My Life at February 2005
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February 28, 2005(Monday)
I went to the training room at 8am this morning. I am the first one arriving there. The equipment rack and the several boxes was there already. However, my nightmare begins when I opened that rack. In this very crowded rack, some of the cables are disconnected! It takes awhile just to make sure that the power cables are all connected. In addition, I do not have the username and password for some of the devices. Therefore, I did some password recovery procedure. However, I accidentally erase the config. To make thing worst, the company did not pay for the internet access. Therefore, I cannot check email. I even have to ask them to set up the phone (which cost about $15 plus long distance phone call) in order to call them. Two of the routers has no config and one of them has no physical card. Carlos from CTT (the one that I have problem with several months ago) did the set up and load the initial config for me two weeks ago in Miami. I guess that he did a pretty poor job that makes my life really difficult!
I spent more time than usual to give lecture. For the previous bootcamps, the QoS part was using online lab, which makes my life much more easier. However, with physical lab, that cause a lot of headache. I skipped lunch and spent the whole time fixing the lab. By the time I left (at about 7:30pm), there is still one or two problem outstanding!
After this intense day of hard work, Carmen and I went to dinner. She also shared her experience of her San Francisco trip today. In particular, she purchased egg tart from China town which she really enjoyed. She said that the store looks really crappy from the outside. But it is very easy to be recognized, not only because there are people lining up in front of the store, but the smell of warm, sweet, fresh Chinese bakery. She lined up looking at all the different cakes and breads. Thinking what she should get as a pre-lunch snack.
February 27, 2005(Sunday)
Carmen and I went with Ricky and his wife Susanna to the Silicon Valley Alliance Church for English Sunday worship. We have not been to an English sunday worship for quite a long time. We certainly miss the environment. Afterward, we had lunch with them and Jackson & Olivia (Olivia Ho Ka Yan is a church friends from HK church, which I have known her since her birth). After the Chinese lunch, Jackson and Olivia drove us to San Francisco. We went to the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we went to the Fisherman Wharf. They dropped us off there. It is such a sad thing that the weather was rainy at that time. Therefore, we cannot fully enjoy the place. We only went to visit a wax museum. Walking around in rain in such cold weather (I have adapted to the Venezuelan warm weather) was such a pain.
We had dinner in an all-you-can-eat hot pot place. We had great sharing time. We took BART (a public transit system) back to Silicon Valley. Ricky drove us back home. These people treated us really good today and made us feel like home. But the sad thing is that I am not accepted by Stanford. Oh well, time to move forward.
February 26, 2005(Saturday)
Carmen and I took a flight to San Jose today. The flight left Caracas at 9:45. I used to take an early flight (earlier than 9am) so this is a relatively late flight. After a 5.8 hours flight to Dallas, we took another flight to San Jose. We have been taking a lot of flight lately and we are very used to the whole procedure. I read the Christian book "Passages of Marriages". This is a really good book that I highly recommended to anyone who cares about their marriage. It also helps me to refocus my life.
We arrived to San Jose at 6pm local time. We are back to the Vancouver time zone. We went to the nearby mall to eat Japanese food. I also went to the gym in the hotel for some jogging exercise.
February 25, 2005(Friday)
I got a reject from Stanford and U of Chicago. In addition, I have not received any interview yet, which other people have. My confident level is going down the drain. It really hurts my emotion stability. I am starting to preparing for the worst. This may be a lesson that God is teaching me (take away my pride?). Currently, this is one of the few moments in my life that I am quite a negative person.
I have something to smile about (e.g. good family, good wife, good health and so on) but I am having a hard time to take away my focus from the universities thing. You may think that, I only got two reject (so far) and there are 13 more. Plus these two rejects are from top school. However, I thought that I did a really good job and several people (referee and Duke's prof) were really encouraging and I thought that I will have a good chance. i have extreme confident in the end of January. However, after hearing no internet phone calls for the last few weeks plus two rejection and several potential rejections (Wharton, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, etc), I am just having a really bad time.
In this moment, I should stay away from anyone because I am a insensitive and harmful person now. For those of you reading my diary, don't worry. I can get back to my normal positive stage pretty quick.
Hotmail was terrible in the last few days in my laptop. When I sent an email, it just does not work. Damn. It pisses. Damn it! Pisses me off! I just can't email using hotmail.
Also, my home computer has virus and cannot go to internet. Damn all these thing.
IT makes my day really bad! Lastly, the wireless card caused my laptop to crash many times! The "Serious crash" thing. Very bad.
