Japanese Paper Light Parade

So on the first day of my visit to Japan in November, Kaori and Maika took me to a local parade that they have in Okegawa. It was really cool in that all of the "floats" were painted by hand and lit up from the inside. Don't even get me started on all the food stands.

Here is an example of one of the cool "rotating" floats. Most of them were pulled by hand and a lot of them were being pulled by kids (child labor!) so I guess they couldn't have been too heavy, right? There was even one float that had a real cherry tree on it.

Woo Woo!

This is an actual news clip from Oakland. I admit that I haven't seen these whistle tips on any cars in the Bay Area, but I believe that it exists! This video makes me laugh every time I watch it!

Hot Pot at Koi Palace

So we went to dinner last night at Koi Palace. This is one of our favorite dim sum places, but on week nights they have a hot pot dinner that usually leaves us with more than we can eat. Case in point- we generally go with 8 people and order for 6 and we are still stuffed when we leave. It's about $25 per person including tip, but it includes a LOT of seafood like dungeness crab, lobster, sea bass, scallops, and shrimp balls. Of course, they also give you a lot of veggies and some beef and chicken, but I consider that to be pretty standard.

Here's a picture of Mike and Mihu from dinner last night.

Funny T shirt

I saw this T-shirt while I was shopping on Saturday and I just thought it was funny so I took a picture using my camera phone and sent it to my blog. Ah, the wonders of technology!

Let's Fly!

So right before my hand surgery, I was going to take a trapeze class. However, the hand surgery and rehabilitation kind of put a kabosh on that. I'm starting to get that itch though and I think that I may try and arrange a class again now that my hand is fully healed. In the meantime, here's some photos of my last trapeze lesson in NYC near Chelsea Piers. (Yes, that's really me!)

Annual Tahoe Trip

So we've kind of started this tradition of going up to Tahoe for a weekend and renting a cabin. We had a group of 17 crammed into this 3 bedroom house. While most of the gang went snowboarding and skiing, I stayed and hung out in the cabin with Jamie, Greg, and Bhavna though we did meet up with everybody on the slopes for lunch.

Even little Maika was having a fun time in the snow. "Snow! Snow!"

It was a fun time since we also got to celebrate MiHu's birthday. Hmm... how many candles are there on that cake? LOL. Yummy!

As you can see there was also a lot of eating.

There were lots of games played that weekend too. We started with Nertz. Then, a very violent game of spoons- where was Sujay hiding the spoon? Under his leg? Taboo long into the night. And, of course, Boggle. Show Lan was definitely the one to beat. A good round is defined as a round where you have the same number of points as Show.

Happy Birthday, Hannah!

Hannah is turning 2 today. I can't believe that it's already been 2 years. It seems like she was just born yesterday. Does anyone remember what happened to them on their second birthday? I'm having a hard time remembering what I did yesterday...

Oh wait- it's coming back to me now. I sent out this email announcement about the launch of this blog to almost everyone I know and I forgot to include the link. Yikes! Well, now I know who cares about blogs because most of you emailed me to say, "Where is it?" If you found this site on your own, can you tell me how you did it? It's not supposed to be "public." Only to my closest 100 friends... :)

Just reminiscing

I was looking at some old pictures and thought that I would share some of my favorites with you.

This one is from Greg's BBQ a few years back. I just love how happy and relaxed we all look in this picture. Just me and my girls. So sad that Elle and Jinn are now East coasters. :( We miss you guys! See how pretty it is in SF that one day of the year?

Yes, these are my friends. As you can see, they were sympathetic to my plight. And yes, they do have a warped sense of humor. I had to wear that stupid cast for a month! I just love this picture because it shows how crazy and funny you guys are!

No news is good news

Went to the hand specialist today. Nothing to report. Next appointment in 6 months- almost on the anniversary of my surgery.

You take the good, you take the bad...

I think that most people know that I had hand surgery last September. If you didn't know, it's not that I didn't want to share, it's just that it happened so fast, that I didn't really have time. I had discovered a bump on my right hand last May. I had my doctor friend Sujay look at it and he told me that since it wasn't hurting me, it was probably just a fatty deposit or a ganglion cyst. (Ganglion cysts are pretty common and don't necessarily require surgery.) So I didn't really think about it futher until...

In August, I noticed discomfort when I was writing, so I decided to go to my doctor who also thought that it was a ganglion cyst, but recommended that I see a hand specialist. I made an appointment with the specialist in September and he told me that I needed to remove it.

Me: OK, I can just schedule something in the next few months,
right?
Doc: No, I mean next week.
Me: (in shock) How long will I need to take off work? Like a week?
Doc: No, 6-8 weeks.
Me:
WHAT????!!!!

So, it turns out that it is a spindle cell fibrous tumor. Whatever that means... I kept asking him if it was cancerous and didn't really get a straight answer. (I'm guessing a lot of people tend to freak out when they hear cancer.) But I just wanted to know. Here was one of our conversations.

