Fart -vs- Smoke
I think I was on the street sometime last week and I had to fart and saw somebody who was smoking in front of me.  Then a random thought came to my mind, if you had to be trapped inside a room for a minute either full of smoke of full of fart, which one would you choose?  I don’t know the science beside the harmfulness of smelling excessive amount of fart, but I imagine that most people would opt for room full of smoke rather than fart since even though I would guess that the smoke would be more harmful than the fart.  People usually stick to what they’re familiar with….unless of course, you’re one of the unfortunately individuals who have lived through an elevator accident.

Admission is the First Step…
It is said that the first step to recover is admitting that you have a problem.  I, Shun Tung Lam, am a Starbucksholic.  Thanks Eric.  haha.  Oh, and put basketball marathon on that list as well.

Dr. Phil
I’ve been reading Dr. Phil’s Life Strategies book, and I must say that I am pretty impressed with the concepts in there.  They are very psychological based.  One concept is that individuals continue their bad habits because there is a payoff that they are getting from doing that bad habit.  For example, Dr. Phil mentions a positive and loving couple that had a younger daughter and an older boy.  The daughter was born with a lot of health problems, but the couple stayed positive and made the best of the situation.  Then one day, the daughter’s health problems suddenly worsen and she passed away.  After the incident, the couple became depressed and fought a lot.  They were no longer the loving and positive people that they were before.  After the incident, the couple also became extremely cold towards the son to the point that they no longer showed any affection for their son.  When the couple went to Dr. Phil for help, they couldn’t example why they were so distance from the son.  It was then that Dr. Phil made them realized that their bad habit of being cold towards the son had a payoff.  The payoff is that by being distance from the son, the couple would not have to experience the same kind of pain that they went through when they lost their daughter.  However, unlike the daughter who was born with health problems, the son was a normal healthy boy.  I thought this example in the boy really gave me a good insight into why certain individuals knowingly engage in bad habits...myself included.

Horoscopes – Don’t believe in them
This past weekend, specifically, Saturday was one of the worst days that I’ve had since going on my leave of absence.  Whoever said that bad things come in threes is right on the dot for the events of this past Saturday.  On Saturday morning, I rented a truck from Enterprise to pick up a queen size mattress plus mattress box from my family friend who had recently graduated and is planning to move back to HK.  Unfortunately, when Enterprise gave me the truck, they gave me one of those four seater trucks with very small trunk space.  I was afraid that the limited trunk space would not be able to hold the queen size mattress plus the mattress box, but the receptionist ensured me that it should be fine, “Customers use that truck to pick up mattresses all the time,” she told me.  She sounded convincing enough, so I went ahead and headed over to Castro Valley.  It was my first time driving a large vehicle, so I took my sweet time on the freeway to be safe. 

When I got to Castro Valley, my family friend helped me put the mattress and mattress box in the trunk.  The mattress + box didn’t completely fit inside the small trunk, so we had to lean the mattress against the back of the front of the truck.  Unfortunately, that meant my rearview mirror would be blocked, but I thought it was OK as the side mirrors were huge and should be able to compensate.  After saying our farewells, I was off on my journey back to SF.

About a minute into the freeway, I see a car pull up next to me and the driver starts to go crazy honking like crazy.  At first I ignore him as I thought he could have been a potential serial rapist.  Then I thought hard and decided to take my chances and rolled down my window to see what he wanted.  He tells me that my mattress flew off back near the entrance.  I look at my rearview mirror and notice that the mattress box is still there, but suddenly remembered that the mattress is extremely light and should have been on the bottom, underneath the heavier mattress box.

So I took the next exit to roll around to backtrack and pick up my fallen mattress.  As I got on the other side of the freeway heading towards the opposite direction of where I had just dropped my mattress, I step on the gas, in a hurry to pick up my fallen mattress that is blocking the freeway entrance on the other side.  Less than a second after I hit the gas, I watched from my rearview mirror as the mattress box flies back and nearly hits the car behind me.  Luckily, the car wisely did not follow too closely and was able to avoid the flying projectile that I sent her way.  So by this time I had a mattress on one side of the freeway and a mattress box on the other side of the freeway.  By this point, I was so stressed and fed up that I thinking to myself whether I should just abandon this journey and head back to SF and forget about the fallen mattress and box.

By the time I finally pulled over after the mattress BOX fell out, I was a good 40 feet in front of it.  I first tried running back to the mattress box to see if I can just carry it to the car.  Unfortunately, I overestimated my own strength as I was only able to barely lean it against the freeway wall.  So I went back to the truck, put on the emergency lights and slowly backed up to where the mattress box was.  With all of my strength, I pushed the mattress box back up to the trunk of the truck.  As I was pushing the mattress box back into place, I hear a loud voice through some kind of car speaker behind me say, “Are you going to be OK?”  I was surprised by the loud sound and froze in my tracks.  I turned around, and it was the cops starring at me through their cop car.  At that moment, I felt like I had just caught red-handed stealing a mattress that was abandoned on the side of the freeway.

Not knowing whether I was in trouble or not, I decided to take the honest route and go up to the cops before they had an opportunity to do anything else and told me that there is also a mattress on the other side of the freeway.  They told me they knew, because somebody had called.  Fortunately for me, I didn’t act on my impulse of just ditching everything to head back to SF as the cops would have probably tracked me down.  Like my friend Pat said, “It’s not hard to track down an Asian guy in a big (white) truck.”

The cops were actually quite helpful and helped me with move the mattress back into the trunk.  He also wisely notified me that I should place the mattress + box so that the ends of them would stick out from the back of the truck so that it was more aerodynamic and wouldn’t fly off as easily.  With my newfound knowledge, I was able to finally make it back to SF with a slightly damaged mattress.

