I am flying down to San Jose on unplanned business trip. One of the designer down there is leaving the company, and he holds some critical information of the project we are working on. So the company fly three of us down to SJ to get as much knowledge out of him as we can get before he disappear. The trip is really rush, fly down today on the earliest flight and fly back to Vancouver tomorrow evening. The flight this morning is brutal. I had to wake up at 4a.m. to catch the 7a.m. flight. Today is very unproductive, since I am all drowsy in the meeting due to depletion of sleep. Next time, if anything trip like this come up, I will definitely fly down the night before and have a good sleep. Too bad I only got 1 night here in SJ, I can couldn’t meet all the friends I have. I can only pick someone haven’t seen for a long time to have dinner with tonight. When we arrived, two of us from Vancouver suppose to meet up with another person come down from Saskatoon. We planned to meet at the car rental booth, but he didn’t show up after a long wait. We tried to phone the airline and find out whether he made it down to SFO. It turned out that his flight did arrive on time, but airport computer system screwed up and the plane is sitting on the taxi way for an hour. It would be more informative if the computer system actually tell us the plane has arrived but the passenger cannot get off yet. We had go around the airport twice trying to locate him, luckily he eventually show up at the car rental.
Return of Pat
Finally Pat will come back to Vancouver tomorrow and I can be relief from the duty of taking care of Charlie. I miss my own place and my bed. I have been taking good care of Charlie. I walked him everyday and play fetch the ball with him on weekends. I even give him a field trip, bought him along to a friend’s BBQ party in Richmond. Sometimes I wish the dog can be more obedience, especially when I am walking him, but in general he is a good boy. Charlie is pretty smart, when his bowl runs out of water or he wants to go out to pee at night, he will poke me with his nose. I think we are going along pretty well, so it won’t be a problem of becoming his step-father.
WYD fund raising
Finally I know the amount we got for the WYD fund raising after several months of hard work. Each person will get roughly $500 from St. Paul in check. The group leader had keep tracked of the number of hours spent by each person, and in total I had spent about 40 hours. This translates into hourly wage of about $12, about 50% higher than the minimum wage at McDonalds. Although I still think it doesn’t worth the effort to raise money for myself, but the extra $500 will definitely help my bottom line of this trip. I think I will contribute this money to my new camera. I hope 2.5Gb of flash memory shared between me and Pat would be enough for 3 weeks in France and Germany.
Wedding
Today must be a good day in Chinese calender. I know two couples from church pick the today for their wedding. I couldn’t go to both of their ceremony, so I have to choose between them. The one I went to is pretty standard, marriage mass at St. Helen then banquet at Metrotown. The banquet surprisingly short, we finished all the dishes at 9:30p.m. There is nothing worth to mention in the wedding, except I don’t expect to see my cousin there. One thing I had noticed is when the bride and groom are playing games, it is better to have give them a mic, so it is more interactive. The audience are out of touch with the game just by the description of the mc.
After the wedding, I joined friends from work for poker game. I was practicing a new trick tonight. Now I can shuffle chips using single hand, like the professional players in poker show on TV. It is kinda useless, but fun, even more fun than the poker game itself.
Left or right
When I am searching for power socket format used in Europe, I came across an interesting article on origin of driving direction. Some countries drive on the left hand side of the road, which is Japan, UK and its former colonies, and the rest of the world drive on the right hand side. Driving on the left hand side actually makes sense and it can be dated back to pre-automobile days. Knights are usually riding on the left side on the road, so that their sword using arm is closer to incoming enemies. Moreover they carry the sword on the left hand side, so it is easier to mount or dismount the horse from the left. It is more natural to get off the horse to the side of the road rather than towards the center of the street. Thus riding and driving on the left hand side of the road is a symbol of the noble class, where the presents leave to walk on the right side of the road. When revolution came in France and US, the people want to distinguish themselves from the old royal system, therefore driving on the right became the rule. Sometimes illogical choices due to political ideology would stay and affect our life for a long time.
The article can be found at this link.