Me: So is the tumor benign?
Doc: No.
Me: So it's malignant?
Doc: Well, there are different kinds of tumors...

Prognosis: He did tell me that the tumor would not spread to other body parts. There's a possibility that it would return to my right hand, but it's unlikely.

After the surgery, it was hard for me to do the simplest things. Here's a couple of prime examples:

1. Wearing pants- the only pants that I could wear were the kind with an elastic wasteband. Sure, Edwin could help me button my pants if I was home. But if we were out and I had to go to the bathroom by myself, it could have gotten real ugly.
2. Writing/typing- Stupid things like signing receipts became kind of a hassle, but I did improve my ability to write with my left hand.
3. Eating- Silly as this may sound. I think I stained all of my T-shirts because I kept missing my mouth trying to eat with my left hand. (I could also only wear T-shirts for 3 weeks because they were the only clothes that could fit over my cast.) And forget about using chopsticks!

So, yeah, it was kind of a scary time for me, but also kinda good. There were definitely some positive things about this experience for me and it definitely reinforces to me that God does work in mysterious ways and that with everything bad thing, there comes some good. Not being able to use my right hand made me realize that I can and should slow down. I've always said that work isn't the most important thing in life. But having to stop work almost immediately, made me realize that the work will get done with or without me. You always think that everything will come crashing down when you stop working, but now I know that that doesn't happen. Life goes on. As I like to say at work, "No one ever died because we didn't get that survey out today."

It also reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses- Matthew 6:34. "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

The other awesome thing that would not have happened if I didn't have a tumor in my hand is that I would not have gone to Japan for 10 days. I loved Japan. My friend Kaori had already planned to be in Japan to visit her family in Okegawa. She generously offered to let me stay with her family while she was there. Edwin donated his miles to me so that I could go for free. So, I had housing and plane fare taken care of, and I had the time off with nothing to do. Any objections? I don't think so! Anyway, I think that I will leave the tales of adventures in Japan for another day. To sign off, I think I will leave you with a picture of how my hand looks now that it is 95% back to normal. (Yeah! No more hand therapy!) For a picture of me in my cast, see our profile picture above.

Russell Peters Fan Club

Russell Peters is hilarious! He is Indian, but has one of the best Cantonese accents I have ever heard in my life. Check out this video clip- it's totally classic! This is my favorite.

Bubbles!

So this is a pic of my cute little niece Hannah with her dad Alex. Edwin and I went to take care of her last month while her brother Timothy was born. While we were there, I taught her how to blow bubbles and she loves it! Anyway, just wanted to share because it shows that I'm an awesome aunt!

Guess she must like Edwin too since I hear that she keeps asking for him. This is a conversation that Laura told me she had with Hannah after we left.

Hannah: Edwin?
Laura: Edwin went home.
Hannah: Edwin?
Laura: You mean Michelle?
Hannah: No. Edwin.

Sounds like Edwin needs to start changing her poopy diapers instead of me.

So here's cute little Timothy in his baby burrito. He looks a little surprised in this pic, but I think that maybe we just caught him pre-yawn. Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend a lot of time with him because we had to go home the day after he came home.

Things we learned while taking care of Hannah:

1. The lyrics to "Hot Potato, Hot Potato!"
2. Don't get off the schedule. It's not pretty and NOBODY is happy.
3. According to Edwin, there were monkeys on Old McDonald's Farm. (You should ask him for his rendition!)
4. Do not seat Hannah in front of the play area if you want her to eat.
5. She likes Morrisey. What can we say? She's advanced for her age.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Blogging!

So for most people, blogging is old news. I really was trying to avoid having my own for the longest time. Not because I didn't think it was cool, but more because I was afraid of the commitment. Commitment, you say? Well, I kinda already feel like I spend WAY too much time on the internet for work, emails, IM, shopping, and searching. How much more time do I really need to spend sitting in front of a computer?

Why change now? Well, I'm not sure. I think it's a combination of things.

1. I started looking at some of the blogs that my friends have already set up and realized that I was able to catch up on stuff that has happened to them over the past year. I've always been pretty good about trying to keep in touch, but this is another way people can keep in touch with me.
2. I've realized that I have a short memory. I love to document places that I've seen, books that I've read, and pictures that I have taken. However, my feeble mind seems to have trouble even remembering what I've had for lunch so I'd like to use this blog to be able to remember and document some of the interesting things that I've discovered.
3. I haven't updated my photo albums. Since we purchased a digital camera, I have yet yet to print out photos that end up in an album. I think at last count I have about 10 unused, brand new, really cute photo albums. Just the thought of having to print out pictures from 2000 (when we got our first digital camera) and trying to remember what we were doing/thinking about in those pictures has me in a state of despair.

So here I am. Been checking out blogs all night and should be going to bed. Where did the time go?