Remember I mentioned that bad things come in threes?  Well, after I came back to SF, I saw a friend who was walking his dogs and I went up to talk to him.  As I was talking to the friend, one of his dogs decided to mark me as his territory.  Luckily, I was able to react fast enough to avoid his conquest…but I think some still got on my shoes though because when my sister’s dog saw me later on, she started to sniff my shoes.  That was #2.

Wow...that was quite a day.  I felt quite a few emotions today: stressed, panic, scared, annoyed, surprised, sad, angry, bitterness, happy, numb...but like Tiff's bf said, "Tomorrow is a new day."  K, time for bed.  Can't wait for tomorrow.  haha.

Random Quote
Here is a random quote from the movie Catch Me If You Can:

"There were 2 mice that fell on a cup of milk. The first one died instantly. The second one didn't give up that easily, until he learned how to turn the milk into a butter and escaped alive." 

I really like this quote, because I see myself as the mouse that turned milk into butter.  Yeah...random.

Sutter
I finally got a chance to watch the scary movie Sutter.  Unfortunately, the movie did not live up to the hype.  The movie did not really have too many scary moments, and it played on many of the same scenes as previous scary movies such as a person sitting in a chair with their back facing you and you turn the chair to realize they're dead.  One good part of the movie (Warning!! -- Spoiler) is the whole realization that reason why the main character was having neck pains throughout the whole movie was that the ghost of his ex-girlfriend was literally sitting on him throughout the whole movie.  I thought that was very clever and cool (for a lack of a better word).  Man, it's been a looong time since i've seen a really scary movie.  Maybe i'll download Brokeback Mountain and watch that...

Books
Since my last blog, I read two more books: For One More Day and Who Moved My Cheese.  They were both OK books with decent stories and good lessons.  Both pretty quick reads (for normal people that do not read as slow as I), so i would recommend them.  Right now I'm reading Dr. Phil's bestseller Life Stratgies.  Hopefully I can continue my progress of strengthening my mind.  As for the body?  I think I found a lifting buddy for at least the next month and a half before I head back to work.  Now who wants to be my study buddy?

Sister, Sister…
This past week was my two older sisters’ birthdays.  Last year we didn’t get to celebrate it together because I was in the motherland, so I made up for it this year by surprising both with a little special something.  On Monday (my second oldest sister’s birthday), my older sister and I drove down to Fremont to surprise her with a birthday cake and clothes.  It took a lot of coordination with the boyfriend to keep my sister home so that we could be at the door with the whole candle and cake surprise. 

haha, funny picture.

For my oldest sister, I originally had nothing planned because her friends already made plans to take her on a road trip on her birthday…that and also because she had already bought herself some nice presents with my card.  Although an opportunity came up when I found out that her Thursday movie plans to watch Sex and the City fell through.  I immediately went to action and called up one of her close friends, Anna, and bought 3 tickets to watch that night’s showing of Sex and the City.  Considering that I have never watched an episode of S&C before the movie, I have to admit that I was surprised that it was pretty good.

Too much sun!
I feel like over the span of the last 3 days, I have absorbed more Vitamin D from the Sun than I have in all of Jan-May.  As I’m typing this, I am looking at my forearms, and they are both red.  On Saturday, I took a few friends biking to Sausalito.  It was a pretty fun trip, but unfortunately a friend suffered minor injuries from the trip.  Today, I was invited by another friend to a BBQ at the Marina.  Got a chance to play some football…man, I miss competitive sports already.

Speaking of Competitive Sports
Unfortunately, my company’s basketball team lost in the first round of the playoffs.  Although I can hold my head up high because we only lost by 2 points despite playing with 4 guys on the court the whole game.

The Secret
No, this post is not about a secret of mine, but rather, it is about the book that I just finished reading called The Secret…which I believe was featured on Oprah’s talk show?  Even though the book is somewhat repetitive, the lesson in there is an important one.  The main lesson of the book is that we can achieve anything we want as long as we truly believe in ourselves.  There is an analogy in the book which I really liked.  The books talks about the story of the genie.  If you traced the story back to its origins, the genie does not merely allow a person to grant 3 wishes, instead, the original story says that the wishes are unlimited.  The book compares the genie as the Universe, and whatever you ask of the Universe, you will receive.  However, in order to achieve this, a person has to constantly monitor his or her thoughts to ensure that one is only thinking positive thoughts that will lead you to your goal. 

I have realized that the concept of monitoring my own thoughts is vital in order to stay positive through hard times.  I mean, in reality…the person you talk to the MOST on a daily basis is…YOU.  If you’re always talking negative about yourself…to yourself, then those feelings are going to project outward via YOU.  So ever since reading the book, I’ve been trying to monitor my thoughts more…for example, whenever I start thinking negatively about something, I tell myself (not outloud): “You stupid piece of S*@#, stop talking negative to yourself Gosh Dan It!  Why the F@#$ do you always do this to yourself.”  =D

Random Pictures
I took this picture on Muni as I was riding to my playoff game.  It reminded me of when I was little and my mom carried me on that same kind of wrap.  I’m not sure if it’s normal for somebody to remember things when they are so young, but I still have this vivid memory of myself strapped behind my mom as a baby going to the markets in Hong Kong.



I have always disliked the idea of people walking around with this iPods on the street because when you call their name, they don’t hear a thing.  This picture from TIMES captures my feelings perfectly:



Here is a random poster I found sitting in one of the empty cubicles of a floor that lost more than half of their employees from layoffs: