Today’s my mom’s birthday!  I can’t believe a year has come and gone.  I remember this time last year she wasn’t here, so we didn’t really celebrate.  This year I’ll be going back to see her later in the week and hopefully we can get a nice dinner in before resting up for an early flight that she’ll need to catch.  Soon, I’ll have my birthday too.  My how it all flashes by!

I feel like there hasn’t been that much to pace my life by, since a work day is pretty predictable.  I’m nearing two years of employment at my company and so much has changed, yet the pattern of each day makes things blend a lot more than during my school years.  Within the next year or two I’ll be changing all of that though – it’s about time for a shift in my life.  Going back to school will offer me a change in scenery and pace of life.  I always enjoy shaking things up a bit!

For now I’ll just prepare for that next stage and marvel that in 2012, my parents will be twice my age!  Has it really taken that long to get to this point?  Sometimes I feel older than I am, but of course there is still so much more to grow.

This year is the first time I’m filing taxes with a real job, complete with W-2, credits, deductions, and all that jazz.  I’ve been avoiding it, like most of the country probably is, but my mom sat down with me to go over it step by step in TurboTax and though it was a bit tedious, thankfully my taxes are still very simple.  Ultimately it turned out great though, since I’m getting some tax returns!

Watching the amount for my federal and state tax returns go up and down depending on certain items I added in was kind of cool.  It’s like watching slot machine 7s fall into place.  I like how that effect almost turned doing my taxes into a game.  Certainly everything’s better as a game!  But then again, it turns out to be so much better that this isn’t a game, since the money I get back will be real and not some virtual currency.

It can get kind of stressful though, since I worry that I missed something that will really affect my return.  This early on it doesn’t really matter since I just qualify for a standard federal deduction amount, but later on when things are itemized, every bit counts…  For now I will just rejoice in the fact that filing my returns this year will be quite quick and painless.  Soon enough I’ll have my returns and I can revel in the pleasure of getting money back from Uncle Sam.

Today was my dad’s birthday and the first one where my parents and I have been united in awhile.  To celebrate, we went out to an Asian buffet, which we discovered actually offers you a free meal for your birthday!  Even better.  :)  It was nice to spend a quiet weekend with them and spend some time just hanging out at home.  Days like that are few and far between now.  Though we don’t really do much, it’s comforting just to have them sitting in the next room.  And there’s something about being in the house that makes me want to move around, which is great for my health!

Branching off from my description of generational gaps in my family…

For my parents in particular, my maternal grandmother heard of my dad through the wife of a professor at the local university, which is where my parents both went to school.  My maternal grandfather was also a professor at the school and his professor buddy had my dad as a student.  Through the women talking, my grandmother learned that this young man was the professor’s star student and first in his class.  My parents were introduced to each other and my grandfather approved without ever meeting the young man.  All he had to know was that he was a hard worker and an excellent student.  My grandmother, on the other hand, wanted to meet and get to know this potential suitor.  As the legend goes, she sat him down for an interview (probably mostly asking about academics and his professional future) and liked him as well.  My mom decided that of the guys she’d been introduced to, she liked this one the most, and so they were married.  Or something like that.

It turned out to be a great decision, since my dad was smart enough to be allowed to leave China, which was a bit of a mess back in those years.  The country had been in lock down and it was extremely hard to get out.  My dad got into a PhD program at Penn State, which is what took him abroad.  About six months before I was born, he left for the land of the free and began his studies.  A year later, when I was a few months old, my mom followed suit, going to Penn State for her Master’s.  I was left with relatives in China and I believe my paternal grandmother was mostly in charge of raising me those years.  By the time I was three and a half, my parents had saved up enough money to fly me over.

I don’t remember much from those years, but I did have one strong memory from the plane ride, about the lady who escorted me from my family in China to my parents in America.  I have also been told by my mother that when I first arrived, I refused to let my dad sleep in the bed.  After all, it really was like meeting them for the first time – my dad had never seen me before and my mom had only been with me for about half a year.  My mom attributes this behavior to a child’s need to cling to one adult they trust.  Apparently between my parents, I chose my mother.  So I clung to her and slept with her, but initially wouldn’t allow my dad to share the space.  Poor guy must have had a couple of rough nights camping out on the couch or something.

And so that is how I spent the first couple of years of my life.  Most of it’s a blur and photography was too expensive back then to have many pictures capturing my toddler years.  The few I do have are quite amusing, with me all bundled up in winter clothes with a red dot on my forehead, or hanging out in a crib with my cousins standing around me.  Perhaps I’ll dig those up someday and share them too.

I spent a lovely holiday with Panda’s family having a BBQ, then going home to enjoy the night with my mom, but along the way, some strange things caught my attention.

