the higher price point. I researched our local grocery stores and compared their offerings base on quality then price. We have stopped purchasing chicken from Costco because they were fat and industrialized (meaning big breast, soft bone, and loose joint - which indicates they don't move much, and are raised to increase the meat output). We found a good replacement in Giant Eagle, a regional grocery store which offers 'frying chicken' (from Delaware) at a comparable price that is less commercial. Plus we can just buy one instead of two in a pack at Costco. There is also Amish county chicken in the local stores with doubled price, we will try it next to see if the quality lives up to its price.

For pork, we have more choices. The pork in Giant Eagle is from Kansas farms, and the quality seems to meet the standard. We have bought pork rib ends from Heinens (from North Carolina) and have had good experience with them. D.W.Whitaker at the Westside market offers Ohio raised pork. I always get the rib tips from them as it's the best bargain. We used the pork rib end bones in a stock from Miles Market (from Ohio) last week, and we were happy with the result. We recently started to talk to a local farmer regarding buying a pasture-raised pig for 2010. It will be twice expensive but we are willing to give it a try to see if it's worth it. We will buy less pork from Costco that's for sure.
We don’t consume much beef, therefore, I don't plan to spend too much time to compare offerings like what we did with pork. Heinens offers beef shank at a good price. Wholefoods sometimes have sales on beef steak. Miles market has various cuts of black angus beef. I think we have enough to choose from for our needs.
We harvested some vegetables from our garden last year and we will continue work on our garden this year. We are planning to join a CSA program this year to accommodate our increasing need for farm fresh vegetables.
While eating healthier, we strive to move our food expenses to local markets. As suggested in the documentaries that we have watched this year "Food.Inc", "The future of food", we are exercising choices every time we walk into the store. We are moving to a new food standard while helping the local agriculture.

Mindset
When research on healthy diet, we have become more and more aware of the environment impact of what we do on the planet. This is a direct result of a list of documentaries that we have watched: 'Addicted to plastic", "Who killed the electric car', "The end of surburbia", and "Collapse". We were introduced to the new concepts such as 'peak oil', 'the clash between infinite growth and finite resource', and ‘local agriculture’. We were watching in awe how the plastic got recycled in the wasteland in India so we stopped using plastic spoon and fork in the office for lunch and bring in our own stainless steel ones. Our thermostat is kept at 50F this winter although it's mainly due to the high cost. We will buy a hybrid car instead of a regular 'fueled' car in the future. We still need to digest the concept of 'peak oil' and see how we can prepare for the collapse and become less dependent on oil.
After 8 years staying in US, I found my feelings for and attitude towards home shifting gradually. Few years ago, I won't even bother knowing the happenings in Shanghai, but now I am more open to them. We watch Shanghai local news every night. This Christmas, we have both noticed an emergent need to preserve our culture and our language. We wrote our first weekly menu in Chinese last week with the help of dictionary and we will continue to refresh our Chinese writing skills. It will be sad to lose our own language because it's one of the most important part of the culture. We agreed to have days off in our Chinese new year to celebrate the tradition.

Home Projects
We have accomplished two major projects this year, the garden and the bathroom remodeling.
We started our garden project in early spring. We roller tilted the garden we put down last year, and the flower garden that we hadn't been taking care of. We added another flower bed next to the maple tree at front. My wife had developed a strong interest in gardening so she wanted another garden for the additional vegetables. We took a day off and put down another garden in the backyard. We spent a few hundred dollars on soil, seeds, flower and herbs for the projects. All tools are borrowed from our neighbor. Happily, the flowers came out well later on. We also had more vegetables this year. We planted some heirloom tomatoes and they came out well, they were the best tasting tomato. The roman tomato is tasteless, but very productive. I bet it's an industrial specie. We had squash, green beans, tomato, fava bean, long string bean, bochoy, and different herbs. We still have rosemary and tarragon indoor now.
At the meantime, my wife has been working on the garden compose and we had so far almost 3 whole big boxes of decomposed 'stuff' for our garden next year. We have moved them into garage in the winter afraid plastic cracking in the cold weather.
We didn't do anything for the lawn in 2009, except our parents have been pulling out dandelions since they arrived here. We aero gated the lawn before the winter, and didn't seed. We will see what happens next year.
Around June, we started to work on our bathroom. Our initial budget was $700, and soon it span into $2000. We took down and reinstalled 4 wall panels, painted the whole room, retiled the bathtub, have someone refinished the bathtub, and changed fixture. Our neighbor has been the project leader and I was there helping out. The cost is half of the quoted price if I decide to hire someone to complete it, and that makes me feel better. Our bathroom was reopened in mid August when we expected our parents coming for visit.
One side project our neighbor did for us when we were vacationing in CA in October is the electric switch for the heating cables outside of the house. We left him the key just in case when we were gone, but he went in and re-wired the switch. Now we have a dedicated switch for the heating cables outside.
As of this writing, we just added another project for 2010. Our roof has been leaking water during snowy days since we moved in. This winter seemed to be particularly harsh on the roof and we had a lot of water leaking in. The ceiling under the roof has taken some water damage and leaking down to the room. We noticed the water drop last night, and traced it to the attic, then found a pool of water there. 10pm at night we were crouching in the attic and trying to soak up the water with newspaper. The next thing I knew was that my right foot was through the ceiling. It's just like in the comedy movie we saw before, only this time it's not that funny because I need to fix it. We will have to fix the hole on the ceiling, and fix the leaking roof in 2010. Plus, we need to better position our heating cable to let it drop down to the down spout so that the water won't back into the house dripping all over from the top frame of the windows in the living room like a water fall. Can't wait to see the winter end.


