Last weekend, my parents came up to celebrate the Chinese New Year with me in advance. They gave me red packets, and we also spent time eating and shopping together.

This year is the Year of the Rat. The Rat is the first of the 12 zodiacs. Apparently, there are a few theories or stories about how the Rat got to be number 1. Here is the story that I am familiar with:

A long, long time ago the Jade Emperor wanted to find a means of measuring time, and so he organized a race, and invited all the animals to take part. When they had all lined up on the bank of the river the Emperor explained that to win the big prize – a permanent place in the Zodiac – they would have to be one of the first twelve to cross the swiftly flowing river and reach a designated spot on the opposite shore. Their order in the cycle would be decided by the order in which they finished the race. And so the race began.

The cat wondered how she would get across if she was afraid of water. At the same time, the ox wondered how he would cross with his poor eyesight. The rat suggested that he and the cat jump onto the ox’s back and guide him across. But as they were crossing the river, the rat snuck up behind the unsuspecting cat and pushed her into the water. Just as the ox came lumbering ashore, the rat jumped off and raced over the line first, closely followed by the ox. By the time the cat had managed to save herself from drowning and reached the finishing line it was too late for her to win any place in the calendar, and so she vowed to be the enemy of the rat forever after.

After the ox came the tiger, out of breath as she explained to the emperor how difficult it had been to cross the river with the strong currents dragging her downstream all the time. But because she was so strong she had eventually made it to shore and so was named the third animal in the cycle.

Just then there was a flash of fur and whiskers, and out of nowhere appeared the rabbit. He explained that he had crossed the river by jumping onto a floating log that had at first moved rapidly downstream, but had then suddenly been washed to shore. Thus he became the fourth animal in the zodiac cycle.

Coming in fifth place was the dragon, flapping his great wings and breathing fire into the air. The Emperor was very interested to know to why such a great creature like the dragon, who could fly, hadn’t managed to arrive first. The dragon explained that he had been close to finishing when he saw a poor helpless rabbit clinging to a log that was being washed downstream. He therefore stopped and gave a mighty puff of breath to blow the log to the shore. By the time this good deed had been done, four of the other animals had already arrived.

No sooner had the dragon reached the finish line than the sound of galloping hooves was heard and the horse appeared. Hidden in the horse’s mane was the snake, who hissed and moved just before the horse crossed the line. The horse got such a shock that she reared up and before she could recover the snake had slithered off her back and crossed the line in sixth place, beating the horse into seventh.

Not long after that, the sheep, monkey and rooster reached the bank of the river together. These three animals had helped each other all through the race. The rooster had found some logs tied together, and invited the other two creatures to go with it. The sheep and the monkey had worked together to clear the weeds, pulled and pushed and eventually managed to get to the other side. This cooperation greatly pleased the Emperor and he promptly declared that the sheep was eighth, the monkey ninth, and the rooster tenth.

Some time later the dog arrived in eleventh place. The Emperor expressed surprise that it had taken her so long despite the fact she was a better swimmer than most of the other animals. The dog explained that it was precisely her love of the water that had delayed her – it had been so refreshing that she simply couldn’t resist playing around for a while.

Just as the emperor was wondering if no other animal would reach the finish, an oink, oink, oink was heard and of the pig came waddling into view. To nobody’s surprise he related how he hadn’t been able to resist the temptation of stopping and filling his belly with acorns. After that he had felt the need for a nap, and had only woken up a short time before. And so the pig became the twelfth and last animal of the zodiac cycle.

Entries for an art contest at the Hirshon Modern Art Gallery in DC.

The rule was that the artist could use only one sheet of paper.

A few months ago, I went to a Safeway in San Francisco to buy some cleaning products. Since they are in 2 cylindrical containers, I didn’t want to carry them by hand while walking 20 minutes on a busy street back to my office, nor are they big enough that I felt it would be necessary to use a brown paper bag, so I asked for “Plastic”, which is what I usually do when I go to supermarkets like Safeway and Andronico’s (as opposed to Trader Joe’s). I would then re-use those plastic bags as my trash bags at home. But when I asked for plastic, the guy said: “Plastic bags are already banned in supermarkets in San Francisco. Do you want to carry these or use a paper bag? Paper bags can be recycled!!!” Oh. Right. I forgot about that. In Berkeley, which is just across the bay and where I live, plastic bags are still being used, so I just assumed that they are in use everywhere. So in the end, I opted for the large brown paper bag, feeling a bit silly and embarassed among the environmentally-friendly people in SF.

Yesterday, I ate at a Panda Express on the medical school campus. The take-out box that I ate in is made out of some type of tough paper material, and since I asked for my meal “to-go”, Panda Express also provided me with a plastic bag. I couldn’t finish my meal, so there were a few left-over orange chicken in my box, along with the fork and fortune cookie scraps which I put in after I was done. I placed the box in the plastic bag and headed over to the trash can, where I usually throw the whole thing in–which literally only takes a second before I head out. This time, I was stopped by the cleaning lady and a supervisor/ manager-type woman. She pointed out to me the three new cans in front of me: Compost, Trash, Recycle, and also pointed to a poster on top of the three cans. Since I’ve been conditioned to throw away trash quickly and mindlessly, I was a bit confused to have been stopped completely. Everything seemed to be happening too fast for me to absorb. At first, I thought she pointed to the Compost can (and above the Compost Can, I saw a poster where they labeled a paper lunch box), so I put my paper-lunch-box-in-plastic-bag in front of the Compost, when the cleaning lady stopped me. I thought: “Oh, right. This is not Compost”, so I threw my paper-lunch-box-in-plastic-bag in the Trash can instead. After I threw it in, the cleaning lady said: “No. Look at the cans! You are supposed to separate out your items into the different cans.” Well, if only they could have told me earlier. In retrospect, I guess they wanted each person to separate out the plastic bag and the paper box, as well as open up the paper lunch box and throw any left-over foods into the Compost can, put the paper box in the Recycle bin, and put the plastic bag in the Trash can. This would take some time, and since most students and staff want to grab a quick bite in the food court before hurrying off to work or class, I don’t know if this will work out in the end, unless they have someone standing next to the Cans and supervising the actions. However, I thought it was an interesting approach to educate the people (instead of only the cleaning lady) to “go green”, and it sure left me thinking hours afterwards.

