Day 1

So it's only been 1 day in California and yeah, it's everything everyone makes it out to be and then some. The picture above is where I work currently. When I first passed by it, I thought it was a museum. And if it didn't have that huge sign in front of it, many would of made the same mistake I did. A few things I've noticed so far about California:
1) Weather is truly amazing. But you knew that already.
2) People are surprisingly friendly. The waiters at restaurants actually look happy to serve you. When they speak to you, they look at you like you really matter to them.
3) There are palm trees everywhere. Even when you're not near a beach.
4) Gas prices here are ridiculous.

My story of the day:
Most of time you get owned at restaurants when you order something and you expect a nice sized portion and you end up with like pea-size rabbit food. Well today was a rather different experience for me. For lunch, I walked into a restaurant called Bugambilias. What drawn me to the restaurant wasn't the name but the fact that the subtext said "Mexican and Salvadorean Food." Salvadorean. Any other day and I would just turn and walk away. But being in a new place, I thought heck why not try out Salvadorean cuisine. When given the choice, I asked the waiter to bring me the Salvadorean Menu. The only thing on that menu that looked remotely appetizing was Deep Fried Tilapia with beans and rice. I remember sitting at my table after 20mins of ordering and wondering what's taking the tilapia so long to cook. I was the only person in the restaurant, and knowing that Long John Silvers can give me what I ordered in mere minutes, I asked the waitress over. "Can you hurry? I have to be back at work in about 15minutes." She goes back in the kitchen and then brings me this.
O.O I swear that thing looked ALOT bigger in person. Atleast 3-4lbs. And apparently, this was a lunch special and you're suppose to eat it with the hot tortilla. Needless to say, I ate 1/2 of 1 side of the fish and just left feeling quite disgusted. So what did I learn from all this?
does not equal Salvadorean Cuisine.

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California...California....Here we come

I'm on my first business trip, and it hasn't even been one night yet and I'm already feeling pretty tired. But I guess that's what 9 hours of traveling does to you. I don't know how consultants can get use to doing this for like years. One thing about traveling is that it sucks when you travel alone. If you sit down for an airport meal or settle down in your hotel room, it would be nice to have someone to chat with. Things like traveling and eating are really best experienced with other people around.

As I was riding on the plane and having 9 hours to myself, I got to thinking why companies send their employees on business trips. If you add everything up, it gets quite expensive to send one person. Here's what my expense report will look like:

$300 Plane tix
$300 Rental Car
$600 Hotel at 120/night (why did they book me a baller hotel room? ...I'm not complaining though...)
$300 Food at 50/day

That total is roughly $1500 just to send me here to learn something. The more time I spend in the corporate world, the more I realize how crazy it is. The amount of money I spend here in a week can equal to the amount of money required to feed a small village of 50 people in Africa for a month. America is insane.

(Above image is a pillar at the Sacramento Airport. Neat!)

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Like a window to the other side of the world

Above is a pic from Phil's webcam in China. A few of us gathered together to celebrate his birthday recently and being able to see the big guy again definitely brought a smile to my face. Isn't it amazing how there are so many ways for people to stay connected these days? And yet as new technology makes communication easier, I feel like something has been lost in our generation. If you think about it, we're the first generation to grow up in the age of cell phones, IM, laptops, webcams, and the likes. It always makes me wonder, what did communication use to look like? I know there were pay phones, pagers, etc. But how did friendships form? For many us, we can agree that we form most of our friendships through AIM and maybe more recently, Facebook. It's just too much out of the way to go meet someone up to talk or share a meal. And if we were to do that with someone of the opposite sex -- well that's been somewhat of a taboo in the asian christian circle. So did we miss out on an important piece of communication? Have we become dependent on technology to foster our relationships with people? I guess it's one of those things that we'll never really know but intriguing to think about.

One thing's for sure though. Good communication will always be at the foundation of every meaningful relationship.

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Like back in college all over again

When you're in college, you go through countless experiences that make you think, yeah, these are the defining moments of what college life is about. One of those moments for me have to be going on HEB runs late at night. It's funny because when you go late night, almost everyone shopping are college students.

One of the things that I miss about the college life is the fact that you share so many experiences with so many people. You can probably go through a week and have the opportunity to spend quality time with quite a few people. Once you're out of college, well, there's alot more work involved in maintaining those friendships. I look at my parents and really when I think about it, they probably don't interact with that many people from week to week. Is that what our lives will become when we get older? I hope not.

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LIke A Scene From A Sitcom

Having worked in the corporate world for almost 3 months now, I have to say, the writers of The Office are genius. I'm not sure how they do it but there are many days where I can relate the activities in my office with the episodes on the show. Can anyone else relate? Sure, the happenings aren't as ridiculous as what goes on in the show, but I can't help to smile and chuckle when I see/hear something that reminds me of Dwight or Michael.

One of the things that I enjoy alot about my workplace is that we're all so different and yet, there's so much to learn from them. When I first started, I was standoff-ish as most of them were my parents age, but now, it's great to feel like I can talk to them like friends. Hopefully, God can open doors for spiritual conversations!

(yes, we had a team lunch at a japanese steakhouse -- like when Michael took his employees to Benihana)

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One of two of my oldest friends

Johnny and his brother Danny are two people that I've known since I came to the states when I was 7. We went to chinese school together through all of grade school. However, faith would have it that in 5th grade, both of our families would move to Sugar Land, and we would go on to attend Elementary, Middle, and High school together. Though Johnny didn't join his brother and myself at UT, this guy still remains as one of my best friends. What's been amazing is how God really entered our friendship and helped to shape both of us to be God-fearing men. I still remember the day I dashed to their house to tell them about how great God was after I accepted Christ the previous weekend. And since that day, God's really been showing himself to us and guided us in our ways. One of my biggest joys in high school was to see Johnny accept Christ and go on to be baptized my senior year. After almost five years since, God's still moving in our lives and teaching us. Nothing brings joy than the sweet fellowship you have with believers and that you can gather to talk about the thing that really matters to us in our lives -- our Lord and Savior.

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Pork Belly

Wow. Korean BBQ ranks highly up there in my fav foods list. I think this really puts hotpot to shame. No offense to those who enjoy the soup, but really, fried pork with the amazing Korean sauces and rice all wrapped up in lettuce -- it's hard to beat that. But then, after the meal, you're whole body is pretty much drenched in oil so I guess that's the tradeoff.

My good friend Johnny came in town to visit me for a couple of days, and it's nice to see a familiar face when everyone's gone home for Spring Break. Literally, the town feels kinda dead when you're driving and you no longer see students walking on the streets of downtown. I think one of the harder things of being in the "real world" is making that mental shift of not being in college and being in the working world. I think in college, we've established the expectation that we're going to have opportunities to have fun and hang out with people basically whenever. However, much that has changed since working as you'll be lucky enough to even catch glimpses of your roommates. After a while, you begin to feel like you've taken for granted the conveniences of friendship for all these years. You really do have to make a conscious effort to meet and see people because in a blink of an eye, days, weeks, and months go by real quick.

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