Haven't posted in a loong time.  Do people still read Xanga entries? 

    This summer's been pretty exciting so far.  I've been able to hang out with lots of different groups of people, and got in plenty of beach trips - everyone knows how much I love the water... 

Celebrated my 24th birthday with the RCCC crew & morningside
                Hillsong concert at Ocean Grove
     Feist Concert
Ocean city with Cornell Philly peeps
          Finally had a Fendarsophell reunion =) with Soph coming up from ATL
                   Ocean city & AC with work folks where I got a nice tan and capsized the kayak riding in from a huge wave and stepped on my coworker's toe with the heel of my shoe.  oops.

And finally, July 6th began my string of work trips to Toronto (July 6 - 9), Memphis (July 9 - 11), and Quebec (July 15 - 20)...

    The first 2 pictures are from Toronto.  The next three are from my hotel in Montreal.  As you can tell, it was amazing - wine and cheese cocktail hour, bathrobe and slippers & umbrella!, living room, music playing when you enter.  I stayed there for one night as I was sight seeing in Old Montreal, which felt just like being in Paris with the tall buildings and narrow cobble stone roads.  The hotel near the mfg. plant 1 hour east of Montreal was also really nice - amazing restaurant, right by the lake, very quaint.  I had a good time for going on a work trip, but I'm glad to be back and I hope to catch up with everyone!

I actually met someone who worked at Xanga recently.....

So it's the night before my Salt Lake City, Utah snowboarding trip, and I should be packing, but I'm so pumped up with caffeine thanks to Dunkin' Doughnuts free ice coffee and some strong cappucino from my classmate's fancy espresso machine.  Caffeine totally makes me hyper and happy, and so does design/being creative haha.  I feel like work has been fun recently because I'm supposed to redefine/improve upon/come up with new processes for the way we handle things, and I'm starting to get more exciting projects where I'm really familiar with the formulation or new stuff to me like SPF formulations or products in the Aveeno Positively Ageless platform. 

Anyways, I'm extra excited because the project we got for class... after the napkin holder activity.... is to design a toy related to food.... so we all went to this one guy's house (he's like older and married and has kids).  But he lives in Brooklyn across from Brooklyn tech in one of those brownstones.  It was the first time I've ever been in one of those brownstones, but I had so much fun with it when I walked in.  First of all, I saw this famous lighting fixture that I love - it's the one with all these papers held with binder clips... cost like $1,000 haha.  And the doorframes and woodwork was really nice... cathedral style.. but they painted everything in really bright colors... light grey blue for the living room and a lime green for the kitchen, and their couch and everything in the living room was a wasabi green, turquoise blue color scheme with minimal accents of orange and reds.  Their kitchen light was this metal strip hanging by three metal cables and different shaped and length crystals/glass hanging from the strip.  I've never been so impressed by someone's home design - totally made me want to just go crazy and make my own space look awesome.  I'll definitely keep this place in mind when I decorate my future house. 

As for the toy design - we're centering our ideas around edible building blocks targeted towards candy makers to make differet shapes of candy that kids can build with.  It's pretty much similar to how we approached the napkin holder design... and now we're thinking about different candies/materials... like starbursts, candy canes, gummies, cookies, chocolate and see what different properties they have and make that all into a building kit.  We can also have edible glue candy and gummy connector pieces... and later extend the line with decorating kits/ ways to personalize it with different colors, make your own pieces in case you lose some pieces.  All these ideas.  haha.  Even if it's stupid, it's a lot of fun, and I feel like it's really nice to just be able to vent all these crazy ideas. 

Haha... oh yea... and the freshmen they're letting in at Cornell are awesome.  There are these two guys doing their externship over spring break at J&J - one's a white guy, and the other is this squirely asian kid.  The following stories are about the asian kid.  Today my coworker from Cornell comes up to me all frazzled, and she's like... omg.. .the one kid follows me everywhere.  He's so unprepared too.  The other day he forgot his wallet, and then he said he forgot the right sized shoes.  And she's like... why does he even own the wrong size shoe??  So he's walking around awkwardly and in pain all day, so my coworker said he could wear his sneakers (dress code at J&J says you shouldn't wear sneakers).  And then ... this part I don't quite understand... but he doesn't have a car, so he's staying at my coworker's house so that she can drive him to work and stuff.  The end of the first day apparently he was like... so is there a train station nearby? haha.  How do you not plan these kinds of things??  Oh Cornell.... what a great school. 

        hello everybody!  Ok ok.... since the previous entry still referred to turkey day, this definitely calls for a new entry. =)  This is going to be a resultingly LONG entry since I have lots to update on.  So get your cup of coffee, kick up your feet and relax. 

