My mother stoped by Vancouver and visit me on her way back to Hong Kong. She will stay for 2 weeks this time and another two weeks on her way back to Toronto. I originally planned to go back to Toronto on the X’mas, but couldn’t make it due to Pat’s schedule. It is always nice to have her tasty cooking and have someone clean up my apartment. I am kinda lazy since her last visit. I will only vaccum or dust my place when I absolutely cannot stay it any longer. On average, I think I clean my place every 2 to 3 months. My mom also repairs my clothes, which is a very important skill that Pat lacks. My mom always boast how much time I save while she is here. The reality is there is no big difference. The time I save for not cooking my rudimentary dinner is lost to eat a proper meal at the table. I rarely clean the house, so not much time is save over there. The only real time saver I can think of is doing the laundary that is a task I couldn’t avoid every week.

Today I have my first foosball match with Johnathan Gay’s team. I am partnering with Anson. The tournament has 5 preliminary round, play one game each one, today is the first game. We did quite well today, beat the other team 2-0 games. We could win two games straight, but let them caught up with us with a 4-2 lead. My skill is still on the beginer level. Although I am playing offensive, I still shot the ball backward by mistake sometimes. There are many better than beginner player in the novice league, because the players in the expert are really crazy. There is no way to win a match against those guys who can score before I have a chance to touch the ball. We’ll see how the tournament turns out, my only concern is the foosball may not last that long from the abuse every day. Some plastic players already have stress mark on the legs. It seems everyone who use that foosball table want to be the one who break the first leg.

I had a really bad day today. On my way to work, I hit the curb and resulted in two flat tires on the right side of my car. If it is only 1 flat tire, I could change the spare tire myself, but I couldn’t help when there are 2 flat tires. I called BCAA to tow the car to the nearest tire shop. I was not the BCAA member, so I have to join it right on the spot. I explicitly told them I had 2 flat tires afraid that they will send the service truck instead of the tow truck. I had waited for 45 minutes before the service truck arrived, which can’t provide much help. Then I have to wait for another 30 minutes for the tow truck. The service of both the truck drivers are excellent, they are friendly and very helpful. We all agreed that it is the dispatch center’s fault to send the wrong truck. Luckily my tires are bought at Canadian Tire and have life time warrenty. Can Tire replaced the two unrepariable tires just for $16 warrently fee. Able to saved two hundred dollars for a pair of new tires, I am not too upset at the end of the day.

I have a full day Prep meeting from 9:30a.m. to 3:30p.m. today. Time is so tight that I have to have my lunch in the meeting room, but we still couldn’t finish all the Preps. Prep is the short form of Problem REPorts, which is a database to keep track of all the issues discovered in the design cycle. Before tape-out, which means the chip is done, all the known issues has to be resolved, problems either fixed or dropped. The block I am assigned to is a so-called resuable block, but it is more like salvage code from the previous project. We are going to tape-in in two weeks and it’s time for us to go thru all the open Preps one by one and determine the couse of action for each of them. The meeting is long but productive, I have a better handling of how much work leave for the next two weeks. The only complain is that is very boring. I volutuneered to bring some snacks next time, so we can have chips while talking about chips.

This weekend I had done lots of dancing. Last night was the Okotoberfest dance and dinner at St. Mary. The dinner is just so-so, and there were lots of old folks and Phillipines in the event. There were dance after the dinner, social dance music then followed by disco music. I am not very fond of disco style, but quite interested in ballroom dancing. Me and Pat danced for the few steps we had learnt. Pat forced me to dance the steps we havn’t learnt yet and got me upset. She then apply her psychology skills trying to analyze why I refuse to dance blindlessly without knowing the proper steps. She keep saying it must be related to my shadow that I had fell pretty bad on my very first social dance lesson back in university day. The fall was true, but it is not the reason. I don’t want to dance unknown steps just because it looks stupid. She says I can dance whatever style I like, no one cares about my bad dancing. However she contradicts herself instantly by not letting me dance like Rain, the gay Korean singer.

Today we finally had picked up our social dance lesson again. We learnt the first lessson of Jive. With the help of my new dancing shoes, I am more confidence in dancing. I am ok in remembering the steps and moves, but still very weak in counting beats. I need more to pratice beats counting espeically during complication moves. I can only handle either one.