It seems to be an Eastern cultural thing to cook based on feeling, rather than using measuring cups and step by step instructions.  At least that’s how we do it in my household.  I guess that’s why we never quite know if our food will turn out like that one time when it was perfect and wonderful (and usually it doesn’t, pity).  But hey, it’s a lot more fun that way and when you get enough practice, soon enough you can cook pretty consistently.  It’s a good way of testing your culinary skills!  Besides, having that variation allows for unintentional discoveries that can be quite fun.  I personally enjoy never knowing what my food will end up tasting like.  Makes meals just a little more exciting.  :-P

Things have been very different for each generation of my family, especially on the marriage front.  I thought it’d be interesting to outline how it has changed from thoroughly Chinese and traditional to (eventually) entirely American and modern.  I’m counting from my great-grandparents’ generation through to my future children’s (and possibly even my grandchildren’s).  I guess five-six generations is what it takes to make the ultimate transition in terms of how the family will progress.

Starting off with my great-grandparents back in Communist China in the early years of last century, marriage was something that your elders decided.  Romantic love wasn’t really a familiar concept and whether you liked it or not, your future spouse was chosen for you by your parents.  In a way, being match-made was easier, since you didn’t have to find someone for yourself.  Plus, with the wisdom of their years, parents would generally match you up pretty well according to personality and wealth.  Think eHarmony, except substitute wealth for education in that case.

So one day your parents would strike a deal with his or her parents and a fortuitous date would be set.  Nothing with 4s and preferably with 8s.  You’d probably get really curious and nervous leading up to the wedding, wondering what your partner would be like, look like, act like.  Then the day would come and you would first lay eyes on this mysterious person you were destined to spend the rest of your life with.  After all the ceremonious duties were done, you’d spend your first night together, getting to know each other.  Over the years you would grow to love each other, or at least tolerate each other.  And you would propagate and continue the cycle for your children too.

Then came my grandparents’ generation, where things were starting to get a little less traditional.  Though your parents still chose your spouse, the two of you were allowed to meet before getting married and get to know each other a little.  Call it a supervised courtship of sorts.  As your parents did, you learn to love each other and build a life together.  By the time your offspring grow of age, rules have gotten lax and you let your children decide from a number of suitors you present to them.  With each, they get to know each other and court a bit before deciding if they like each other enough to commit their lives to each other.  The pressure of making the right choice started to become an issue, with this generation having the power to decide their own fates (within certain choices presented to them).  Now the concept of romantic love began to spread as young couples tried to figure out if they could love this person for the remainder of their years.

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 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.

(More on my parents’ (and my) story in this future post.  Look for it in the following days.)

As for my generation, we’d moved to the US when I was young and I was brought up in a very Asian-American household.  I’d say my split was probably 60% Chinese, 40% American in my younger years, and now it has transitioned to 70% American, 30% Chinese.  It gives you a rough estimate anyway.  So for me, choosing a future spouse is mostly up to me, though my mom has certainly tried to introduce me to the sons of her friends and former classmates.  I get to pick him, but I still seek my parents’ approval and blessing.  If they don’t like him, I don’t know if I could go through with it.  Thankfully, they seemed to have liked Panda plenty at their first meeting.  :)  Also, at this point, love is very much an issue and the real thing driving my motivation.  Whereas before people learned to love, now I am looking for love.  Completely different priorities!

I anticipate that my children’s generation will do whatever they want without much, if any, say from me.  They’ll probably go chasing after their own fantasies and desires with little regard for my wishes.  But then again, I’d probably let them do their own thing and not try to interfere.  As for the generation after that, well, who knows how the world will be!  Maybe having a family will be so overrated that they chose not to procreate.  It certainly seems like more and more people I know are choosing to delay a family or throw that concept out entirely.  What’s important to us has shifted beyond recognition and I’m sure my great-grandparents would be utterly confused at the state of the world today.

And so, in five generations we went from no choice to complete choice.  In six we can go to no children, no seventh generation!  Yikes!  But hey, perhaps family values will make a comeback and the opposite will happen.  You never know.

Today was my 24th birthday and I got to spend it with Panda and my parents.  :)

I couldn't drive off without a picture first!

I got up early in the morning, surprising my parents, since  I love to sleep in.  Well, I had a date to catch!  Since Panda does not have his own transportation, I went out to pick him up so we could have lunch with my parents.  I was allowed a day of joyriding in my new car for my birthday, after which the car will be stored away until I get myself a job.  Call it sort of reward and encouragement at the same time.  I got a chance to set up the Bluetooth connection and made my first call with it to Panda.  He couldn’t even hear a difference!  Excellent.  Now I’ll never miss a phone call in the car since my music will automatically be muted for incoming calls.

Isn't that the smallest cone you've ever seen?

So we drove back to my neighborhood and I called up my parents to direct them to the local Souplantation.  I can’t believe we never knew about it before!  But you know, now that I think of it, it looks awfully familiar and I think it’s been there for a long time, but we just never knew about it.  So lunch was nice, with my dad and Panda doing most of the talking.  My parents really enjoyed Panda’s choice of restaurant and it was quite healthy and filling.  Plus, they had the cutest little ice cream cones!  By and by, it was time to part and for me to head off with Panda for the rest of the day.  We did a little strolling around the area before heading over to the dealership, since we’d noticed that the floor mats in my car were missing.

Look what we came across on our stroll!

With the paper mats in the way, we didn't notice at first that the actual mats were missing!

This fish must have been very hungry, since it spent the night trying to eat rocks.

The rest of the day was very chill as we hung out and enjoyed each other’s company.  For dinner, I had a hard time choosing, so we found something on Yelp that was near his home and headed that way.  Unfortunately, the place was closed for some reason, but thankfully, he had just gone to a nice Japanese place just down the street the day before.  We went there and had a nice time eating and watching the fish doing silly fish things in the tank in front of us.  Nice place and nice food.  To round out the night, we made a pit stop at cha for tea, my all-time favorite boba place.  They offer games there for people to play as they hang out, drink tea and boba, and munch on some food.  We’ve got a little tradition of playing Connect 4 there, so we sat down to a showdown.

All too soon we had finished our drinks, played many a round, and realized it was time to head back for the night.  I dropped him off and drove on home, enjoying the feel of the Corolla one last time.  I came back to dozens of birthday well wishes from friends on Facebook and a steadily growing number of votes coming in to help me towards winning a job interview for January 4th!  It’s great to have support and it’s been a fun way for me to earn my foot in the door for an exciting job.  With just one day left, I’ll do one final push and hope for the best.  I do believe I can stay in the Top 5 and earn an interview, but just in case I’m still working hard to ensure it’s taken care of.

In honor of the “numbers game” that my parents keep saying job searching can be, I thought I’d play around with some numbers myself…

1 lifetime:

2 parents

3 cats

4 countries lived in

5 states of residence

6 cars our family has owned

7 major relocations

8 cousins (and a step-cousin) I don’t get to see enough

9 jobs where I’ve earned money (3 internships without)

10 years old when I started documenting my life like the packrat I am

11 (and a half) places I’ve called home

12 grandparents, aunts, and uncles living in Asia (plus a step-grandparent)

13 years of keeping a daily journal

14 schools attended from pre-school through college (some simultaneously)

15 European countries traveled over a 5-week spring break

16, an eventful age: took driving lessons, attended Leadership Academy, went to Australia & Hawai’i, and moved to California from New York

17 (and a quarter) years’ worth of education thus far

18, the last landmark birthday (21 doesn’t count since I don’t drink)

19 affiliations with UCLA organizations throughout my college career

20 (intermittent) years in this country

21 major cities traveled to over that 5-week spring break

22 countries traveled to overall (not counting the 4 I’ve lived in for some period of time)

23 airports I’ve been through

culminating in 24 years of rich experiences!

I’ve certainly got a lot of stories.  As always, things in my life tend to be more exception than rule, so these numbers may be slightly off, depending on your criteria.  You get the idea though.

I saw David Copperfield with my parents on Christmas Eve and though the show was good, it was not magical to me.  Perhaps it is because I have come to an age where I understand some of the logic behind the tricks he does or perhaps it was because I found him to be rather arrogant, cuing us to applaud every little thing he did.  Ultimately, he isn’t a magician, so I suppose I shouldn’t expect a magical experience.  After all, he’s an illusionist and that part he did quite well, playing with our minds so that it was hard to fathom just how he pulled off his stunts.