                                  This year is off to a great start!  After the 3 months of service, I'm finally singing with the praise band on Sundays, and it's awesome.  I'm really encouraged by the members in pt prayer meetings, and it's just really nice to serve the church. 

                      January 26 - 27th was GCF Retreat - those of you who talked to me knew I was really excited about going back with Not By Sight to serve as praise team for the retreat.  I learned that NBS was started by some cornell alum in 1996 haha... feels like I'm part of something old and giving back to the young GCFers.  But I'm not as established as old people like Tom where this retreat was his 8th time?  yea... think about that one. 

                                       So when I realized how much I was saving up, I was like.. wow, maybe I can spend some real money!  And I was thinking of all this stuff I wanted to buy.... new laptop so my mom can have mine, TV, accoustic/electric guitar, keyboard... maybe pay for my internet at my apt that I stay in all of 3 nights out of the week now !!  And I actually bought an accoustic electric guitar (mostly because my sister bought me the Fast Track M-Audio recording thing for christmas and I couldn't plug in my guitar).  I wanted to post about the beautiful guitar I bought... the Takamine EAN40C which is part of their naturals series.  Sounded great plugged in, but the double back was splitting, so I returned it.  And I felt ok about that, I was ready to move on to better things.  I definitely am in love with the Breedlove AC25/SR Plus. Details to follow on my search for a new guitar.... 

                            Updates on trips I'm taking...............

            Booked my flight for Salt Lake City, Utah.... Beautiful powder snow here I come!!  It'll be the first time I'll be snowboarding out west or.... anything other than east coast snow for that matter.  Last weekend was the Morningside ski trip to Windham, NY.  That made me so excited for going on a real trip (more than 1 day of boarding).  I turned down the trip to Jackson Hole... cuz that place is for skiiers =)  And I'm holding out for some cool places haha.... Like Alaska, or Whistler in 2010 olympics.  Windham was a lot of fun.... although our last run was black or double black diamond with MOGULS!!  I hate you moguls.  But the employee who worked there was awesome.  We were trying to look for an alternate route because we had 3 snowboarders, and the guy was like... WHAT'S WRONG WITH MOGULS?! They're a natural part of the moutain.  And he went on about how we have to learn how to go on Moguls eventually.... and that this wasn't a VIDEOGAME!  haha...

                                              When we were sitting in the cafeteria, I also heard this guy go... "Hey, are you Ellen?  Ellen Huang?" And I'm like... wow... that's not something I ever expect.  And it's actually this kid from my High School!  I've been really bad about keeping in touch with High School folks, but it's interesting that they all still hang out, and it was cool seeing people from my past =)

                                                                                                         Should I visit Vegas?....

        I should update more often... so as to prevent these looong posts where I want to write about all this stuff. Anyways... last but not least, I'm actually taking the class at Pratt for Product Design that I've wanted to take since what... senior year at Cornell.  But I always thought Pratt was too far... it's in Brooklyn.  I wanted to post about this earlier, but I originally signed up for classes at NYU, but classes kept getting canceled, although I just received an ID card from them... and I registered for the class at Pratt, but I never gave my credit card information.... and after the 2nd class... I still haven't paid.... Further proof that Pratt is really ghetto haha... I took a class there before, and you have to enter the amount that they should charge you on the webiste.  The Campus is really ghetto too.  (I'm sure my boss will wonder why she hasn't approve an expense for it haha - thank you work for agreeing to pay for this currently free class).  Oh, I'm liking my job recently too =)  is not so bad. 