February 24, 2005(Thursday)
Work is mostly boring today. I spent some times in the afternoon to work on the IPv6 lab for the IPExpert. I have completed the previous contract with them and I need to negotiate a new one with them soon.
At night, we watch the first half of the "Kung Fu" movie again (we watched that several days ago) and we also had the guitar class.
February 23, 2005(Wednesday)
I hosted the Chicago CVoice#1 tutoring session this morning. It is always tough to introduce to people and break ice in the first day through telephone. In the afternoon, I gave an introduction to the San Francisco group about the QoS and IPTX course that I will teach next week. This is a fast overview and it went so fast that even I have no idea what is going on and I just said non-sense thing. I will see them next week and clear thing out.
Mimia came to our house for dinner and also to practice about the songs that we will sing in Mar 25. She does not read Chinese at all so she will have difficult with all of the (about 20) songs. We need to help her to do "ping yin" for some of these songs and for the rest of them, she simply does not need to sing. That will be an exhausting process. Paco was here as well to discuss about the arrangement.
February 22, 2005(Tuesday)
Supposedly, there is an online tutoring section for Virginia's IPTX group. However, no one showed up. Therefore, I am very relaxed.
In the afternoon, I took the IPTX (IP Telephony Express) exam. I relied solely on the study guide (past exam). It works for the QoS exam I took last Tuesday. However, as for this exam, the questions are completely different. None of the questions are the same. Therefore, I really have to know the material! I am not in a good mood at that time, and I thought that I will fail it for sure. However, I am glad that I barely pass the exam (passing mark is 769 and I got 770). That proves that I know the material.
It was 4:40 after the exam. Therefore, rather than going back to work, I went to church directly. We shared about what Christian books we read in the past few weeks. In addition, because there are two new friends, we played some ping pong with them, because yesterday we mentioned in the meeting that we were too straight and too boring for the non-believers.
February 21, 2005(Monday)
Today is another boring day at work. I will take an exam tomorrow but I have no mood to study during work time. Therefore, I studied at home instead. I also went for a walk to the nearby mall for about 40 mins!
We went to Che So's house at night for the Baptist Church Chinese youth fellowship meeting. We had dinner there too. We discussed why the fellowship is not warm and the bonding is not strong. The MB church youth fellowship has about 25 people but the Baptist Church fellowship has only less than 10 people. Obviously there is some comparison (which is wrong). Fellowship has its ups and downs. My attitude for the fellowship is that I am only a visitor in Venezuela. Therefore, I need to re-adjust it too (but it is not easy, given that I want to leave for PhD by summer)
February 20, 2005(Sunday)
I am the song leader for both churches today. I led the following songs: "El Mundo Entero es del Padre", "Give me freedom" (from SoP), "Tan Solo He Venido" (Campamento theme song), "Canto de Gracias", "This life's most beautiful blessing" (from SoP). I taught Sunday School today for James 5:13-21. I asked them to flip through different books in the Bible and they were not used to it. Carmen did not go to MB Church with me in the afternoon because she needs to prepare some food for tomorrow's committee meeting and need some rest. After church, we talked to Andy from MB Church. He was my group member in the campamento and he accepted Christ several days ago. We were very happy for him!
Several days ago my church friends lend me the HK movie "Kung Fu" (This is the illegal copy. But then there were no official copy here and everyone uses the illegal copy. The system is very different from the North America and Asia system). Since we have nothing much to do tonight, I suggested to Carmen that we can watch this movie at night. I seldom suggested watching TV. The last time that I turn on a TV in this kind of circumstances (that is, other than turning on the TV for someone else or for church's purpose) was nearly several years ago.
February 19, 2005(Saturday)
Today is the training for Desca employees. I have taught the bootcamp several times and my boss Omar wants me to teach it to the Desca employee. The bootcamp is 6 days and he wants me to teach more than half of the bootcamp in 1 day! That will be difficult. In addition, most of the people do not understand English. If it is not for the technical languages (English), then that would have a huge problem. I tried to have as many body languages as possible and I tried to speak slow and loud.
Because of the language barrier, there is a limited interaction with the students. Also, Omar took in charge in a lot of moment when the instructor should be in charge. Also, the people seem like that they want to stay there longer and don't want to leave. Therefore, I have to stay there until 7:10 even though most of them have finished the lab. When I left, six or seven people were still there chatting around and also studying the material that I taught them. My manager Omar also said that he will go back to office tomorrow to pack the equipment back to the box so that they are ready to ship to customer. Does he have a life?