It all started on my drive back home after spending the day at his family’s.  I noticed on the opposite side of the freeway, a silver/gray Honda type vehicle on the side of the road, left side tilted up and that front wheel still spinning.  Apparently it had hit a pole of some sort, which seemed to be the thing propping it up at that strange angle.  The front of the car had a dent in the middle, with smoke coming out of the hood.  It was a bizarre thing to see and I almost didn’t believe it, what with all the TV show crime and accident scenes I’ve been seeing.  As I passed by, the driver’s side door opened slowly (remember that the car was tilted on its side, so gravity was working against them) and I saw an arm or a leg push out.  As I contemplated whether or not I should exit and turn around, I noticed an SUV type vehicle pull over.  It looked like they were getting help, so I continued on my way, but puzzled about that incident the entire drive home.

Then when I exited from the freeway and began to drive through my town, I noticed groups of people camped out on the lawns of businesses.  It seems that they wanted to get a really good view of the fireworks that night, which I think were coming from the town center or the nearby amusement park.  A couple of lanes of the road had been blocked off, which made no sense to me, since there was nothing there.  The right-turn lane of the street I was on was blocked off, but traffic going in that direction wasn’t stopped, so I couldn’t figure out why coned it off!  How bizarre.  Were they saving room on the streets for patrol cars to use later?  Were they actually going to block off all the roads in that area closer to the time the fireworks were due to start?  Were they going to allow people to use the road to camp out too?  Or maybe they were getting ready to set up traffic stops and sobriety checkpoints?  Who knows.

Finally, I passed by our postal office and noticed that the flag was at half-mast.  Pondering the situation, I couldn’t come up with any explanation as to why that could be.  Independence Day is a holiday of celebrations, not commemoration, like Memorial Day would be.  So it couldn’t be due to that.  I figured someone must have died, but I wondered if it was a local thing or national thing.  When I made it home, I did some digging around and discovered that President Obama ordered flags at half-mast for a couple of days, to commemorate the late Senator Robert Byrd.  I hadn’t really heard of the man, so I wonder if they always lower the flag for Senators or if this man was a particularly special one.  Apparently it was supposed to be raised to full mast for today (after all, it is a happy holiday), but seeing as postal workers are all off, it’s no surprise they just left it.  Makes it easier, since it’s to be half-mast for Monday and Tuesday anyway.

And there you have it, a 50-minute drive full of peculiar things that I just about managed to figure out.  This is how my curious mind works.

My mom lectured me about smart financial moves today and though I was tired and didn’t really want to think about it, she makes a good point.   I can save a lot of money if I take advantage of tax breaks, save and invest wisely, and limit my spending.   At this point, I don’t really want to think about it and plan for it, but it really is the time to start as I get a steady paycheck.  Unfortunately (and despite one of my majors being Economics), I’m not really interested in the financial field and have little patience for all the complexities of it.   At the same time, I can save a lot of money by knowing how to handle my money smartly and not pay a financial advisor to figure that out for me.

It’s a bit of a dilemma because I just don’t have the interest, but the stakes are pretty high and the ultimate benefits do warrant a closer look.  As of now I’ve been letting my Roth IRA money sit there, whiling away, but what I need to do is invest it in a somewhat aggressive mutual fund or index or something.  There are many other things to do, such as figure what areas of tax avoidance I can take advantage of (note that that’s not the same as tax evasion, which is illegal).  I need to put in a lot of time and effort into this area, but I just don’t have the interest.  I wish I could just let someone else handle it, but why spend good money on something I can learn myself?

At least if I start early in my working life (like now), I’ll be setting myself up for a better future that will be able to ride out the periodic financial downs.  I just wish it wasn’t so complicated.

Happy Mother’s Day to those who qualify.  :-P

As we get bombarded by flower, jewelry, and and plenty of “pamper her” offers, let’s not forget that none of that really means as much as time spent together.  The mother who has spent so many years giving her time and energy raising you probably needs no more in return than attention and love given back to her.  Though giving things is a popular way of showing affection, I think it’s much nicer if you can take the time to spend the day/weekend with her.  After all, how much effort does it take to buy something and have it sent to her?

So year after year, it is a family tradition to celebrate various occasions and holidays just by going out to dinner.  Of course I will treat her in this case, and take her to get the moisturizer she said she needed.  But flowers?  I find those the most unnecessary gift of all.  They only last a week or two and especially for my mom, she’s got plenty growing in her backyard.  A bouquet looks nice only for a fleeting moment, but the waste of resources to produce it… well, it’s just not very eco-friendly, so I’m opting out.  She’d get better use out of a pack of seeds or a little pot of freshly sprouted seedlings.

