The Power of 7

I can't believe Barbara and Georgi tagged me for 2 different Memes in the same post! Is that even legal? Oh boy, I better clear off some old Memes off my plate before I tackle these new ones. FIFO.

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Surely I must win the prize for slowest person in the world to respond to Meme tags. Claudia tagged me for The Power of 7 back in Feb 2008. So I chipped away at my responses until I came up with seven things. It took me a while. It was tough! It's hard to think of something that I haven't blogged about before, and there really isn't much interesting stuff I can say about myself.

Then a few days ago, I noticed the "drafts" link in Blogger and clicked on it. Oh my, I had no idea there were so many old draft posts! And one of them was titled "7 Random Facts" from July 2007 which I started because Karin tagged be back in May 2007!!! So what I am doing is amalgamating my responses from that post into this one. This means there are more than seven items listed below. Hope that doesn't throw you off.

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1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


1. I have a hard time watching TV/DVD/movies without close captioning turned on.

I used to be able to watch stuff without CC, now I depend on it. I started turning on CC on my TV after Miss M was born, so that I could watch stuff on mute while holding her when she slept. I also started to turn on CC/subtitles when watching DVDs too (which really helps when you want to catch all the names while watching The Lord of the Rings), even English language movies. Now I find it difficult to follow programs/movies when there is no CC/subtitle option.

2. I prefer flipping through books/magazines backwards.

I mean, using my left hand to flip the pages from back cover towards front cover as you would do for a Chinese book (although I don't read Chinese). Now I don't mean reading English novels backwards, I still read those from front cover to back cover. But I'll flip through books like my knitting stitch dictionaries from back to front, it just seems easier to me. I also do the same with magazines, flipping backwards until I find an interesting article, and then read the article going forward of course.

3. I spend too much time planning out potential comfort stops on road trips.

It's almost anal. I make two lists, one for potential eateries and one for potential restroom stops, anywhere along the way between home and destination. It's rather time consuming when you're not familiar with the places along the way. Most of it is done by searching for big name/chain type stores/restaurants.

The restroom stops are more important to me since I have a micturition issue and suffer from the "small body, small bladder" problem. And I need to find a fairly decent restroom. That public restroom at that gas station (Beacon? Now Valero?) in the middle of nowhere on Hwy 1 somewhere between Capitola and Monterey does not qualify. Sorry, I can never remember the name of the gas station or what town it is in, but it is on the west side of the highway. The drive between San Francisco and Monterey used to be so painful until I discovered the mall at the 41st street exit of Capitola. Restrooms. Starbucks Coffee. And Marie Callender's, a good place to eat with Miss M. You never would have guessed the mall was there unless you were local because it's not right next to the highway and there are no signs advertising it.



4. I wore a robot costume for a video game photo with the developers of a Sega Genesis game.

In the early 90's, I worked for a small company (and I really mean small where the staff numbers varied between about 5 and 20 over the almost 5 years that I worked there) who had a contract with Electronic Arts to work on the Sega Genesis game B.O.B The Paranoid Android. They had a costume made, and the owner/developers wanted to do a photo with the B.O.B. costume. I can't recall what it was for, perhaps it was for the game insert. The costume was so small that I was the only person petite enough to wear it.

The company was two sided, one software side, one gaming side. After working for such a small company with it's financial vicissitudes, I have to say that I was very happy to move to a more stable medium size company after the company collapsed (especially after not being paid for the last few months of work at this small company, and other more sordid details; it's a long story and not appropriate for this blog).


5. I use the (chess piece) knight's move to choose eggs in my carton, especially with a carton of 18 or 24 eggs.

Nope, I can't go sequentially down a row or column. It makes the carton feel unbalanced when I pull it out of the fridge. The carton is more balanced when I randomly choose eggs out of it.


6. I rarely wear high heels.

I can remember the last time I wore heels. It was Sept 2005 for a friend's wedding. And before that it would have been my wedding reception in March 2003 (gosh, has it really been that long?). My wedding was actually in November 2004, it was a very small affair with immediate family and close friends. But the in-laws wanted a big "thing", so we had a Chinese wedding banquet (dinner). I think it was just all "show" for their friends, since 80% of the guests were theirs. DH & I didn't really know these people. It was quite stressful to plan this thing and I have to say weddings are much more fun as a guest. I cannot tell you what dishes were on the menu either because we seemed to spend most of the time roaming the floor greeting everyone, and in my case, changing outfits (which is a Chinese tradition at weddings).

