Public Transportation

For the past few days I have been trying to be a good citizen by attempting to take public transportation to go to work. First day I took the bus which dropped me off four big blocks away from work so it took me 40 minutes (vs. 15 minutes by taxi). On the way home, I took a taxi who took me to opposite direction and cost me twice as much taxi fare to go home. Today I took another bus which dropped me off two block away but I needed to walk 10 minutes to catch the bus. Total journey time is again 30 minutes. I had to take the taxi home again since Joaquin is hungry and I was running late. Luckily, this time I walked for 15 minutes first so my taxi ride will be short. Tomorrow I'm going to try out another bus to see if I can get to work faster. It's not easy but it saves money and reduces carbon emission. I'm not the only good citizen as I notice taxi queues are visibly shorter these days. Obviously the melting stock market is far more powerful than Al Gore's cry to save our melting planet.

Embrace the Financial Ice Age

When it began 6 weeks ago, it was called a financial storm. The general public were in shock but they were somewhat happy to see the Wall Street bankers punished for their greed. Then the storm became tsunami, swallowing up the other side of the Atlantic. Currencies fell in a record speed against the Dollar. Overnight, people see their wealth evaporate and purchasing power decrease. Fundamentals are thrown out of window. This week the tsunami turned into ice storm, freezing up emerging markets which in less than six months ago were over heating to now colder than your freezer. Many now are reported to be on the brink of bankruptcy. Much like Fuld of Lehman who didn't see it coming, we also didn't see it coming (even Mr. Greenspan was blind sighted). I now feel like I'm a character in "The Day after Tomorrow" standing cold in a frozen world and wondering why we were not given warning signs.

But warning signs were there, many can now point back to them with a perfect hindsight. I knew Yen was going to go up and bought into Yen more than one year ago but only to lose my patience and sold it 3 months too early. I should have sold my stock which six months ago were valued at 2 or 3 times their value today. Too many I should haves but the most important thing at the end of the day is to say 'thank you': thank you for keeping my friends and family being healthy; thank you for keeping me in good health; thank you for not having to worry about where to sleep and what to eat; thank you for having enough so I can afford to have all these "I should haves" laments; and thank you for giving me a happy and healthy baby and a loving husband so together as a family we can keep each other warm and be ready to embrace this ice age.

Who are you calling a gordito?

Ceci Jr.

Small, Medium & Large

Aging Minds...

No body told us that parenting is the cause of deteriorating memory. Last month, Jaime forgot to bring his passport to the airport for the first time in his life (only to find out later that I forgot about putting it in my purse earlier). Last Thursday, we realized that neither Jaime nor Joaquin had China visa required to attend my brother's wedding in Guangzhou on Saturday. Jaime remembered that he needed a haircut for the wedding and I remembered to ask for a crib at the hotel. The need to apply for the visa however never entered our mind...

We had to smuggle Jaime into Guangzhou since he was able to get a landing visa into Shenzhen Special Economic Zone on the day of. Technically, he was not allowed outside of SZSEZ but practically such monitoring system is not in place so we were able to attend the wedding.


Joaquin on the other hand was not as lucky. We actually brought him all the way to the border, hoping we can get him visa but the Chinese government decided that a 5-month-old can potentially pose threat since he has never applied for a formal visa before. We had to part with him at the border and had our helper bring him home. His stroller and diapers attended the wedding with us instead.

台灣行之阿祖莞爾篇

上次沒來得及寫寫阿祖的搞笑對話:

我跟她您是不是真有福氣
她說 什麼福去(台語為"福氣")
我是有很多福來才對啦...

她耳力不是很好
她自嘲地說我老了
身體全部都漏(台語同"老")掉了 都沒接著...

她拿著台幣兩千 直說我要包兩百元紅包給秉鑫
跟她說 但您手裡拿的是兩千呀
她說 蛋清(台語同"兩千")? 我還蛋黃呢...

她可以上節目跟吳宗憲一起耍寶搞笑了
一點兒都不會冷場呢