Carmen and I went to MB church to practice music. Afterward, we went to hospital to visit Ana. Her kidney had a bad history. In the past week she had a flu. The doctor suggested her to stay in the hospital in order to prevent the flu to move to the kidney.
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February 18, 2005(Friday)
Another day of hard work, preparing for the class of tomorrow. Basically the config are all completed. However, Omar needs to tidy up the cable, which takes a lot of time. He does not really trust other people so he did the cabling himself, even though he is a busy manager. I was working until 7pm and went home a bit late. After eating dinner at home, Carmen and I went out to have some ice-cream together.
February 17, 2005(Thursday)
I was preparing for the lab most of the day today at work. Most of the stuff went according to my plan and I hope that the course will be smooth. Internet is not working in my home so I asked some friends to call the ISP to check out for us. At night, I taught the guitar class. Since I will be traveling quite often in the next few weeks, I need to spend as much time to them as possible or else they will miss a lot of classes.
February 16, 2005(Wednesday)
Today is a busy day at work. I hosted the QoS online tutor section for the Virginia group in the morning and hosted the CVoice online tutor section for the San Francisco group. In addition, Omar gave me the equipment for the training this Saturday. These equipments (8 routers, 2 switches and 19 IP Phones) are customer's equipments and we will just use that for the training. Therefore, Omar is extra cautious about the equipment. Even though he is a busy manager, he still spent about an hour or so to help me to unpack the box, put a number besides each equipment and put it back to the box. He just does not trust other "lower rank" people who can do this cut-and-paste stuff. He is so responsible that he will burn himself out soon. He works until 8 or 9 pm everyday!
I talked to Carmen about this and I agree that I will be some kind of manager similar to Omar. I will be very responsible (either I am very responsible or very laid back like I am now) manager and I will look after everything by myself. I will probably be a workaholic too. However, I don't think I have a chance to test this theory anytime sooner as I will study PhD. Talking about PhD, I still have not received any news. I read from different forum that there will have some interview this week or so. However, I have not received any news yet. That makes me quite worry.
February 15, 2005(Tuesday)
I did some studying this morning for QoS test. I had been teaching this course for five or six times. And they want me to certify in all the exams. Slightly more than two years ago, I was a taking-exam-machine. However, after two years of idleness, I need to get my brain up to speed again! This will definitely be a challenge.
I purchased a study guide this morning, as recommended by one of the students. After studying the study guide for about 2 hours, I passed the test with ease (984/1000!). I was happy about this, obviously. That means that my test-taking skill is not as rusty as I thought. Omar called after my test, asking where I am. I told him that I am taking the test. Originally I did not want to get back to Desca. but then I went back anyway. I find out that all he wants to say is that the equipment for the short training course this Saturday is ready.
We went to church at night and the topic is sharing about love life. (as yesterday was the valentine's day) Not many people came, and also some of us were sick. Therefore, the night did not go as smooth as we hoped.
February 14, 2005(Monday)
I finally have my work-day-afternoon-nap. I enjoyed that. In addition, I uploaded lots of campamento photo to the church websites. I will have to teach a Cisco Call Manager Express bootcamp this Saturday the whole day. This will be one of the few Saturdays that I have to work. The material will be similar to those that I taught in USA. At night, Carmen and I made craft to each other as a celebration of the Valentine's Day.
February 13, 2005(Sunday)
I am the singspiration leader today. I led "Stream of Praises", "Lord bless you", "Tan Solo He Venido" (Campamento theme Spanish theme song), "El Perfecto Amor de Dios" (ACM's "You Are King") and "Vengo a ti con mi Oracion". The high light of today is Chi Kong and his mom. They are literally crazy and accused me and other people. I have never met anyone like this before! I "inch" back too. This is probably due to some psychology sickness.
I had good afternoon nap. And then at night, Carmen and I went to Willy's house to have hot pot with his family because today is his sister Sophia's birthday. The church people treat us really well!
February 12, 2005(Saturday)
Today is a complete resting day. I slept for 9 hours, plus two 2 hours afternoon nap! I am sure that I recovered all my sleep that I missed in the last few days. I also went out to Parque del Este for a run. Carmen and I will go to San Francisco next months are here is the schedule:
Feb. 26 (Sat)
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AA2154 Caracas - Dallas
09:45 - 13:35
AA1681 Dallas - San Jose
15:56 - 17:40
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Mar. 06 (Sun)
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AA1232 San Jose - Dallas
08:09 - 13:31
AA2155 DFW - CCW
15:06 - 22:18
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February 11, 2005(Friday)
I slept at 10pm last night. However there was a mosquito inside the room and I woke up four times! I was very tired this morning even though I had 9.5 hours of sleep. However, after another hour of sleep on the cruise, I was much more energetic. We also went to two different beaches today. We rented some snorkeling equipment and the yacht sailed to a very small sand island in the middle of the light blue sea.