Chinese dinner banquets can be fun for those who have never been to one. There are 8 or more dishes served family style. It is a great way to try different dishes. Dishes are often chosen for their good meaning. I've gone to so many of these banquets in the past that they all seem pretty much the same, despite slight variations in the dishes. Dishes you are likely to find at one of these dinners include some sort of cold appetizer plate (meats, jellyfish, etc), shark's fin soup, peking duck, lobster, fish, roast pig, chicken (or other bird), veggie dish with mushrooms and/or sea cucumber. For dessert, you may get some sort of bean-like soup, bun filled with sweet paste, as well as the wedding cake. Oh, I forgot rice. Of course there is rice, but it's better not stuff yourself with rice and save room for all the other food. ;-) It is not unusual to have a noodle dish at a (usually much older person's) birthday banquet; they symbolize long life.

So anyhow, back to foot apparel. I'm pretty much in casual shoes, usually Josef Seibel shoes. I put on a pair aeons ago and they were so comfy. I've worn several different styles from this shoe maker. Stick with what works is what I say. The only challenge is finding my size in stock (size 36). My daily shoe looks like this:

and on warmer days I might wear this:



7. I met my husband in college.

We were both taking a boring computer course, one of those introductory ones where they tried to teach you 4 languages in one quarter (we were on the shorter quarter system, not a semester system). I distinctly recall this course. Of the 4 languages they tried to teach us, they taught C during the last couple of weeks of the quarter. Well, that did not help me when I was also taking a Database course (boring!) which required programming with C. So I pretty much gave myself a crash course in C, and knew it pretty well by the time we got to C in that introductory language class.

Anyhow, we didn't actually meet first in class. He actually fingered me first. Doesn't that sound obscene? Well, it's not what you're thinking. When you finger someone (it's a UNIX command) it'll display what you have written in a .plan file which you keep in your home directory. Can't recall what was in my .plan file, but it must have been interesting enough for him to notice me. :-)

8. I absolutely must have a glass of water (or tea) at my bedside when I go to bed.

It's just not right if the water isn't there. When I wake up in the middle of the night and want a sip of water, I do not want to have to get out of bed to get it.

9. I don't eat fu gua, literally translated as "bitter melon".

Yuck. Although you'll often find little old ladies buying this stuff by the boatloads. I don't like brussels sprouts either, however I might eat it if Gerald Hirigoyen cooked it. (I have one of his cookbooks which he signed when I used to eat at Fringale, in a previous lifetime)

10. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ..... I used to write messages in morse code.

Yeah, I used to be a bit eccentric; I don't do this anymore.

11. I am unable to learn new languages.

I've attempted to learn several languages, I just don't get very far in them. I've taken about 12 years of English and still find articulating difficult, however it is slowly improving these days now that I am no longer spouting baby babble and actually getting to use simple sentences with Miss M. :-) I've had 3 years of French in high school, still can't speak fluently or comprehend someone speaking French. However I can probably manage reading text if I have several books/online resources at my disposal. I took 1 quarter of Italian in college, but don't remember any of it since I was so bogged down with a Computer Graphics course that really should have been 12 units (instead of 4, or was it 3? units) with the amount of time/work we put into it. And I don't even remember how many courses of Cantonese I took, but that doesn't count since it was way too easy for me (because my family speaks it). I thought about learning Russian during my freshman year in college, however nothing materialized. I've dabbled in Latin for a few months, Mandarin & Japanese for 10 minutes, and Irish for 5 seconds (when I attempted to send text pages to someone).

12. My college GPA ranged from a high of 3.75 to a low of 1.92.

I discovered this when I went through a lot of old paperwork in preparation for our house move. I stumbled upon some old college report cards. I didn't have a complete collection, so this range only comes from the ones I found.

Well there you have it. Are you bored out of your skull now?

If you'd like to play, please leave a comment with your blog url so I can visit and read your post. Besides, I love discovering new blogs. :-) Blog reading is improving on this end as I am learning to get more organized.


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