Snapshots

Benny is now over 9 months old.  Time flies.  Going from a baby who can hardly open both eyes for long periods at a time, to a baby who commando-crawls his way around the rooms.  Lots of things have changed, but some unfortunately have not.  (Still not sleeping through the night!!  Not even close!)

Thanks to the digital cameras and large hard drives, we have many thousands of photos and a few hundred short video clips.  I wonder what it will be like 20 years later when people go through his photo albums…  It would be so different from the old days.  I think I have like, a total of 1 album.  There are probably more photos scattered in different places, but I probably have less than 1000 photos of my entire childhood.

Getting old is pretty cool for a baby, but not so cool for the dad.  The body just doesn’t feel as great due to a variety of things.  Ever since I had my teeth fillings replaced (from silver to white) at the end of April, I could not eat off my right side because it hurts when I bite anything moderately hard.  I’ve gone back to get some adjustments, but they simply did not help much.  So it takes twice as long to eat the same amount of food, and I have to do it very carefully.  Food just doesn’t taste as good when you have to watch every bite.  I still have to go back for more adjustments, and possibly replacing the fillings in that 1 or 2 molars.

So in addition to not being able to eat much, my right hip still doesn’t feel right after the sun run.  It wasn’t caused by the sun run, since it was my fault I injured it 2 weeks before the sun run.  I haven’t run for about 2 weeks now hoping that it would heal.  It has gotten better, then regressed, then better, then regressed again.  So I don’t really know what’s up with that.

Dez and I are doing this experiment of eating organic/homemade as much as we could for the entire month of May.  That also means our food has less grease than before.  So the combination of these 3 factors have made me lose a lot of weight.  I now weigh 10 pounds less than before Benny was born.  And for those who know me, I already didn’t have much to lose to begin with.  And, once again, I exercise in order to gain weight, not to lose weight.  If I don’t do lots of cardio like running, I can’t gain much weight.  I know this apparently shocks everyone I know who wants to lose weight, but that’s the way it is.

So, my body ain’t feeling so great, and neither is the car.  My Toyota Corolla is now 11 years old.  Not too long ago the brakes start to make high pitch squeaking sounds when I brake.  Then some dashboard lights burned out.  Then I was driving on Knight bridge (not even fast, about 50 km/h) when something flew from the opposing traffic, through the inner lane, and hit my windshield on the outer lane and chipped the windshield where it sort of impairs the driver’s vision.  I can still drive and see OK, but the chip really is quite big.  Like a big water drop that never goes away.  And then the seat belt warning light was behaving weird (always flashing ON even when I already put on the seat belt), which was actually more annoying than the chip on the windshield.  I managed to make it so that it’s always OFF, so at least I don’t have a flashing light on my dashboard.

Anyway, I think most of these health / mechanical issues are fixable.  But they’ll take some time.  In the meantime, I just gotta get used to it…

After the last post, I realized that I did not have much longer to train for the sun run, and if I did not take my lunch time to run, I would not have time to train.  So for nearly 2 months, I pushed myself to run 3 times during the weekdays, and 1 more time on weekends.  In many of those times my mind was willing, but my body was not.  I really had to push myself.  Despite rainy on most days, the hours around lunch time was surprising “unrainy”.  I found that many times it would rain in the early morning, then stop, and then continue to rain in the late afternoon.  Because of this, I was able to run 3 or 4 times a week.  I did notice my pace getting better.  And for those times I went to the gym to run on the treadmill, I noticed that I was able to run faster than I did last year also.

On May 9th, I was as prepared as I could be.  There were some factors benefiting my run, but there were also some hindering factors.  The weather was awesome – warm and sunny.  I did not have any stomach cramps during the run, which happens about 15% of the time.  I did not have to dodge too many slow runners / walkers because I am placed in the yellow – slightly faster – group compared to years past.  I wasn’t too tired as I slept around 13 hours two nights prior.  However, I was sort of sick (sore throat and runny nose), and only got around 6 hours of sleep the night before.  My right hip also wasn’t feeling the greatest as I pulled a muscle or something during a training run.  So all in all, it was an OK run.  It could’ve been worse, and it could’ve been better.

Anyway, my goal was to beat 50 minutes.  It wasn’t easy, but I did it.  It was a decent improvement over last year’s time.  I don’t have a goal for next year yet.

Because our company got amalgamated into the mothership, we doubled our corporate team from the typical 20+ people to 39 total for this year (basically Richmond office + Burnaby office).  This also meant that for our high tech division, we were placed #13 out of 65!  Not bad.  Our previous record was #28.

Dez, Ben, and I went for our final “-lympic” event: Paralympic gold/silver/bronze medal curling game.  It was Canada vs South Korea for gold/silver, and Sweden vs USA for bronze/nada.

Of course, we were mostly watching the Canada vs South Korea game, not just because we’re Canadians, but because they put the Sweden vs USA game on the sheet closest to where we sit, so we can’t actually see much of it since too many heads were blocking our view.

There are a total of 8 ends (as opposed to 10 ends in regular curling).  The Canadians was demolishing the Koreans by the halfway point, 8-1.  7 point difference.  Pretty hard to come back on.

And then Koreans scored 2… then another 2… then another 1…  Oh man, it was nerve-wrecking.  Deja vu all over again as we compare the parallels to our women’s gold medal game.  Women led… until the last end, where they led by 2 points.  Yup.  And then overtime… then lost.  Well, the game was a nailbiter for sure.  Good thing the outcome was different.

