Category Archives: General

In the past year…

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I’m back from the Internet dead. Here’s a brief update on my life since my last update (just over a year ago):

  • I was promoted to Senior QA Engineer in May 2012 at my company! I still can’t believe I’ve been doing QA for four years already. Time flies when you’re old.
  • I moved into a studio in Manhattan and no longer have a roommate. Life is wonderful!
  • My company was acquired by a much larger company (salesforce.com) at the end of 2012. Now I can say proudly that every company I have worked out since graduating college has been acquired.
  • Went back to Taiwan in September/October 2012 with my wonderful boyfriend. This time around we had the chance to ride the High-Speed Rail (HSR) and visit Kaohsiung, Tainan and Kenting. It was really great even with the typhoon warning. We also went to the famous Taroko Gorge for a day trip with an excellent English-speaking tour.
  • Took my first programming class with Skillshare since college!
  • I turned 30 and realized it was time to change my lifestyle by eating healthier. I managed to lose about 20 pounds since July 2012!
  • Heading to Tokyo/Taipei in four days with my best girlfriends! I’m so excited. I pre-ordered our Ghibli Museum tickets. We are also going to Disney Sea!

Well that’s about it for now. We’ll see if I can update my sad site more than once a year!

2012

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Well, I updated WordPress and my theme. I seem to have lost my custom header image. I guess I’ll have to find it somewhere on my computer and put it back in! Anyway, it has been a pretty rough 2012. My boyfriend has deployed to Afghanistan (again) for four months. Meanwhile, work has been pretty insane with deadlines. To top off my January, I found out during a work meeting that my Agong (grandpa) passed away on Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning Taiwan time).

I have great memories of Agong. He was always playing with me. He was a fierce Chinese checkers opponent. In his later years, when he started to get sick, he would cling to certain memories of each grand child. For me, he always spoke about how I would always go to the airport to pick up Ama and Agong with my dad. After a few months, they would pack up and then I’d go to the airport to drop them off with my dad. Back in the day, non-passengers could go as far as security to send off their loved ones. He spoke about how I would always ask why they had so many kids and why they couldn’t just stay with my family. Then I would cry at the airport because I didn’t want them to leave me. I totally remember crying and waving through the glass window to my grandparents as they walked away through security.

It scares me how I’m getting older and that death is just so much more real now. Now, I feel like that little girl again. I don’t want my Agong to leave me. cry

Sadly, I will be returning to Taiwan in a month to say my final farewells to Agong.

My last visit with Agong in October 2010

Back to reality

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I’ve been back in NYC for almost a month. It’s felt like so much longer. As soon as I got back to work, I had to catch up with what I missed during the vacation. It turns out that I didn’t miss much with my project. Why do you ask? Because the team member working on my project really didn’t do anything! So, I felt like I was being punished for taking a vacation. I stayed late everyday for the next two weeks to play catch up. Today, we finally had our big release, and after a few big bumps, things are looking up. I’ve been up since 4:15am and am about to crash. I must resist taking a nap because I’ll end up not falling asleep tonight. Plus, I really want to wake up early to go spinning.

My family vacation was full of drama, but overall I enjoyed myself. I definitely appreciated being able to do this with 16+ other family members at my age. I know that I probably won’t have the chance to do this again in the future. Japan is truly a beautiful country. I was a bit frustrated with the Japanese’s desire of not speaking English. In fact, I think I made them scared whenever I asked anything in English. Oh well. I definitely need to go back to Tokyo because I only spent 2 days there. Grace and I were unable to figure out the monster subway/rail system there. Taiwan was so much more relaxing because we did not have to wake up at 7am every morning. The only reason I woke up early (8:30am) was so I could enjoy breakfast. I did my regular Japanese straight perm (soo relaxing) at my favorite hair salon. I even ventured out and did an eye examination. I got new glasses (with frames) and contacts for $234. That’s pretty amazing! The examination itself was $12. Not bad right? Instead of user the letter “E”, Taiwan uses the letter “C”. I’m not sure why though?

I decided to update my website because my cousin Jane mentioned to me that my site was down and that she was getting some kind of error message. I contacted my webhost, and they were able to restore my site. Also, “Anthony” fixed the permissioning of my files so it’d be like prone to hacking. Thanks to him, I can now upgrade my WordPress with the push of a button. It literally upgrades in 15 seconds! Amazing. I wonder if this was an enhancement for WordPress? I used to always get error messages when I tried to press the Upgrade button. Oh well.

Here are my vacation pictures. There’s over 500 so be prepared. Also, they are mostly of food. )

Japan/Taipei 2009