Entertainment
Since my last injury back in Shanghai running the half marathon in 2008, I haven't been able to get back to running. I joined the gym early in 2009 so that I can have some alternative exercise. One class has become my weekly routine - Yoga. It helps with stretching my body which I hope will speed up my recovery. At one point I was so tired of being injured and I went to have my leg check up, I went to a recommended sports doctor, and I didn't get much back from the visit. It was a very expensive visit as well, even with the insurance. It's one of the financial mistakes that I made in the year.
Other than running, I got the chance to play basketball a few times with colleagues this summer. Games took place at an outdoor half court and I had a good time. My leg injury was there, and I wasn't able to do my best. But it's great to get back to the game.
We did watch some good movies this year, below is a list of my picks.
Best drama: The curious case of Benjamin Button
Best Animation: Up
Best TV series: Dexter
Best Chinese movie: A night at the supermarket
Best Sci-Fi: District 9
Best Action: Terminator 4
Importantly, We watched a series of documentaries including: "The future of food", "Food.Inc", "The end of surburbia", "Who killed electric car", "Addicted to plastic", "Collapse", 'I.O.USA', 'The business of being born', "Sicko", "Guns in America", "World's most dangerous gang", "Bowling for Columbine" that cover a wide range of subjects. The future depicted from them was not bright. Most of them are trying to reach out and raise awareness for social responsibility. We have been acting on the ideas that are promoted ever since such as stopped using plastic spoons in the office, change our diet plan, and choose local food over national chain. We consider those viewings good learning. There is still much to do and we are still trying to chew them and digest piece by piece.
We are glad to watch a few good Chinese movies this year. "A night at the supermarket" is an entertaining movie. Yes, one can argue that the movie copied many ideas from other movies, but I say it serves the purpose and has enough originality to stand on its own. On the other hand, "Crazy Stone" wasn't that impressive for me. "Red Cliff" was a well directed movie, and I found it enjoyable to watch. The most disappointing TV series this year is "Heroes", it's been dragging since the last season and I think the show has lost its way. The best TV series is "Dexter" due to its gripping story development in the consecutive 4 seasons.

I continued my music journey in Progressive House this year. Trance has been commercialized too much that I have lost taste to it.
As for video game, Call of Duty Modern Warfare2 is the best of the year.

Finance
Our IRA investment in 2009 has delivered good result. I made the decision to divert our portfolio at the beginning of 2009 to take on some high growth and riskier stocks. The decision has paid off. My IRA has grown 27%, while hers has gone up 30% since inception.
Our after-tax investment account on the other hand only went up 4% because we set up the account at the peak of the market and soon the market went under. Even after I tried to infuse new growth oriented stocks into the mix, the account hasn't been able to fully recover from the market downturn. In 2010, we will continue to invest this account with new stock selections, and possibly a monthly or quarterly contribution instead of a lump sum deposit.
Another much smaller after-tax account that we had was still in the negative growth area. I bite the bullet and sold some underperformance funds before the year end in exchange for some promising stocks. I look forward to see its result in 2010. For the losses that I had, I will use it in the tax return this year.
Both of our 401K account started to climb out of valley in 2009, but we are still not able to shake off the losses incurred in 2008. We can only hope we can go back to the positive growth in this year.
We opened a few new bank accounts this year in pursuit of higher interest rate and opening account bonus. One bank account is actually a good choice because it has the ATM onsite in the company. That makes money withdraw safe and convenient.
We had a car accident in 2009, which put a dent on our insurance premium. We haven't changed our insurer due to its low cost, but we will be reviewing our policy this year and looking for alternatives and better home insurance coverage.
On the expense side, I bought six pairs of shoes this year. Patagoia (my current favorite brand) Balsam, Drifter, Vasque Blurr, Vasque waters shoes and Salomon Xt Wings from Sierra Trading Post at good prices. I also bought Rockport travel shoes (which is a mistake) from amazon.com. and finally a pair of Salomon XA Comps at Marshalls for $15. I am happy to report that my hunting for a fitting shoe has finally concluded. They are all great shoes. I am also happy that my parents can bring back home some of my shoes (wrongfully bought because they were cheap at the time) and give them away to relatives.
We purchased a few pieces cookware in 2009. Some of them are for resell over amazon.com and two pieces ($29) are for my cooking pleasure. I was able to sold two pieces (Kitchenaid 12qt. stock pot and Marco Pierre White oval fry pan) at very good prices. I lost money and product over a 14” fry pan transaction because the customer didn’t return the pan and amazon.com refunded the product due to the damage during the shipping. Another good financial lesson learned.
The current concept in managing our asset is 'liquidity'. We know the current house is not our home for long and we want to keep everything 'liquid' so we can have an easier transition in the future. We will limit our purchase and sell or donate anything that we won't carry over to the next home.
Due to the market downturn and Fed's rate cut, mortgage rate has been dropping through the year. We analyzed our situation at the time, and decided to refinance the mortgage. However, after we paid our application fee, we did another round of calculation and found a better option - pay off the mortgage totally. We cancelled the refinancing and lost the application fee during this process. It was very expensive lesson.
To keep a record of mistakes we made so that we can remember, here are the top financial mistakes in 2009:
1. Application fee for refinancing the house
2. Buying airline tickets for my parents from David Wang, higher price than in China, and can't use Credit Card to accumulate points.
3. Go to sports doctor for leg injury, high x-ray fees which is not necessary.
4. Didn't completely stop at the red light on E71. and Chester when turning right.
5. Bought a salad without thinking how to avoid heavy weight items.
6. Lost money and product over amazon.com during a transaction.
Other fun facts, we both saved on hair cut in 2009. I started to cut my hair since early spring and stopped going to saloon. My wife stopped going to saloon and let her hair grow.

