Real programers

I use my pen to write pseudocodes in my notebook. But then again, I am not a real programmer.

David's first haircut

Before:


After:

Chinese New Year? Really?

Maybe I am too stressed out with writing my dissertation, I really don't feel anything about the fact that it is Chinese New Year today. Sorry to everyone who has send me a "Happy New Year" email/card, I really can't deal with that right now.

Colorful writing

Awhile ago I got a bottle of Noodler's Forest Green ink for my daily writing. While I am pretty happy with the color, it has some feathering and bleed-through problems when used with my Pelikan M800 on my notebook and I finally decided to get another green ink.

After being shocked by the shipping charge, I convinced myself that buying a single bottle would be silly and I ended up buying 4 different inks this time. I guess that another good thing about being a grownup, as buying more than one bottle of ink at a time is no longer an unimaginable luxury.

Today the inks arrived and I excitingly took out all my inks to run a test. At this point I have accumulated 11 different kinds of inks, including:

Alfred Dunhill: Blue
Mont Blanc: Royal Blue
Noodler's: Forest Green
Pelikan: Brilliant Green, Turquoise, Royal Blue, Brown, Black
Private Reserve: Lake Placid Blue
Rotring: Red
Waterman: Red

It's a beautiful view to see all these colors on a page. I am a little bit disappointed to find that Pelikan's Brilliant Green is a bit too bright for my taste. Fortunately the Turquoise and Brown turned out pretty well and I may switch to brown for now. The Lake Placid Blue from Private Reserve is another disappointment. It has the same problem with my experience with Noodler's; beautiful color but noticeable feathering and bleed-through used with Pelikan pens. Maybe I can load them in some other pens and give them another try, but then again I am really attached to my M800/M250 now.

Lost ring scare

I found my wedding ring was missing when I went to Life Sciences to attend a journal club this afternoon. Naturally this totally freaked me out as I've never lost something this important. A bunch of folks helped me to search the room after the meeting but we just couldn't find it. I was very sad and mad at myself on my way back to office. Fortunately, the minute I stepped into my office I saw the ring lying on the floor just next to my desk.

What happened this afternoon is a bit too much for me. I decided to take the ring off and ask Ann to keep it for me at least for a while.

NOTE TO MOM: While it might be a good idea to pick a size or two bigger than necessary when it comes to buy jackets for your son in high school, there really is NO need to do this when he is getting married and is looking for a ring. *Sigh*

Eating frenzy

Alyssa's appetite has been pretty amazing over the past few week. She would eat about 2 to 3 times as much as she would eat normally and still feel hungry after only about an hour. I took a measurement of her height after dinner and we are surprised to find out that she is about 120cm tall now. That's pretty tall for a 5-year old Asian girl I guess.

A-don and gon-gon

David finally learned the correct way to say grandpa in Taiwanese this evening. The correct pronunciation is "a-gon", but he has been saying "gon-gon" since he learned the word. Interestingly, both Alyssa and Vivian said "a-don" when they were young.

"Grandma" is a lot easier for them, maybe due to the similarity with "mother" ("a-mom" versus "mom-mom"). All three kids learned how to say this without any problem.

6 more weeks to go

According to our resident groundhog in town, we still have 6 more weeks of winter. I certainly hope that spring will come sooner than that.

A Pelikan nest

Many years ago Ann designed and commissioned a custom-made leather pen pouch for me. I use it to carry two or three pens with me everyday since I have it. Although my Pelikan M800 is always there, other pens went in and out of rotation. Today for the first time all three pens in it are Pelikans, including a blue M800, a black M250, and a snake R200. It's very interesting to see the three birds on the cap peeking out when I open the pen pouch. What makes this even more interesting is that the three pens are from different eras and the styles of the logo are all different.

The joy of handwriting

Actually I really hated handwriting when I grow up. My handwriting is pretty bad and that has always been a big issue with my self-image. The main problem was that I always write really fast. Part of this is because I am so busy-minded and my hand can hardly keep up with my brain. Another problem, which probably is the root of this, is my miserable childhood experience.

I had one of those "famous" teachers when I was in elementary school. As young as in 3rd grade, we have our "morning test" at 7AM. The school ends at 4PM (or 5PM?), but we have to stay for another hour after that for "enhanced studies". After we get home, there's another 4-5 hours worth of homework waiting EVERY SINGLE DAY. Needless to say, writing speed is essential for survival under such pressure and bad handwriting becomes inevitable.

Later in my life I found that I have this complex love/hate feelings toward the need for handwriting. I found myself more creative and being able to better organize my thoughts when I am working with my beloved fountain pens on paper (no distraction from computer and internet). However, after I am done and going back to read my own writing I always feel some embarrassments and resentments.

Recently I have rediscovered the fun of handwriting after I picked up a copy of "Write Now" from Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay (ISBN: 0-87678-089-3). I still have a VERY long way to go to learn italics but I am pretty sure that I will enjoy this journey.