I was also very distracted by his odd sense of humor and all-too-confident demeanor.  I went looking for cool tricks that I just couldn’t explain, but he tried to mix in too much comedy for my taste.  Certain things also appeared too staged, like the husband who slapped his wife’s butt when they were on stage because her knit dress was showing her undergarments.  When David asked if anyone had any questions, it was way too obvious that the guy shouting, “Do it again!  Do it slower!” was part of the show.  It didn’t help that those aren’t even questions.

That's my daddy in the front row with the sweater on!

Nevertheless, there were some entertaining moments and he certainly is skilled at his crazy illusions.  The night ended on a high note when my dad was one of the audience members who go to go on stage and be vanished into thin air.  He eagerly went up and when the show was over, came out laughing heartily after having been a part of the show.  That was definitely worth it and we got an autographed picture for his troubles.  So in the end, it turned out to be a fun time, but I do believe we could have used a little more disbelief to enjoy it more.

Facing our mortality is probably the most difficult thing for people to deal with.  We all know it’s inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  It’s even worse when you’re dying at an unnaturally fast rate because your body isn’t functioning the way it should to maintain your health.  (I don’t believe in saying because you’re dying because, well, we all are, in a way.)  The younger you are, the further thoughts of death are from your mind, until a tragedy strikes that reminds us all that we aren’t as immune to death as feel we are in youth.  Diseases that strike in children are more horrifying because we feel they didn’t get a fair chance at life.  Then there are others that are borderline, if not outright torturous.

Imagine what it would be like to be in Charles Sabine’s shoes: you know that the most likely cause of your death will be a deadly and incurable disease, Huntington’s.  On one extreme, you could fear the oncoming suffering and death and let it take over your life.  Day to day, you wonder when it’s going to start taking over.  And when it does, you worry yourself more with how quickly it will overcome you.  On the other hand, you could take advantage of every moment and go do the things you’d always put off.  You can embrace every experience and truly start living and being, not letting it consume you.  There’s nothing quite like a brush with death or knowing you have a disease that will kill you to get people to make some drastic changes to their lives.

Last night my mom told to be careful when I’m driving and be particularly wary of big rigs.  After all, it’s pretty obvious that my little car counts for nothing against one of those.  It turns out she said this because one of our family friend’s daughters had somehow collided against one hard enough to spin her car around 180 degrees so that she was facing oncoming traffic.  Perhaps she passed out or she somehow didn’t get her foot off the gas in time – either way, she was hit by an oncoming car and did not survive the impact.  It makes me wonder how it must feel to die without ever know it was coming, or have it come so fast that you hadn’t even really registered what was going on.  Is a life suddenly taken more tragic than one slowly robbed by debilitating disease?  It’s hard to say.

On one end is death by disease that you can anticipate and on the other end is death by accident that comes on suddenly.  Neither is very pleasant, but it happens all the time and it’s always a reminder of how fragile life can be.  I’d call these unnatural deaths, but technically diseases are a thing of nature, are they not?  To me, untimely deaths are ones in which you die before your parents.  There’s a saying in Chinese about how white-haired people should not ever have to bury black-haired people (aka parents shouldn’t have to live to see the day their children die).  I think that’s a pretty widely-accepted belief in cultures around the world.

Stories like those make me think about my own life and how it will end.  Of course I imagine and assume that I will reach a decently old age and have at least two generations of progeny for it really becomes more of a reality, but you never know.  I guess I don’t really think about it because it’s a scary prospect to have my life cut short so early, before I can do all the things I want to do in this world.  Besides, it’s not really something I can control, so worrying about it all the time won’t do me much good.  But I do think it’s good for us to keep in touch with our own mortalities, if it creates the motivation to do more with our lives.  And perhaps one of the best ways to respect life is to live it, truly.

I am blessed with good health and good luck, and I plan on making every bit of that work for me.  I’m going to leave an indelible mark on this world, so long as I can live out the course of a “normal” lifespan.  Even if I don’t, at least I’ll have been working towards it.