Career
Not till later in the year I started to make moves to prepare for the next step in my career. The business my group manages did well in 2009 and we are on our way to meet the target for the first time. It will be unwise to miss this accomplishment. Therefore, I will stay put and see it through. On the other hand, I have talked to other department to see if there is any fun project to work on, and there is. My manager will make some arrangement this year to fill my time with work from both sides.
While I am writing this, my wife is preparing for an interview for a position in eMarketing in our company. It's a new field for her and she is interested. She is good at her job and she has good chance, and I can't wait to celebrating her getting the job.
We are still working on our long term career plan. Recently we had a meeting to talk about our life goals and city preference. We wrote a family vision statement in the meeting to guide our future planning. We will continue our research on our career and city preference in the new year focusing on what industry and type of job we like.

Travel
Earlier of the year, I traveled to L.A for the first time on a business trip with my manager and another colleague. CA was still like what it was when I left there 4 years ago, sunshine, hippies, girls showing skin, and the whole 'California' attitude. After our meeting with the client, we went to a local museum which is very nice. It was my Nikon D60's first field trip. I was able to snap a few good shots there.
We had two long vacations a short one after that. One with my in laws in DC, NY, MD, and one in CA with my parents.
We went to NY because my wife needed to renew her passport in NY. So we decided to take her parents along and did a tour in DC as well. It was about 7.5 hour's drive to DC. The train system in DC is well built and we had not much difficulty to get around. The Holiday Inn hotel we stayed in Greenbelt VA is decent and inexpensive. We walked around the town taking pictures at different sites and museums. The next day we left the DC and dropped by MD, then went on to NY. We stayed at Newark as the hotel was less expensive. We sent her parents on a city one day tour in the morning and we then waited in the chilling wind in front of the Chinese embassy. We got in and soon we found we were missing some documents (which were not required according to its website). The copy machine wasn't working, which wasted me four or five coins. Eventually, we got it renewed and we needed to pick it up a few days later. Fortunately, we bumped into a couple who worked in the same company and they were doing the same thing. They had a cousin lived in NY and their cousin can pick the passport up for us. We left the embassy and walked around the city and window shopped some food stores of our interest. There was one very expensive store (something ducas) I remember. We bought a bread in a store where my wife said Wholefoods sources its bread from, the bread is expensive, and the store cashier is nice and friendly.
We then shopped at Fairways. The array of olive oil in that store is impressive. There was a young guy with a back pack looking like a college student stormed into the aisle and started to sample each olive oil with the bread. The watching old Chinese lady next to him was laughing. The young man turned around and said 'trying different oils'. Well, he looks more like 'stuffing myself up before walking into the classroom'. Poor kid. My wife also got a comment from another old guy who was trying to walk pass her 'get outta here' in the store. She was not happy about it and before I found out that guy disappeared already. When we were done with the shopping and walked to the register, we didn't notice we cut off people accidently and we were 'reminded' by the people behind us right away. Finally we left the store and we saw the old guy who was previously rude to my wife, and I wanted to confront him, my wife stopped me and that guy sneaked back into the store again. Overall, Fairway is a nice store with great product, but I just can't stand the people there.
Then we went to a 'legendary' local restaurant to check out their corn beef sandwich, we found it was way too expensive and left there. We walked into a Wholefoods and were not that impressed by its cashier (in terms of friendliness).

Before I concluded that NY city is not a friendly city, I would have to point out that I have a few friendly encounters when I was asking directions in the morning. All the people I asked responded kindly and they all tried to help. I guess I have got used to the customer service standard here in Cleveland Ohio.
As soon as my parents arrived in early September, We drove them to the Niagra Falls where they had a great time appreciating the grand view of the falls. One bummer is that the picture card somehow stopped function and we lost some family pictures.
CA vacation in October was a nice, but short one. We travelled to Montery Bay Aquarium, Big Sur State Parks, Yosemite, Las Vegas and Grand Canyon. The sites are wonderful, but we found we need more time to rest between place to place as our parents can't handle tiring commute. We did plan our food well, and cost was controlled and in line with our budget. We took thousands pictures and I found shooting Grand Canyon and Yosemite were very challenging because it was easy to get overwhelmed and carried away by the beauty and missed focus in the picture. At about the middle of the trip, my mom got sick and we had to slow down our pace and luckily still were able to finish the trip as planned. I will go back to Yosemite again, and when I do, I will spend a whole week there in a better hotel.