Too bad USA lost again, so they got nada.

Anyway, on a separate topic, for those who didn’t click on any of my previous links: Those links are actually a subset of all (or nearly all) the photo highlights we have of Benny.  We have thousands of photos, and Dez selects the good ones, as well as ones that tell a story.  I post them using a free and great simple php-script gallery that I found on the web that did exactly what I wanted my gallery to do, except doing it better than if I were to code it myself.  I even donated $10 because I was so impressed.

Benny’s gallery is mostly for the grandparents who are not computer savvy, but also for people who would like to have a glimpse of what have been happening to us.  It’s categorized by months, with subcategories of special events.

Onto another unrelated topic, there has been much changes at work.  It’s still too early to tell if it will be good or bad in the long run, but changes are certainly happening.  Adapting to changes is never as easy as staying in a status quo.  I’m handed with more responsibilities, which is both welcoming and challenging.  I always like a good challenge, but sometimes I reflect on whether I really want to be committed to this line of work.  I know for certain that I enjoy software development, but I do feel that it’s a “top 3″ rather than a “top 1″.  It’s in the “I enjoy it but I don’t have a fiery passion for it” category.

Benny is now 7 months old.  Time seems to be accelerating, and the world is changing so fast.

The Olympics has ended over 10 days ago, and it felt like a vacation (sort of, except I actually had to work).

We lined up in the cold, along with thousands of other people, for stuff.  Some stuff was a waste of time, while others were worth the wait.

We attended a few events.  3 curling events:
1) Men’s curling round robin #1, and saw Canada vs Norway, which was great because it was also Canada vs Norway in the gold medal game, but we didn’t have tickets for that one.
2) Men’s ice hockey, qualifier round Norway vs. Slovakia.  It was my first live hockey game ever.  We sat in the lower bowl, category A seats.  Yup, we sort of splurged, since the tickets weren’t too costly.  Not like it was a semi-final or gold medal game.
3) Women’s gold medal curling, and saw Canada vs. Sweden.  Extremely unfortunate that our Canadian team didn’t win gold.  Of the 4 big team sports medals (men and women’s hockey, and men and women’s curling), this is the only one that didn’t get gold…  It was a very exciting game though.  And we can say that we were there!
4) Men’s bronze medal curling, and saw Sweden vs. Switzerland.  Another great game.  Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for Canada!) that the Canadian men went undefeated and didn’t end up in the bronze medal game, so we didn’t get to see them.

So, what were some of the free venues that we lined up for? (By the way, Benny was with us in all of these!)
1) Torch relay.  Dez and Benny got photos with some athletes and saw some politicians.
2) Downtown Olympic cauldron.  Heavily fortified!
3) Live City Yaletown.  Went to the Coca-Cola pavilion to get pics with torch (no flames)…
4) Vancouver Art Museum.  Saw lots of Leonardo Da Vinci stuff, as well as local art.  Didn’t have to wait too long.  Not many pics because photography was not allowed in most areas.
5) Royal Canadian Mint.  The highlight of our line-ups!  5 hours wait in the rain.  Dez and I sort of did a relay, so it wasn’t as bad.  Got to hold the Olympic medals with our (gloved) hands!  And saw the million dollar 100kg gold coin!  Didn’t know coins can look so good…
6) Sochi World.  Saw the IOC president Jacques Rogge and figure skating phenom Evgeni Plushenko.
7) Richmond O-Zone.  No wait!  Saw Yu-Na Kim’s performance live on big screen, as well as Mao Asada and Joannie Rochette.
Men’s gold medal curling and gold medal hockey!  OK, we were actually home for those, but watching it on TV was great!  Canada beat Norway in another great curling game, and Canada beat USA in hockey overtime and claimed the title of most gold medals ever in a winter Olympic game.  Not too shabby.

It was certainly one of those events that we may never see in Vancouver again in our lifetimes.

So, what has happened?  In no particular order…

We caught the stomach flu.  “Gastroenteritis” is the proper term.  “Norovirus” is the name of the group of virus that induces Norwalk-like symptoms.  Vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, etc, for 3 to 5 days.  For me, it was basically a mild flu + food poisoning.  I had sore throat, and couldn’t eat much for 4 days.  Benny was also sick, although we didn’t realize until he was kinda done being sick.  Dez got sick last, and although her stomach problem went away in about 4 to 5 days, she has been coughing and coughing since.  Oh, and we passed it to my dad and grandma.

Didn’t go to Fitness World very much due to the illness.  After I recovered, I had to spend more time taking care of Dez and Benny.  I can feel my muscles withering away.

I spent about 2 to 3 weeks looking for good computer component deals to build a budget computer for Dez’s cousin.  Once in a while I have to learn about the latest and greatest in the computer world, and then decide what is the “best value”.  The budget was $500, and with the help of a Microsoft insider friend, I was able to put together the computer for under $500, and it’s a computer with pretty good parts, too.  Something I would be proud of owning.  I really pushed the limit as to what $500 could buy, while accounting for future upgrade capability, etc.

Even though I have PS3 now, I have hardly used it, except to watch a couple of non-BluRay movies.

At work, the table tennis tournament has become more demanding of my time.  Regular season ended in January, and we’re now into playoffs.  I ended up being a team captain because I was a top 8 players among the participants.  But due to bad luck, I ended up on the same team with the weakest player.  So in this double elimination format, we’ll be a 2-game team.  I’m looking forward to the end of the season so I can get a break at lunch without all the table tennis obligations.