Someone put up an umbrella and two chairs there and those are the only two things on the 'island'. We snorkeled and saw some very exotic fishes -- blue, yellow, silver, black. Some people went to the deeper area with the instructor, and they saw tiny 'water mothers' and lobster! The instructor got bitten by the water mother but he's fine. I put on my cloth most of the time so that it prevents the sun from hurting my shoulder further more. We finally left the beach at 3:40.
After shower, we took a flight back to Caracas and returned home at 8pm. I am not very tired but our skin begins to hurt. We were too tired to cook so we went out to eat. At night, I updated my homepages (photo and diary) and check emails.
February 10, 2005(Thursday)
We left the house at 4:15 and took a 45 mins very-small-flights (about 40 people) to Los Roques. Los Roques are actually a bunch of islands. Together, they formed this nationally protected park of Venezuela. They are located on the South part of Caribbean Sea. We stayed one night on one of the islands. Very primitive 'cabin', with no air conditioning and TV. But it's already considered as a high class cabin in the island already. It's located rite near the beach. So we can hear the tides at night. People there live a very simple life. They open their house door at night and sit at the front pouch, chat, no TV, drink some beer. After checking in, we went to take a yacht (one that fits 30 people, it's one of those yacht, where the rich people would purchase and go on for vacation. ) to different Island (beaches). We went to swim and walk around different places. We ordered a fresh Lobster for lunch and it tastes really good (see my photo for the picture of this Lobster). We got there and went on a yacht. We stayed on the deck for some suntan (We have put on sunscreen, no. 60). Even though we used a lot of sun screen, we are still red. Last time I was this red was June 23, 2002 when I went with some Baptist Church Spanish youth to "Tu Cacas" beach.
We went to two islands, all white sands and light blue water. If the water gets a bit darker, you know that it got deeper. There were sea urchins and sea weeds here and there underneath the sea, and of course lots of fishes! Some very small silver fishes love to go in herd in the shallow water area, I think there are around 1000 per herd. It's so weird that even though they swim around you, you can never touch them. We returned to the hotel at 4:30. After taking a shower, we went out for a walk. We walked all the way to the highest point of the island, which is a tower. There is a nice view looking down. We had some sharing time during and after dinner. After dinner, we went to the balcony of the cabin, and chatted underneath the stars. The sky is so clear and lots of stars, plus there's the sound of the tide and the breeze.
I was very exhausted by the end of the day. I was struggling whether I should play again tomorrow or not. I guess that people of my parents’ age will definitely take tomorrow off if they are really tired because a trip is supposed to be enjoying and relaxing. However, for people in my age, we want to "play hard" and not waste any single moment. People of old age wants to enjoy life but we want to play hard!
February 09, 2005(Wednesday)
Today is a busy day, especially because I skipped the internet and went to campamento for the last four days. I guess that the last time that I skipped internet for about 4 days is several years ago! I have to check some emails. I am glad that there is no work email that I have to check. However, I spent over three hours to organize about 300 photos that we took during the campamento and put that to the website. (My website only displayed 45 photos because other photos do not have Carmen or my face on that).
I also hosted the online section for both the Virginia CVoice group and San Francisco CVoice group. CTT just started a new online tutoring section, which is different from the previous I hosted. Previously, all I have to do is to show them the questions and the answers. However, now they can see my laptop screen using "gotomeeting" so I can't do other thing while displaying the questions. In addition, starting with the San Francisco bootcamp in the coming month, the students have to do the CVoice material by themselves. However, I still need to go through it quickly. Therefore, this is new to me as well. I am glad that so far it went pretty good. I stayed in the office straight from 9:30 to 6pm without going home.
Carmen and I will go to Los Roques (a place with beautiful beaches) tomorrow with Qiao and Elaine (a young couple from the Baptist Church). We will take an early flight tomorrow. Therefore, we went to their house to have dinner and stayed over so that tomorrow we can go to the airport together.
February 08, 2005(Tuesday)
Today is the last day of camp. As usual, people like to take a lot of picture. We took a lot of pictures too. However, because I have been to so many camps, I don't have to hard feeling of separation.
We took 3.5 hours bus back to Caracas, before of the holiday traffic situation. We had dinner at church. Then we had combined fellowship between two fellowships and Pastor Isaac shared about dating. He was a pretty funny and good speaker and we enjoyed his talk.