Events
We had a tragic event this year. We were expecting in August and when my wife went back for the second check in September, we heard the bad news. We lost a twin due to chromosome defect. It was a sad day. We soon found out both of our family have a history of miscarriage. Our doctor said there was nothing we could have done to prevent that, though parents from both families have different theories.
Jill and her children came to visit us in October. Sadie and Doug are big kids now, we enjoy the time they staying with us.
Other news
Nikil married with Joan in India
Santosh left US due to his visa problem
Anita and Mukesh got married in India
Ankur and Swat got married in India
Veronica got married here in US.

One guy in the office has been bothering me for a while. He chews ice nonstop from 8am to 5pm. The noise is annoying and distractive.

I expect to see great improvements in our career, and refined life style in 2010. We feel we are ready to move on to another level. So I would like to call 2010 the year of ‘龙腾虎跃’ .

Beethoven in Trance - Episode 59

2009 California Trip Report
Day 1 - Arrive SFO, took the BART from the airport to our base in Oakland, rest for the night.
Day 2 - Monterey Bay Aquarium, Big Sur
We started around 8am, traffic in San Jose wasn't too good. Fortunately, we could use the car pool lane, which was much better. We reached the Aquarium around 10:00am. Parking is $5 (we later found parking on the street between lover's point and aquarium is free). We spent about 3 hours in the aquarium (which is not enough in my opinion, I was busy taking pictures and forgot exploring the amazing world underwater). We drove to the Julia Pfeiffer Burns state park on the highway 1. , then come back in the evening, dropped by Carmel River State Beach and the Safeway close to Roi road, got some food, checked in hotel Best Western Crest Park, and rested for the night (it was a nice and clean hotel).
Day 3 - Point Lobos State Reserve, San Juan Bautista, Yosemite
Drove to Point Lobos State Reserve in the morning around 8am. It was a great place to hike, taking pictures and picnic. We left there around noon, and drove to Yosemite afterward. We stopped at San Juan Bautista for some pictures (nice little town and buildings), then continued to Yosemite. By the time we arrived Oakhurst, it was almost evening. We stopped by the Vons in town, had some food. Drove up to the mountains. Driving at night into Yosemite was an experience. We arrived Curry Village after 2 hours driving, parked the car (worrying about bears gonna attack our car because we just had fried chicken in the car for dinner). Went into the tent and slept. Woke in the early morning because it was really damn cold even with two blankets.
Day 4 - Yosemite Falls
We didn't realize it was gonna take us one day to hike Yosemite Falls and upper Yosemite Falls but it did. Bumped into a bear drinking water, took some pictures. We came back down and went for pizza in the curry village. Worst experience ever in there, 40 minutes of waiting and i asked the guy over the counter twice, first time he said I needed to wait, second time he said it wasn't ready and walked away. I went to another guy over the counter and complained about it, then finally, he came out with the pizza and apologized. Very bad experience with them, never go back again. Pizza is ok, nothing special.
Day 5 - Tunnel View, Glacier Point, Miror Lake
Since we missed the tunnel view when we came in, we went back in the morning, taking pictures, then went up to glacier piont, bumped into another bear, took more pictures, then came back to curry village. We stopped by some other areas for picnic as well, I don't remember the names though. We refreshed up, went out to mirror lake. We took the bus, hiked the trial. It was a great place to see, the water is low though, couldn't really take any pictures of the reflection. We went to the food court in the Yosemite Lodge for dinner. The beef stew soup was superb. Fast service and low price, thumbs up.
Day 6 - Giant Sequoia, back to base in Oakland
Drive out of the park, took some more pictures in tunnel view, then headed to the 'Groove with giant trees'. Amazing. By noon, we left the park, drove back to Oakland.
Day 7 - Las Vegas, Grand Canyon
Took the plane to Vegas in the morning, got the rental, and drove to Grand Canyon. It was about 5 hours drive, with stop for food. Checked into the hotel, Yavapai lodge. There was a general store next to the lodge which is essentially a supermarket, with everything you need. Nice. We didn't go anything that day, just went to bed and sleep.
Day 8 - Grand Canyon Hike
We hiked the South Kabib trail in the morning. We made it to the half of distance, then came back. Took us about 3 and half hours. Took the bus back. Drove to Desert view next, then dropped by the ruin. It was about sunset time, and we didn't make it to the red line bus, so we have to watch the sunset in Matte point. It was not impressive.
Day 9 - Left the Grand Canyon and drove back to Vegas
Went to M resort and casino for dinner buffet. It was a Thursday, so nothing really special, but for the price, it was ok.
Day 10 - Vegas
Vegas is still Vegas, I have been there 3 times, and it didn't change much. We went to the buffet at Bellagio for dinner, but we weren't impressive (maybe that's because we just had one the night before)...
Day 11 - Red eye fly back to home

Overall, it was a wonderful trip but it was an exhausting trip. If I could do it again, I would skip Grand Canyon, it was great, but I was more impressed by Yosemite, and I felt I wanted to see more of it. One week in Yosemite is called 'vacation', two days is called 'travel to'. Big sur is also nice, but I was rushed, and didn't have time to let the moment sink in. Point Lobos is geat, don't miss it. Aquarium is also fun, I wish have 5 hours to spend in there. I was busy taking pictures.
We travelled with two seniors this time, and it was a mistake to pack everything into the schedule. One of them got sick on day 7 when we drove to Grand Canyon. The tent cabin in Curry Village in Yosemite is a little too cold for them as well (in mid October).