I saw a few ants in my room yesterday. I don’t know where they are coming from, so I cleaned my room for the second time in two days.  Threw away trash, even sprayed some diluted pine sol in some hard-to-reach areas. Hopefully, that should do it…

Is it normal that our wall gas heater is still emitting some hot air (I felt it when i put my hand close to it) and making occasional cracking sounds even though I turned it off completely? We’ll find out after the safety check this Wednesday.

I don’t own an ipod, and it seems like i’m one of those rare people who doesn’t want one (esp. for a 20-something). I don’t like how buying one means I also have an obligation to purchase from itunes. Besides the point that I don’t like to listen to music while walking around, I also have doubts about ipods/itunes (once, my computer or itunes program crashed, and I lost all the songs I purchased; that scared me enough not to invest too much on music downloads).

I also don’t care about the new iphone. Who wants to read the news on a tiny screen when I can do that on my work or home computer? (ok, i’m short-sighted, but that’s beside the point). And why reply or write emails while driving or on the train? Can’t it wait for just an hour? I think this “convenience” just adds to the distractions around us, making us a restless and nervous species. Yes, it looks cool with EVERYTHING on just one phone, but I can imagine spending endless hours just playing with it. Playing games on it, calling people, compulsively checking emails and emailing…to the extent that it would seem like I have given my whole life to the iphone, and the iphone will become the storage unit of my life. And besides, if you paid so much for it, it wouldn’t be worth the money if you don’t use it ALL THE TIME, right?

Now, on to the latest invention: MacBook Air (dun dun dun). When I first saw it, I was like wow, what if I break that thing? It looks like a wafer, but a cool one, certainly, but no disk drive? That’s an essential on any laptop, even for my meager standards. It sounds like it would be a nice tool for the traveler, because it’s light, but I’m certainly not the most elegant of people, and I’m afraid that sooner or later, the computer will break in two or something. However, most Apple users are very soft-touching and caring of their Macs. I mean, Apple users call their computers “baby”, and give them names, so it only makes sense that this computer will feel very welcomed in this community. (Have you seen those ipod socks? They’re just too cute.  I would like see a MacBook Air Blankie to match those socks.)

The main reason I’ve been away is that the workload has been crazy here in the office. It’s a non-stop grants submission period since September. It is only now that I can take a breather.

A lot (or not that much, depending on perspective) has happened:

My family in Socal is fine from the fire; they didn’t have to evacuate, so that was a great relief for me.

My roommate has “disappeared” for more than a month now. She left me a note saying that she had an emergency and will be gone “for a few days, or a week or two”. But like I said before, she has been gone for a little over a month now. I called her cell phone a few times and it went immediately to voice mail without even ringing. I called the landlord and he said that she’s fine, ’cause she called him a couple of weeks ago saying that she needs to pay her rent late. I don’t know where she is or when she will be back, but I hope she’s okay. She might be taking this time to spend time with family for Thanksgiving…

I took an HTML/CSS course a few weeks ago for self development. It was really fun; I enjoyed it a lot, and I hope to spend more time developing my interest.

However, my right eye has been bothering me for the past week or two, so I wasn’t in the mood to work on the computer stuff. My eye feels dry sometimes, and it’s a bit pink. I got scared and went to see my optometrist, who said that it’s a bit swollen but should go away by itself in 2-6 weeks. He recommended Refresh Tears eye drops for me.

I also started taking modern dance classes last weekend. For some reason, I feel like expressing myself through dancing again. It was certainly refreshing to do something new with my body. The movements are elegant, and I enjoyed it more than doing step aerobics (which has recently been like “step robotics” to me).

Last week, I also played poker for the first time! It was quite confusing at first (we play Texas Hold’em poker), but i managed to win once with a Full House!

So that’s about it for updates. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Update: My roommate’s back the night I wrote this post.

Since I work at the hospital and the coin was probably circulated around there (and our area has quite a few homeless and mentally ill patients), I wonder who had touched and handled it before.  Paranoid, i immediately sanitized my hands after putting it in my wallet. And now, I wonder if I should just throw it out (but I could still use it for my laundry next weekend…)

This is my neighborhood. It was a quiet and beautiful day on Saturday morning. The sky is blue; the air is crisp and warming up.

On my way to Monterey Market, I come across this decorated tree trunk. It is very interesting, and sometimes I like to stop and take a closer look at it.  Someone seems to have added more stuff to it since a few months ago… (you can see a magnified version here: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2293/1520008357_f80cb754ee_o.jpg )

At monterey market: the first thing I saw (how could you miss it?) are these HUGE pumpkins!! I wonder how much they weigh…

Every year in October, Monterey Market stacks up lots of pumpkins outside, and kids love to climb on them.