I’m frustrated.

This bad economy has made it very difficult for me to find a job and I’m starting to get impatient.  Here I am, at 5 (well, now nearly 8 that I’m posting this…) in the morning, still not sleeping because I’m so angst-filled I can’t.  I can only stare at job listings for so many hours a day, day in and day out, before it all becomes a blur and what I want becomes too similar to what’s out there.  Let’s not even get into the pain of sorting through the legitimate stuff and the sketchy postings.  My parents keep telling me to just get a job first and then worry about getting one I actually want.  However, I just can’t do that.  I can loosen my desired fields and responsibilities, but I am not going apply for every single job I am close to qualified for.  I’d just end up doing something I won’t care about to want to get up in the morning.  Plus, no matter how temporary, it’d be a job I’d have to stick with for a couple of months at the least.

I have this terrible fear that if I get started in a position that is too whatever-focused, I’m going to end up doing that for far too long for me to be happy.  Not that I need to be happy all the time, of course.  Right now the thought of the whole job hunt makes me cringe, but I do it because I need to support myself.  I’d love a job that’s a little bit of this and that, touching on many of my interests.  I don’t want to get restricted to just one area.  Am I being too short-sighted?  I’d love to get into some of the areas I’ve worked in, but I also don’t want to drown in them.  Also, it’d be great to work for a non-profit, but I will need to learn how a for-profit works.  Everything I do now I’d hope would be useful for me in the future as an entrepreneur.  And sure, all of the above would be great for that, but what I really want is something in the green space and/or at UCLA.  (That’s not all that I’m applying for, of course.)

I don’t really know why I am so stubborn, however I have applied for plenty of jobs that may not fit the bill of what I want perfectly, but would be something I care about enough to work hard at and have enough experience in to make a real contribution.  Unfortunately, I’m not exactly hearing back yet.  I have experience in a lot of areas, but not extensive in any particular area.  I wonder if that’s hurting me.  It’s also extremely difficult to figure what exactly is an entry-level job!  The job I really wanted I lost out to someone who’s been working for 3-5 years, I believe.  With all these people who have anywhere from 1 to 5 years edge on me, how do I leverage myself?  The competition these days is harsh and I am always up against people with more/better experience.

On the bright side, I’m going to speak with the boss at my internship next week to go over what I want to learn while I’m there and what I want to do in terms of work.  Perhaps she’ll have some useful suggestions in mind.  I just wish she could have leads too.  I had an evaluation with my manager before she left last week and she gave me great feedback.  I also hear a lot of good words from the boss.  All of that’s great, but I need it to work for me in terms of landing a full-time position somewhere.  I can only work for free for so long.  In fact, it’s already been too long and I am itching to have benefits so I can finally get my teeth checked, buy new contacts, and perhaps even get a physical.  I also can’t wait to not have to ask my parents to help me out.  I’m ready to be fully self-sufficient!

But of course, all this comes at the price of finding a job I can enjoy (at least most of the time), be qualified for, and contribute to in a meaningful way.  It’s not fair to a company to pretend I love the position to land the job only to leave them as soon as I can get another one I truly want.  I just worry that there are too many positions I’ve dismissed because I couldn’t imagine myself doing those tasks for 40 hours a week.  Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad I imagine to focus on something that is not my strongest interest.  Guess we’ll see as I continue this (seemingly) endless struggle.

The past two nights, I’ve been playing out my fears subconsciously in my dreams.  Two nights ago, I had a nightmare that I cheated on Panda by kissing another guy, who then tried to get me to leave Panda.  I told him that I had made a mistake and I wasn’t going to be with him, but I was horrified by what I had done.  I woke up vaguely remembering what I had dreamed and feeling miserable, but relieved that it wasn’t real.

Then last night I dreamed that Philosopher and I were in a parking garage.  For some reason he had gone up to the second level and came back down telling me I had been rejected.  Confused, we went upstairs where a blue car resembling the one that my parents had owned many years ago was parked with a letter under the windshield wiper and a huge playing card (a jack) on the ground in front of it.  The card was something like three feet tall by two feet wide and seemed to be a play on the word “jacked” because that was certainly a way to describe the way I felt.  The letter was a rejection one from the job I had applied to.  I was absolutely devastated when I woke up in the split second before I realized it was just another nightmare.