Beethoven In Trance - Episode 58

Long time no blog, can't remember where was I in the last blog.

Anyway, deep into the summer of 2009 and we have been busy.

We kicked off our garden project this spring with a bang. We shopped around the nurseries in town, spent over hundred for all kinds of flowers, vegetables, and herb. After completing the routine of preparing the garden soil, we planted some tomatos, pepper, eggplant, cabage, and some peas in the garden we put down last year. We also re-did our flower bed in the front, and put down another flower bed to the right of the entrance steps next to the maple tree. My wife is obssessed with gardening this year, she wanted another garden soon after. We then spend another weekend putting down another garden with some bochoy, and squash. But that's still not enough, she lined up an army of vegetables in pots on the drive way, which makes driving in and out of garage a fun experience. Fortunately, cabage came out great, as well as tomatoes. We had heirloom, roman, and beefsteak this year. Roman sucks, no flavor, no juice. Heirloom is the best, beefsteak is in the middle. We also had some jalopeno, but very small yield. Hebanaro is coming out too, but very small. Eggplants come out much slower. Suggar snaps, peas and green beans are all growing fine. We have been enjoying our vegetable in dinners.

Other than garden, we started our bathroom remodel project this June. It's been a long and messy project. Our initial plan is to retile the bathroom walls around the tub, then change the fixture, paint the whole room, then refinish the bathtub. The budget was around $700. As soon as my neighbor and I started to taking off the tiles, we realized that we needed to replace the dry wall behind the tile as some of them are rotten with mold. We then found the walls are covered with wall papers, and we needed to peel them off before we paint. One thing led to another, before I knew it the poroject became something involves extra help from a dry wall guy, and a plumber. We had a quote from one of the plumber friends of my neighbor and it was $800. My neighbor said no, and called up his cousin, who happens to be a plumber. He did the job for $300. The dry wall guy (another friend of my neighbor) showed up and started to install the dry walls, it was $400 at first, then after patching all the walls and fix up an air duct below the vanity. It became $650. Then, we bought the paint, the tile, the caulk, the grout, adhesive, sealant, and fixture. The total cost tripled to $2000. Luckily, my neighbor has the tile saw, we cut the tile and installed ourselves. I painted the room with four coats over weeks. Then, we called in bathtub refinisher who is charging $300 for scraping the paint then recoating it. The guy came out in the middle of July and did the job. He left a small pool of paint at the bottom of the bathtub making it an uneven surface. My neighbor didn't mind and wanted to let it go. I called the refinisher again, and they came out to check and decided to redo it (sounds familiar? it happened when we refinished our hardwood floor). Anyway, he came out again after 2 weeks, sanded the extra paint down, then recoat the whole thing. While he is inside doing the job. I was outside watching my neighbor standing in a lift trimming the tree in my backyard. The tree has grown much and leaves were hanging over the roof. We were concerned that one day the thunderstorm will hit the tree hard enough and the branch might hit the roof. Now the tree is trimmed, we lost some shades though.

So, we had our bathroom out for use for two months. I have been taking shower with a garden hose in the back at night, and also in the basement next to the sink where there is a drain on the floor. We just had our bathtub back this Tuesday when the coating was supposed to be dry, as well as all the caulk and sealant on the tile. The new shower head is cool, we used the new curtain, which is pretty. We have a much brighter bathroom (certainly the four light bulb working full throttle has something to do with it). We got the fixture on clearance in the home center, there was a piece broken and I was planning to buy a replacement or return the whole thing and buy a different one. But the plumber (who quoted us $800 for the job) he suggested us call the manufacture and ask for a replacement. Well, he was right. Thanks to his advice, my neighbor called the company and we got a new replacement part for free. Basically, we got a complete working unit at a clearance price. Nice.

All in all, at $2000 price tag, this project still looks like bargagin. We did a lot of work ourselves, my neighbor certainlly did the most of the heavy lifing. We took his family to chinese buffet and dim sum places in the last couple months and they loved it. I also made them some beef noodle stir fry and they loved it too. They even asked for the recipe, which I don't have as it's my own creation. So, we saved on painting, tiling, taking the walls down. We got our plumber cheap, while drywall is not so much. The bathtub refinishing cost is ok, and we got two coats out of the price of one. We had a bargain with the fixture as well.

Since I was painting the bathroom walls, I had all the tools out. So I decided to paint the hand rail on the entrance door step outside. We got the paint from clearance in the homecenter, $2 or $3 per quart. Color is very acceptable. We picked some purple, pink, and bright yellow. We painted the handrail purple (it's a exterior paint). Then we painted a park bench pink. I also got some polyurathym from clearance, and I plan to stain the pinic table after I power wash it. I also need to paint the garage door as well (after power washing it).

Now we did our garden, remodeled our bathroom, trimmed the tree in the backyard and bush fense. We still need to power wash the drive way, the picnic table, garage door, then paint the door and stain the table. We then might be able to call it a day in the yard this year.

Inside the house, I shop-vac the cool air return duct because there is a place inside of the duct collecting dust. I painted the door trim (which was painted with the wrong color last year) of the entrance door. There are still some details to do, and another coat of paint needs to go on the silt. I also touched some of the baseboard around the floor in the major traffic area because they were stained when floor was refinished.