In the future, I hope my kids would do the same – make an effort to see me and spend time with me (and if not, a fun ecard or homemade video is so much more meaningful than a pile of flowers that thousands of other mothers got).  I hope everyone is celebrating happily and enjoying what is a beautiful day out on the west coast.  Go for a stroll and grab some dessert or something.  I say do something with her and have some quality bonding time.  :)

Panda and one of my coworkers seem to love the idea of life being like a musical.  Whenever we walk, Panda will start singing a little tune he makes up to go with the rhythm of our footsteps.  My coworker always is talking about breaking out into song and dance (and apparently he’s sizing up everyone to see who he’d want to be near if this did happen, so he could be next to the better dancers).  Yeah, I’m surrounded by strange people.

When I was younger, I used to sing a lot too.  I think for me it stemmed in my upbringing.  My parents would sing old Chinese songs for no real reason as I was growing up.  In the car, we’d pop in a cassette or CD and sing along (that actually served a purpose: keeping my dad awake and alert while driving).  Around the house, they would do so without any accompaniment.  And there’s something really harmonious about singing or humming while gardening, which is something my mother loved to do.  I never saw any shame in singing in public and only in later years did I learn to tone it down.

This unconscious behavior got suppressed over the years as people always looked at me funny or asked me why I would burst into song.  Perhaps my voice is not that great, but I didn’t care.  It felt good and it felt right.  But nowadays, that doesn’t really happen and I wonder if that feedback affected me over the years until I got to this point, where I laugh and shake my head at people who sing randomly (or would like to).  It’s a pity, because I see nothing wrong with it.  I’d like to get in touch with that part of my behavior again.

What is so wrong or strange about singing in public anyway?  I find it to be a great way of expression, and usually a positive outlet.  Though I listen to certain types of songs when I am down and want to get sadness out of my system by having a bit of a cathartic release, I can’t ever recall wanting to sing a melancholy tone to express myself.  I can imagine a sad song being sung at organized events and the like, but not really by a lone person walking the streets.  Instead, I’m always inspired by happy, positive, upbeat feelings – and  it brings a smile to almost everyone’s faces, whether or not they actually like my singing.  The spontaneous desire to sing tends to go hand-in-hand with smiling and skipping.

It would be really cool if life were a musical and people burst out into song and dance more often.  It’d certainly make my world a happier place.  For now, I’ll just settle for the bit of singing Panda and I do from time to time, usually without realizing it’s happening.  There must be something deep down that drives us to do it and why should we deny ourselves that sort of innate joy?  It’s a beautiful thing, really.

Sometimes the smallest things can really create extreme disturbances.  My laptop charger (already the 4th one I’m on), isn’t the best of quality (that’s what you get for just a few bucks, I guess) and only works when pressed firmly into the laptop charging port, at a certain angle.  When it moves just slightly, it will stop charging unexpectedly.  Add on to that a battery that barely holds a charge now and this means that whenever I am using my laptop, it will shut down randomly without warning.  Very inconvenient, especially considering how it’s taking much longer to boot up nowadays.

Thankfully, I have a mother who is quite the handywoman.  She’s great at fixing things and given her engineering background, a small thing like charger circuitry was a small task for her.  Once it was decided that I couldn’t care less what the charger actually looked like, she set to cutting the cable that hard started to sever on my original charger.  She took the original head, connected it to a charger that hadn’t developed a frayed wire, and soon enough I had a brand new charger to use.  The head fit perfectly into the port now because it was from the original charger and not one of the cheap ones I had gotten as replacements.  No more spotty charging results!  Problem solved.  To think, I nearly dished out $70-80 for a new charger just to get rid of that annoyance!

My mom adores the hot tub at our local pool and likes to go whenever she gets a chance.  Since I have a bad back, I’ve been trying to go more often to help soothe those muscles.  I’ve found that it actually turns out to be a good place for conversations, as the heated water swirls around you.  In fact, my mom and I have discussed many an important thing while soaking there, from my thoughts of moving out of the house to our viewpoints on life issues.  Surprisingly, we’ve had great exchanges and I’ve revealed more of myself than I ever have before.  I guess relaxation of the body brings about relaxation of the mind, so my thoughts come out more readily.

There’s something about water that is really soothing, and great for thoughts and inspiration.  The potential reasons are many, but the result is undeniable – people tend to relax more and think better when surrounded by water.  For me, it’s the sort of peace and tranquility I get from it.  It’s nice to just close my eyes, sink back, and let the water support me.  Maybe it’s because my thoughts are “swimming” around in my head and the water helps me let them pour out.  It could be just as simple as the fact that so much of us is composed of water and we developed in fluid that we feel a deep connection with it.  Who really knows?  I do believe it works though, and that’s what matters most.

So, what are your reasons?