I suppose I have been more stressed than I realized and now I’m being bombarded by the things I dread most.  I just hope that both have “happened” already so they won’t in reality.  After all, I never want to do anything to hurt Panda and I REALLY want that job.  So let’s just hope that both those events turn out the way I want them to!

Don't make me go there yet! Let me do my interview first, please. photo credit: sanfernandovalleylawyers.com

Today I got an e-mail that had me bouncing off the walls: an invitation to schedule an interview for a job I really want!  It was thrilling to see it sitting there in my inbox, waiting patiently for me to open it and arrange to meet with the hiring manager for the position.  I eagerly replied with a preferred time and she confirmed not long after.  Suddenly, I remembered that I’m on call for jury duty this week!  Frantically, I began to compose an e-mail back, bringing up the topic.  I came up with as many alternatives as I could and sent it back, hoping she can be flexible with her time.  Now I’m waiting here and haven’t received a response, so I anticipate she has gone to bed and I won’t know until tomorrow.

In the mean time, I’m reviewing the application information and compiling a list of my qualifications for each of their requirements.  I’ll go over their website, my cover letter, and interview advice articles over the next two days as I prepare for this all-important interview.  I e-mailed my parents, happily sharing the news with them and called up my mom when she was free to talk.  Tomorrow I’ll be chatting with my dad, discussing possible questions I should be ready for and anything else his wisdom has to offer.  After all, he’s often been in both the hiring and applying positions and can impart a lot of useful knowledge and insight.

LEED certified! Who wouldn't want to work in a building so green? photo credit: smithgroup.com

I’m also going to e-mail a former boss, who I just went to visit days ago, and see what she has to say.  It’ll be nice to share the good news with her, after I gushed about the position and how much I wanted it.  Besides, she works for UCLA, so maybe she’ll have some pertinent pointers to share with me.  Now let’s hope I can make it to the final step and get hired!  I’d be absolutely elated because this job fulfills the requirements I had outlined before.  Though I said it’s not exactly my dream job (which would to be an eco-consultant, I think), it is my favorite candidate for being my first career job.

When I was talking to my mom, I was concerned that they weren’t interviewing on Friday because they were going to choose then and then rush someone into the position by Monday.  That would make things difficult if I had jury duty and the manager couldn’t stay after work to interview me.  My mom assured me that no company would ever be so crazy-rushed to hire someone in such a short time frame, so there must be leeway for me to interview at a later time if I must.  If I get called in to serve my civic duties on Thursday, I certainly hope she’s right.  I would love to get this position!

Gosh I’m nervous.  I haven’t wanted something so much since Panda.

Just like old times, taking self-portraits in the car.

I got a chance to hang out with Katana yesterday and it never ceases to amaze me how each time we see each other, I don’t feel like she’s been gone for that long.  The last time I saw her was sometime during Christmas break a good nine months ago, but it’s easy for us to fall right back into an old pattern, an old routine.  I guess this is kind of how I live my life, since the same thing happens when my parents and I are reunited, and last month when I finally came back to LA and saw Panda again.  In each case, the time we spent apart doesn’t seem so long because of the ease in which we slip back into familiar territory.  Sure, a lot has changed, but fundamentally, we’re still the same.

It’s weird to think about Katana and Elle, who were the two best friends I had from my high school years at Valencia.  Ever since Katana and I graduated, with her going off to VMI, then NMMI, and I going off to UCLA, the three of us have only gotten to hang out sporadically, whenever it happened to work out.  Usually that meant about once or twice a year, particularly the over the holidays and/or during another one of our seasonal breaks.  And though interactions were few and far between, we were still the Asian girls who stood out and didn’t quite fit into the mould of what people expected girls, especially Asian girls, to be.  I guess that’s what ties us together in the end – this common way of life that leads us from “normal” girl activities to things like JROTC, where we met, or to be particularly outspoken about some feminist beliefs.

Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve known these two ladies for nearly 7 years now!  I haven’t ever known and stayed in contact with someone for that long.  Being that I moved every 3-4 years, that’s not too surprising.  For the first time in my life though, I’m going back to old friends again and again.  They are no longer memories to be stored away in a compartment labeled based on what city I knew them from.  Now they are a consistent prescense in my life, however fleeting that may be.  So I guess this is shocking to me because I don’t know what it’s like to have lifelong friends.  Do they all fare so well seeing each other so infrequently?  No matter where we are, whether it’s spread across three states in the US (like we are now), or spread across countries (as we’ve often been), I don’t need to see or even talk to these girls to know they will be there.  It’s kind of like family.

A picture is also like a moment frozen in time... photo credit: _Mike_Howard_ on flickr

Speaking of family, mine is also a very scattered one, with me seeing my relatives something like seven times over my lifetime and seeing my parents twice a year on average.  And though we’ve all grown a lot these two decades, I still think of my parents as 35-year-olds and honestly, only when I look closely do I realize they’re not anymore.  But in my head, there’s a semi-frozen image of my family members – my cousins are still budding young adults, my parents quite young, and my grandparents still sprightly.  Sure, we’ve added a few new members since then, but they kind of just get tacked on without the others gaining much in age.  I don’t know how it works in my mind, but that’s how I recall my closest kin.  Every time I see them again, even after four years away and so much that happened in between, I remember a lot of my childhood and the main processes remain unchanged.  I still get spoiled and stay with the same people and generally do and eat the same things.

Even for my parents, the few weeks I see them out of the year doesn’t seem so odd because those memories last me a long time.  I’ve got so much other stuff going on while I’m on my own that just touching base with them semi-annually is plenty to work from.  It does get lonely in the house sometimes when I’m the only one, but I’m used to solitude.  That was much like how our household functions anyway.  Besides, at my age, it’s time to be moving out and doing things on my own.  Much as I adore my house, Valencia is not really the place to jump start a career.  I’d rather be in Westwood or Santa Monica, or somewhere more central to the hubbub of LA.

Finally, the day that I came back after months away in Singapore, I was nervous to see Panda again.  It was our first time being apart since things really got started and it was certainly not a short period of time to cope with.  Even now I wonder how we managed, because not seeing him for a day can make me antsy.  I was glad that we fell pretty quickly back into a comfortable rhythm, working out our schedules around challenges, as we’ve always done.  I had been afraid that it would take some time to warm up again and that we may almost be like strangers for a bit, but that didn’t last very long.  Once again, time altered its flow for me (well, at least to my perception it did) and it was like a fraction of the time had actually passed.  I guess that’s what happens with people you care about.  Katana said it best: we have changed enough to have things to talk about, but haven’t changed so much that we don’t connect anymore.

Is it just me or does beta scream cop-out to you too?

photo credit: theproducersperspective.com

At first it was a great idea.  Have a beta version and allow exclusive access to dedicated users/customers so they can use it and help you figure out all the glitches.  It’s like getting free manpower to test out the functionality of your product!  Then you could open it up to the public with minimal complaints.  Plus, your customers feel good about themselves because they got a sneak peek at your new product.  You get valuable feedback and they get to feel special.  Pretty good solution all around, huh?

Unfortunately, all good ideas can be misused and morph into something it wasn’t intially meant for.  At times, unforseen uses and changes can be good, but often it is not.  Nowadays, it seems companies use beta just as an excuse for any glitches that their product may have.  How many sites do you see that still have beta listed on a corner of the logo, even after weeks or months of being up?  At that point, beta is just a crutch for the companies so they can’t be blamed for malfunctions.  That’s how I see it anyway.  Would you ever buy a computer or car that was still considered beta?  It signals a certain higher risk rate and I know I wouldn’t go for something like that.

For the same reason, my mom doesn’t want me to buy new technology as soon as it becomes available.  I mentioned the new solar panel on the Prius 3rd generation and she warned me against using that sort of technology too soon (not that I wanted to buy such an ugly car, but the technology sure is awesome).  I mentioned this when with friends and Doc agreed – his family had bought a van with automatic sliding doors as soon as they became commerically available and ran into a lot of problems with that vehicle.  For the majority of people, it’s better to let others try something new first, then get it after it had reliably performed well for a period.  I guess that explains why there are so few early adopters out there!