We have been having water leakage in the basement since we moved in. My neighbor mentioned that he used to have the same problem and it was caused my tree leaves and roots blocking the drain pipe. He solved the problem with couple bottles of Draino. That was what we did couple weeks ago. We first ran hot water into the drain around the house through the down spot at the bottom cornor of the house, then dumped the Draino and waited couple hours. Then we ran hot water through again. And this trick seemed to be working. We had a few thunderstorm since then and we had no pool of water coming in the basement. The edge of the floor is wet, but no pool of water came in. That is a great news. We will do that trick again this year before the winter after we clean out all the leaves in the gutter.

Last weekend, we were outside in the yard stripping the leaves from the branch that my neighbor trimmed from the tree. It was an 8 hours project in a 90F summer day. My wife needs those leaves for the compost. We now have to save all the vegetabls and left over fruits for her compost. Fun!

We left our skylight on the second floor bathroom open last year for some time and the cold wet weather has done some damage to the dry wall around the window. I had to take one piece of the wall down and I now have to install a new piece, patch cracks, and paint it. But first, I need to clean the room with all the debris and shop vac the leaves collect on the window frame. This is another project.

My parents are coming September 2nd. I would hope to finish the project by then. I have two weeks to go. One weekend for this, another for the power washing. Will see how it goes.

Beethoven In Trance - Episode 57

can't remember when is the last time I blogged.

it's been a busy summer so far. We kicked off our garden project this spring and added a small flower bed in the front of the house and planted some more flowers in the old flower bed. We planted all the vegatables on the side of the garage, and just digged another garden on the other side of the backyard. We haven't finished fencing yet, and will have to do that as soon as possible.

We finally started our bathroom remodel project last week. It was estimed as a $700 project including retile, and refinish bathtub, then paint. As for now, the project cost is hitting $2000. My neighbor was helping me with the project, and right after we started to take off the tile, we found it would be better to tear down the wall instead. One side of the wall behind the tile has been molded, and had to be replaced. So, one thing lead to another, before I knew it, we had taken down three walls surrounding the bathtub, and another wall next to the door. We also took down the wall paper that was painted. The wall paper only covered half of the wall so there would be some sanding to do. I have been scraping the cracking paint off the wall for days and there is still more to go.

We bought the fixture from Lowes and it was on clearance. The fixture had a broken piece though. I was thinking buying a replacement at that time. Interestingly we were looking for a plumber at that time, and my neighbor found a plumber, and he brought them in for quoting. The plumber suggested we call the manufacture (Delta) to ask for a replacement. My neighbor called and the company said they would send me a new one. Great. fixture is done then. By the way, we never realized how expensive bathroom fixture is untill we started to look for one... After the plumber quoted us $850 for the job, my neighbor decided to say goodbye to them, and brought in his cousin who I also know and went fishing with before. He quoted me $300 for everything (well, my neighbor needed to work a bit for the low price). The pipe work was done last Friday and I took my neighbor's family and his cousin to a Chinese buffet for dinner. Everyone was happy about the food because we were all starving.

We have put up some 'Fiberock' board around the bathtub on which we will put up the tile. Will need to buy tiles, adhesive, and grout today, it's gonna be another $200 or so.

We bought the paint from Sherwin Williams, total $200 including primer, paint, brushes and rollers. I will still need some painters tool and white paint for door and windors trim.

The dry wall guy showed up last Friday and helped putting up the Fiberock and he will put up dry wall today. After that, my neighbor and I can start painting and tiling. He has a tile cutter that I can borrow.

We would need to remove the vanity and toilet before we paint.

After these jobs are done, I will call in the bathtub refinisher to refinish the bathtub. It's gonna be another $300.

I am so looking forward to getting this project done. It seem a second bathroom is really neccessary in a situation like this. I have been taking cold water shower outside with garden hose for the last three days. Getting a shower in the basement seem to be a great project for next year.

Beethoven In Trance - Episode 56

For people who are interested in food:

My review of Michael Pollan's two books
In defense of food
Omnivore's Dilemma

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
In his book "In defense of food", Michael Pollan advocates people eating whole foods, and not too much. For example, corn syrup is a man-made food, therefore can not by recognized by your body while sugar can. This lends to the suggestion to use sugar rather than corn syrup for consumption (which is not practiced in the food industry because corn syrup is cheaper). Ever heard of people saying 'Coke Original' taste better? Well, that's because they hadn't replaced the sugar with corn syrup. Eat whole foods, foods that is recognized by your grandma as he put it in the book. Eat as French does, no second serving, eat in a crowd, spend more time around the dining table, to make eating an enjoyable event. By eating slowly, we also learn to appreciate the quality of the food more. He also recommends plants over animal protein as main course. "Use meat as a condiment" as he suggested.

Omnivore's Dilemma
In this book, Michael followed the journey of the industry corn along the industry food chain from the field in Iowa to the American's dinner table. A typical industry corn, (Type 3 corn, recognized across continents) was grown in Iowa in this example, spread with growth enhancer made by nitrate leftover from World War II, Corn is the No. 1 agriculture product in terms of the ability and speed to transform raw petroleum and natural energy into man-made energy. After harvest, they are shipped to wholesale trader in trucks, then transported in bulk to the processing facility owned by Cargil (who is the vertical integrator in the food industry and the largest private owned company in US or the world). In the processing plant, corn turns into Corn Starch, Corn Plastic, Corn Syrup, and numerous corn products that don't have the word 'corn' in their names (ex. ethanol). Corn dominates the farming industry and created a vicious cycle, the more the farmers grow, the lower the market price, the lower the market price, the more government subsidize, the more government subsidize, the more tax payers have to pay for.