February 07, 2005(Monday)
There was volleyball final between Baptist Church and MB Church. We lost to the MB Church again. We also played basketball final and we won this time.
After the night sermon, there was a talent show night. I was the MC of the night. Originally I am supposed to group with Kum Fung and he was my translator. However, he just can't translate my Chinese. Then Mimia became the translator. Afterward, the show was quite long (2.5 hours) and no translator was needed. I was the only MC. I think that I did a good job but then Carmen said that I was too exaggerating.
For the talent show, my team combined with Carmen's team. The performance was a silence drama, describing the struggle of a person between money, drug and Christianity before accepting Christ, and how accepting Christ frees him. The interesting thing is that this drama was thought and directed by a non-Christian in our group. We won the first prize! After the whole night, my voice is not as smooth as before!
February 06, 2005(Sunday)
We had three volleyball games today and we won all of them. We had praise and worship at night. Carmen led and I played violin. The group was very talented and we had a very good time praising God. I also played violin very hard (literally) but I am glad that the string did not break.
Afterward, the Chinese youth of both churches gathered around and played some games and talked (even though there is a lot of mosquito). I used the "mosquito fear" liquid but then the mosquito still bites anyway.
Usually I need about 9 hours of sleep per day. However, for the camp, I only need 5 or 6 hours per day. I am using all the energy that I accumulate during all these time.
February 05, 2005(Saturday)
We woke up at 5:10 and left home at 6:45 to go to church. Then we went to campamento. This is a summer camp for all the Chinese churches (about 7 of them) in Venezuela. After 2 hours of drive, I turned to full gear to play different sports, such as basketball, volleyball, tennis. There is different sports competition between different churches. Today, we (Baptist Church) played against MB Church. We barely lost the game. We also played basketball and we lost again. I was very exhausted today after all the sport games.
There is a lot of mosquito in the camp site. It was also very hot (makes me think that the weather of Caracas is very comfortable). I played piano for MB Church's worship at night. I am very hot but I still wear long sleeves jacket to prevent myself from mosquito. I was sweating badly. I took about 5 or 6 showers today! At the end of the day, we had devotional group.
February 04, 2005(Friday)
I emailed the MIT students several times today. I am applying for the "System Dynamic" group. Originally I wanted to apply for the OR (Operation Research) department. However, they require GRE, which I did pretty badly. Therefore, I applied the next-in-line, which is System Dynamic. This is a relatively new field of study and very few universities have this kind of research. Therefore, the demand is small (but the supply is small too). If I have the luxury of being accepted, I still need to be very careful about whether I can be a competitive candidates for finding job. However, this is too far away for me to worry about now. I guess that if MIT accepts me, I would be very happy anyway.
February 03, 2005(Thursday)
Today is dad's birthday. So I gave him a phone call. At night, several people came to our house for dinner and also practice for the campamento music. My home is the ideal place (from my experience) because I have a piano, guitar, and violin. (I am still looking for my flute. It is missing after I moved house) These group of people (Menyee, Kum Fung, Eric, Roberto) are the elite in the church and we had a good time practicing the song. Carmen also cooked curry for us. Even though it is a bit over-cook ("lone" in Chinese), it still tastes really good.
February 02, 2005(Wednesday)
I had a good phone conversation with Dr. Clemen, professor of Duke University. One of my references Dr. Soni knows him well. In addition, I have communicated with him several times already and he was always positive and optimistic about my application. He told me that my application is very competitive and is among the top tier of the applicant to Duke. That obviously makes me delighted. I have a decent chance enrolling to Duke!
In order to bring my credential to my CTT IPCE class, CTT asked me to take the exams. If it was two years ago, I can take these exam almost instantaneously. However, after a two years gap, I am not prepared mentally. I am supposed to recertify for my CCIE certificate soon and I always want to take this exam. However, I just cannot motivate myself to take this exam, partly because I know that I will go to school soon. Hopefully this will be a push for me to take all these exam so that I can have my CCIE certificate with me while studying for my PhD.
My boss Omar also asked me to do some training for the internal staff. Probably because I got good feedback from my students and the demand for VoIP is high for this year. Therefore, he wants me to teach the staff in the WEEKEND! However, I am not sure which weekend I would be available because I will be traveling almost every weekend during March!
February 01, 2005(Tuesday)
I got to find something meaningful to do at work. I wrote some IPExpert lab today. The fellowship at night was Bible study. Elaine was leading the Bible Study. It was one of the very few times that I don't have to lead Bible Study at church. I can sit back, relax and contribute as a good group member.