               Surprisingly, the commute to Pratt Brooklyn is not that bad at all either.  I can get there in probably less than an hour and a half from work.  I still havent timed it straight from door to door.  Anyways, it's really related to Mat Sci, which makes me happy cuz I've always felt bad about going into design because I'd feel like I wasted my engineering degree.  First assignment for last week was to research an assigned material.  I got concrete, and other materials were wood, rubber, plastic, metal, and ceramic.  The class is about 8 people at most, which is a nice size.  We presented our material and then the next assignment was that all of us had to design a napkin holder out of our material.  We made some quick sketches at the end of class and the assignment for this past Thursday was to come with 10 ideas in the form of drawings and sketch models.  I really like posts with pictures instead of so many words, but typing is definitely faster.  I'll try to post with stuff from class in the future.  Assignment for next week is to flesh out 3 of the 10 ideas in the form of working prototypes out of any material. 

                             And I'll leave this post with saying that Design is awesome ...and can definitely consume all your time.  I wish I was a Studio rat in college.  That's a better way to spend your time than doing boring problem sets where everyone is supposed to come up with the same answers.  No fun in that........

TERKEE TURKEE TURKEY!

I feel like this Holiday season has crept up so fast this year!  I don't even feel like I've had ample time to really get into the spirit of things.  But at the Morningisde Thanksgiving Dinner this past Saturday, the annual question was posed - "What are you thankful for this year?"  It's funny how important those questions are, to remind us to really look past all the mess and confusion that is our daily lives and to take a break and look at life more through God's eyes. 

I think this past year has been one of the most eventful and impactful year of my life.  [awkward sentence, yea?  well, there are plenty of things to improve upon]  Why this year?  If it was just about all the things that happened, good and bad, then I would just say... it's been a crazy year and leave it at that.  But through everything that happened this year, especially the bad, I feel like God has shown me so much love through my friends and all the people I've met, and especially my family.  Ah, such cheese! But seriously!  I feel like I've always been the irresponsible one or the runt of the family .. and I had to like... do more to be what would make them happy...... or whatever other things I've let myself believe.  It's so funny how people build up these perceptions of sitautions and those perceptions dictate the way we live - whether they're even true or not, and most times not.  But I get it now, and I won't question how much my family loves me anymore.  So thank you to my family who doesn't read my xanga entries anyway, and thanks to the girls who have taken care of me like second moms.... fendarsoph, and to the awesome brothers I've gotten to know this year.   

"Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy."  - Psalm 126:5 .... This year has been worth all the tears because of all I've gained, and I'm looking forward to all that God has to teach me in the years to come... learning is fun!... really....

"Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the LORD has been good to you."  - Psalm 116:7

I'm so tired..... I feel like I'm falling apart.... and I think I need to get my wisdom teeth out because the gum might be slightly infected, which might be the cause or part of the reason I'm feeling not so great.  I already got them out on one side... really not liking the idea of having to do it again. 

At work, I've totally been feeling an office space vibe everyday...

Bob1:  So what you do is you take the specifications from the customers and you bring them down to the software engineers?

Tom:  That, that's right.

Bob2:  Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the customers just take the specifications directly to the software people, huh?

So I've been having this on-going battle with my product design partner in oral care.  For example, I ordered the boxes of toothpaste that she needs to label and they are sitting in my cube.

Me: Hey, so I haven't had time to bring them over, but if you need them they're at my cube.

Woman:  Yea, so I'll need 100 samples whenever you can get them to me.

days later....

Woman:  So when the other toothpaste tubes get in, can you let me know? 

Me:  Sure.

Woman:  Then, we'll have all the samples that we need? 

Me:  Yes, like I said, I have some sitting at my cube that you can take to label. 

Woman:  Ok, so I'll need 50 samples each of the new flavors and 80 samples of the current product.

I know that in the same way that she can walk a little to get the samples from me, I can do the same.  But it's just principle of it all!  Why is she so unwilling to DO IT HERSELF?

Another example:

Woman:  Why wasn't this done?!  You got the e-mail at 12:50 pm yesterday.

Me:  I'm sorry, I've been swamped with other projects.  Plus,  it's really not our group's responsibility to handle that. 

Woman:  Then who is responsible?

Me:  It would be X or Y.

Woman:  Well, X and Y are out of the office.  Oh, X left his cell phone number.  Can you call him and tell him we need this done? 

Me:  Um, ok. 

Again.... am I going crazy? or would this not annoy you too?