Corn gets into American's diet through corn syrup, corn starch, and animal protein. Animal protein? How did that happen? Through animal feeds. Chicken, cow, pig, salmon, you name it. Cow is like a huge fermentation tank that process the corn and transform it into protein. By eating steak, we are eating 'processed corn'. The champion of transforming corn into protein is ... chicken. That's why chicken is cheaper than beef. That also explains why those animals are given antibiotics, because animal can't just live on corn feed, they are born (or used to be born) to eat grass.

The next stop in the food chain is the retail store. Michael mentioned WholeFoods and criticized its diminishing effort to support local growers. In his point of view, local farming is more important than 'industrial organic (such as Earthbound) agriculture', hence should be nurtured.
(as a side note, WholeFoods CEO wrote back to him in a public letter to clarify WholeFoods' sourcing practices and efforts to support local farmers, and Michael replied with another public letter not fully convinced. Both letters are available on WholeFoods' website).

At the end of the book, Michael took us to a journey to created the 'perfect meal' - everything in the dinner will be gathered, hunted and prepared by him. There will be nothing bought from the store. He hunted down a Californian wild boar, gathered bunch wiled mushroom (morel), mined the salt, cultivated wild yeast and harvested some fava beans from his garden. The perfect meal was perfectly natural.


Both books introduced the readers to the 'industry food' to various degrees. Michael's experiences on the Iowa corn field, Kansas cow ranch, and some local chicken farm in VA convinced him that the industry food is cheap for a reason and good quality local food is worth every penny charged. "We are what we eat". Michael suggest us eat selectively, and eat better, enjoy foods more for our own good.


So what do I learn from the books? It sucks to learn that we have been eating corns in various forms (and we are still eating leftovers from WW II), but the reality is, I don't see myself hunting down some wild animal in the Forrest to put dinner on the table any time soon. There are a few inspirations after the reading though.

One thing I have started doing, and I've never realized how much fun doing, is reading the food label, Xantham Gum, Benozate, Citrus Acid ( I don't even know I am spelling them correctly). The label is a shopping list for a chemistry lab (and might be true for the food company research lab). I avoid these products as much as I can. When I pick up a pack of WholeFoods chicken and read on the label "given corn and soybean vegetarian feed', I will laugh and put it down (and wonder: what is a non-vegetarian feed for chicken? chicken?) because the description just tells me that this chicken is no better than any 'regular' industrial chicken therefore doesn't warrant the higher price.

Happy grocery shopping and happy eating.

Beethoven In Trance - Episode 55

The long overdue 2008 annual letter.

Time flies. I feel like I just wrote the 2007 year end report not so long ago.

Looking back the year, though I found less 'ground breaking' concepts or projects than we had in 2007, 2008 had its own twists and turns. These events happened to line up nicely in a time line.

Career development became a top priority at the beginning of 2008 when the relationship with my manager went south. I was given an 'action plan' to work on due to some error I caused at work. I was under pressure to dance his tune and look for something else. Remembering my early success in sales and marketing, I concluded that I wanted to move to a similar position. There was one job over the sales and distribution department at the time, initially I decided to wait because my intuition told me that I wasn't ready. Later my manager suggested I look for something else, and I made a mistake to apply for the opening against my gut and my application was failed. Not surprised (as I knew it was coming), I stayed put and did what I have to do at work. The manager left the company shortly after. Then the turning point came. It was an article called 'No Excuse', and it was about being responsible and getting the job done. It helped me. I got better at work and felt less stressed. It was a road map that I could just simply follow it through. Soon, another opportunity in the sales and distribution (actually a better one) became available. I applied, and by July, I got the offer. It was an interesting interview experience. I was interviewed by a manager on the interviewing panel, and I was told that he was also hiring. He seemed interested in my background and indicated that I could apply for his opening as well. So I ended up having one offer that I originally applied at hand, and the one I applied later in the air. After many considerations, I decided to accept the offer in hand (which somehow feels right intuitively). And that, was August already. As a side note, my taste of music started to change along the way as well. the transition is subtle on the surface - from trance to progressive, but the fundamentals are different - from a upbeat mainstreaming pop theme to a personal dedication focus.

So what is the learning? Translating from Dr. Phill 'if you don't manage your inlaws, your inlaws will manage you.' If you don't manage your job, your job will manage you. Also quoting from the article "no excuse" - " if you hate the job, the job will hate you as well, and if you happen to have a job you hate, you just have to be responsible."

Settling down in the new job in the rest of the year, we made a few trips back to back. First stop, Portland, Oregon for our very first marathon in October.

Portland is a fun place. It showed us what we are missing staying in Cleveland. I wasn't able to finish the marathon due to the leg injury which was disappointing. We rested at home for one day and went on a trip to India for our friend's wedding. The trip to India certainly refreshed our view of India. The city we stayed was like a small rural town in China. It was dirty and under developed. Shanghai is in much better shape comparatively. My previous blog has recorded the experience. It was a good trip, short, intense and good. We had good experience with Air India, and the aircraft was better than the one we took the next month to China.

