Remembering the One or Two

Subtitle: Simple Joys of Life

In the culture I grew up there is a saying: eight or nine out of ten things in life are either disappointing or frustrating. Being a person who always has a positive attitude, my wife created a photo-story out of our family pictures -- A 20-year old picture showing our son eating grass off the ground in a park, a picture showing our family camping, etc. She named the photo story “Remembering the One or Two.”

I think it may be the most important attitude in our family--remember the one or two simple joys we shared; forget the unpleasant ones. I'll try to remember jutting down a thing or two when I encounter them.

Here’s one:

We recently bought a new car. The dealer provides life time car wash free of charge. We talked the dealer into letting us wash our other car for free as well. Now on weekends we would go for our free car wash together and have a simple lunch outside of home. Sometimes we would even drive separately and meet at the car wash place and call it a date. It’s almost like 30 years ago when we were dating--we would set a time and meeting at a movie theater. Not bad to be able to bring back the romance after 30 some years of marriage.

Here’s another one:

My wife and were both born and raised in Taiwan. We did not come to the US till I had already had a graduate degree and had our first child. While growing up, all the schools taught in Chinese mandarin only. Although we are both native Taiwanese and talk in Taiwanese at home and at any other places other than at school, we cannot write anything serious or give a formal speech using our native Taiwanese language alone; Chinese language will always sprinkled in. Some of the things we use in a conversation, we don’t even know how they look like written down.

Recently my wife took a one-day training in formal Taiwanese. She brought home the course notes; the written class notes as well as the mp3 audio files. We have fun listening to these mp3’s and test each other on how certain words look like when written down. We would point out some words and test each other how they should be pronounced. We would laugh and tease each other on the things we missed. We are having a blast.

I remember reading a story about a famous female poet (Li Qing-Zhao) about 300 years ago in China. The lady’s husband was a scholar. They both loved books. They were not rich. To enjoy a day without having to spend money, one would say a phrase and ask the other which book, which page the phrase came from. One would cite half a poem and ask the other to complete the poem.

Isn’t it just lovely, how my wife and I have such a great time learning Taiwanese! We are two modern day nerds.

Feb. 24, 2008
We both are new at doing blogging. I am eager to share with my wife a new posting on my blog and am eager to read her new postings. We gave each other comments on each other's writing. We share the new blogging tricks we found. This simple joy costs us $0.

The Mysterious Curry Chicken

I am an average middle aged engineer. Nothing about me is special, except that I am an immigrant from Taiwan. I bet the experience I had finding the mysterious curry chicken is not unique to me. I believe some of my friends may have encountered or will, sooner or later, encounter a similar experience.

I believe at least 80% of the Taiwanese immigrant families in America share my situation: I work as a software engineer; I have two grown children. I depend on my wife on everything that keep me alive and to have clean shirts to wear. I am a totally useless ignorant in day-to-day life without my wife. Sometimes my wife took an extended trip back to Taiwan to see her family. When she does, she would always leave me enough food, well prepared ahead of time, in the refrigerator. Just so I won’t starve or eat McDonald 3 meals a day everyday. If we don’t get to talk on the phone we would exchange e-mails everyday.

In March of 2007, my wife went back to Taiwan to see her family for one whole month. As usual, she left me tons of goodies in the refrigerator. I enjoyed all of them, except for the curry chicken.
What’s so special about the curry chicken? If you would read the e-mail I sent to my wife, you’ll know. Here’s the e-mail, dated sometime in April of 2007:

My Dear Wife:

Let me tell you a little tale of how I found the curry chicken after nearly a month's search.
I tried to find it in the freezer, but failed. I tried to find it in the non-freezer part of the fridge; could not find it either.

Therefore, I did what any engineer or scientist worth his salt would do in this situation: I sat down, and did some thinking. I came up with the following:
• Fact: Our refrigerator is not a huge one and you told me there was curry chicken in it.
• Conclusion: The darn chicken must be in there.
• Action: I called you and asked where it could be.
After we talked on the phone, I got one more clue: It's in a round container. When I looked for it before, I was expecting a square-ish container. So, this is a piece of really useful new information. It practically weeded out half of the possibilities in the fridge. You did not mention whether the container was metal or ceramic, but I assumed it be a plastic one. With this new insight, I started another search. I would do it methodically.

I took out everything in the freezer and put them back one at a time--the ones that I would least likely eat went to the back and bottom. I did not find the chicken. No sweat. Progress had been made--I had just ruled out the possibility of finding it in the freezer. I was half way to the whereabouts of the chicken. Then, I repeated the process on the non-freezer part of the fridge; shelf by shelf. Still no luck.

At this time, I had to assume that my wife had a memory relapse. It's not likely, but you cannot argue with facts, especially the facts were uncovered via meticulous scientific process. After all, saints made mistakes too--even Peter, Jesus' star disciple, made mistakes and he is the one guarding the gate to Heaven. Logic dictates that I give up the search of the mysterious curry chicken.

The fridge was almost empty today--one yogurt left. Even the fruits were all gone--one apple left. Since I am a healthy eater, I went to Safeway after work and bought some bananas, 3 oranges, and 2 apples. I saw yogurt was on sale; for $10 you could bring home 10 small cans of yogurt. It's a no brainer; I bought $10 worth of yogurt.
Remember I said I was a healthy eater? I did not buy Sweet & Sour Pork,
nor did I buy Peking Orange Chicken at the China Express counter. The total cost of the goodies would have cost me $13.50. But, I remembered Susan told me to tell them "My wife has a Safeway card. I have our phone number." That's a $2.50 saving right there. Am I good or what!

(Are you still listening? Hang in there. The story is almost over.)

As any good man would do, as soon as I came home, I put all the yogurts in the fridge. Now that I had 10 yogurts and that lonely yogurt had been sitting in the fridge for more than a month, I thought I could afford to dump it. So, I dumped it in the sink and planned to wash it down the garbage disposer. But, wait! It looked like chicken and it smelled like curry. It's the mysterious curry chicken!

Lesson Learned: When scientific process fails, dumb luck will kick in. That's how Fleming discovered penicillin, wasn't it.

It's only 6 more days left. Miss you.
Ralph

P.S. Did I tell you I pulled the knob off the washer? I tried to do the laundry last night. The instruction said to pull the knob to start. It broke when I pulled it. It still works; I can use a screw driver to lift the knob. No need to worry yet, but we may have to start saving some money to buy a new washer.

Physics is Like Sex

Draft: Feb. 14, 2008

This is a story I heard from a POD cast from the Writer's Almanac:

After worked in the Manhattan project and witnessed the explosion of the first A-bomb, Richard Feynman felt there was no point building anything any more--they would be destroyed anyway. He wandered around pondering what he should do. Later on he decided to do what he loved to do--physics. When asked why he chose to teach physics, he answered, "Physics is like sex; they may sometimes produce useful products, but that's not why we do it."

I watched an episode of Donny Deutch show on TV where Deutch interviewed Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. In answering a question from Deutch, Warren Buttet said he enjoyed managing investment and was good at it. It just happened he made a lot of money doing what he loved. He didn't plan to become rich.

My reflection: Doing what interest you and let God worry about the rest.
Aristotle said, "We are what we repeated do. Excellence then, is not an act, but rather a habit." It's a lot easier doing what you love to do repeatedly. If you do it repeatedly you'll get good at it. When you are good at something, anything, even if you don't get rich, you'll still be happy. Feynman and Buffet did just that and became the laureates in their respective field.