Yes, we went back home for the very first time after 7 years in US. Before we went, we found there was a marathon in Shanghai at the end of November. We signed up, and I started some massage therapy session (because I still had injury on my left leg and couldn't run for 5 minutes). The first 1.5 hour session cost me $120. I then went through the health service in the company and got two more session for $15 / session. After I arrived Shanghai, I went through another massage session with a local therapist (a blind person) for $3 / hour. On Dec. 31th 2008, we were running our first half marathon in Shanghai after 7 years. Our race result was not recorded because we didn't step on the mat at the beginning (because we were late, and we blamed the poor organization). Anyway, we didn't really care about the result that much. We went to an Indian restaurant after the race and had lunch with both our families.

Other than preparing for the marathon and relax at home, I am very happy to visit my grandmother's resting place. I was her favorite, and I haven't had a chance to visit her since she passed away while I was in US. I am also happy to meet with all the family relatives, particularly my mother's elder sister, who was very happy to see me after 7 years. We met my dad's mother as well, she is 92 now and still look healthy. I met most of my friends, played basketball with them, and had dinner with them. And of course, I took many pictures, food, people and city. I cooked some at home, had a chance to cook a free range chicken particularly.

On the financial side, not exciting. Stock market has been tanking since the beginning of the year. Our 401K has dropped 40+%, as well as our Roth IRA accounts. Zecco has announced to pull back free trading service, and I decided to transfer out of this company. I will transfer it to Scottrade, which offers $100 reimbursement for account transfer.

The housing market correlates with the stock market. Our house value has dropped about 11% (20K/170K) since we moved in. Mortgage rate for refinancing was at 4.85% one time, and we decided to refinance our house. We calculated couple options and went to bank to start the application. After another round of calculation after we came back from the bank, we actually found out refinancing was not as good option as paying down another 40K principle to the loan. We wasted $325 because the application fee was not refundable. It was an expensive lesson.

My income in 2008 increased 7.3% from changing the job in August, and I got another 2% ($1000 ) recently as annual salary increase (my wife got a 3%). As for side income, I didn't have much country specialist opportunity in 2008. I can only remember one or two in the whole year. However, I did discover another revenue, which is selling cookware through amazon. The result so far is encouraging. The whole exercises is not just about money, but the mind set - no need to hold on to something I don't use often. If I can sell it for better price, sell it. As of this writing, I have sold total four pans. first, an All-Clad 4 qt. saute pan (the pan that triggered my thought of selling it due to the large price difference online, and the fact that the price was still too much for me @ $70). I sold pan for $120 and pocketed $30 profit. I then sold a used Sitram saute pan and a new Sitram sauce pan, both were selling at higher prices online. I made anther $30 profit on each transaction. The most recent pan sold is a CalphalonOne chef pan, MRSP $200 online and I sold for $95. I bought it @ $20. I have two more listings on amazon now, a Kitchenaid 12qt. stock pot ($24 purchased), and a Beka copper oval fry pan ($15 purchased). They will be tough sell due to the high price I listed them under, but since I am in no rush to clear the inventory. I just wait and see what happens.

We also made a few purchases in 2008 including: clothe and cosmetics from TjMaxx and Marshalls after Valentine's day. food items in a Japanses grocery store in Portland. food items, clothe, accessories and an Indian wok in India. Throughout the year, I bought 5 pieces of new cookware (totalling $110) and three new Japanese knives (totalling $53). During the Christmas month, I bought 3 pairs of shoes, two pairs of trial shoes, and one running shoe for total about $60. We also bought a new TV due to the fact that no more analog signal will be available in Feb. 2009, a DSLR camera Nikon D60 that I am still learning how to use. I also upgraded my PC because I hate not being able to play the latest titles. I was asked why I liked playing games so much. Well, as most gamers (if you play tennis on Wii, you are not included in my definition of gamer) will answer, "because gaming gives you experience that I won't get from real life". With the new PC, I have completed Crysis, Prince of Persia, Bioshock, and Tombraider Legend. I am currently on Tombraider Anniversary and I can see Tombraider Underworld along the way soon. Call of Duty 4 and 5 are also on the top3 list.

2008 Movie of the year award goes to "Journey of the man" from National Geographic. It leads us through life from the beginning to the end, and that, brings me to the next topics - Health.

We are getting more and more conscious about what we eat and how we eat, and we will continue to explore various dietary choice. We started to consume more fish and visit Whole Foods Market more often. We eat slower, and enjoy more variety in our diet. We replaced our costco non fat milk with a whole milk from a local farm, and purchased brown rice to complement our daily white rice. Our recent wheat flour dumpling was a success thanks to a new recipe. I just finished a book called "In defense of food" which talks about what people should eat nowadays (eat whole foods, not much, most plants). I am on the second book "Omnivore's Dilemma". We are excited about what we will discover in 2009. In additional to updating dietary plan, I also joined the company gym, and attending yoga class, which I found helpful. The stretch helped me recover from my injury.

Overall, I will call 2008 a year of awakening. I am happy to see we weren't off the track from 2007 when we layered some good foundation. I am excited about 2009 as we will be starting our own family. I will call 2009 'year of living' as we continue focus on health, career and finance as they form the golden triangle of our happiness.