Small and simple does the trick

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , , , , ,
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I’m sure that many people have promised themselves that this is the year they will get fit.  And just a week and a half into the year, most are probably doing alright with that goal.  However, as weeks drag on to months, it gets harder to stick with it.  It’s like the opposite of going cold turkey, whatever that may be.  Suddenly trying to pick up a behavior is just as hard as trying to quit an addictive one.  The process tends to work better when it’s done gradually or less drastically.

That’s one of the reason why pedometers are doing so well!  People walk all the time, so doing a little more throughout your day doesn’t kill you and make you want to quit your new fitness regimen.  Plus, having the number staring up at you makes things a lot easier to track.  When you have small, measurable goals that you can easily track, it makes staying on target so much easier than the “I did 5 sets of 10 reps but I don’t see a difference” approach.  Personally, I love the weight room, but I can see how it’s not the best way for people to get in shape.  After all, strength training is more focused on building muscles than building a figure.

So in the following weeks, if you find yourself having trouble reaching your goals for the year, make a list of small actionable items to do, one at a time.  This goes for anything from health resolutions to general goals, like that book you’ve been meaning to read, that book you’ve been meaning to write, or the friend you’ve been meaning to catch up with.  Start with the basics – read a page, write a paragraph, send a text.  And of course, don’t forget to just keep walking!  You can build momentum step by step and soon enough you’ll climb your way up those mountains.

Now if only I could find my Pikachu pedometer… (story for another day, when I actually find it or determine it lost forever).

[update jan.12.2010]  Oh my gosh!  Panda showed me the link above and I was shocked to find this is something that was actually known (maybe even popular?) in the States!  Mine came from China, so I figured it was this obscure thing…

Psychotic fish

laelene Posted in photo blog,Tags: , ,
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Is it just me or were these fish acting more than a little weird?


fish trying to eat a rock

He seemed to think he could eat that rock, but he kept spitting it out when he found he couldn't.

fish hiding inside cave

This one was super anti-social and peered out suspiciously from back there.

fish staring out at us

The blue one looked at us dumbfounded as the yellow one darted around in its hiding place.

fish that wouldn't leave the corner of the tank

This one seemed plastered to the glass, unable to leave that corner.

Swagbucks addiction

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , ,
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I think it’s time to address a recent addiction of mine (and Panda’s).  About two months ago, he got wind of this site called Swagbucks, which I had actually signed up for two months before that.  Basically it’s a search engine (powered by Google and Ask) that rewards you for using it by giving you points, or Swag Bucks.  The exact algorithm for deciding who gets Swag Bucks when is unknown, but it seems to correlate with popular searches and IP addresses.  You pretty much just go about your searching throughout the day and get really happy when you see this:

congratulations, you won 1 swag buck

And then you rejoice!  When you collect enough of this currency, you go to the Swag Store and redeem a prize.  So far I’ve opted for the $5 Paypal each time, since I figure cash can be used any way and there’s nothing in the store that I really want.  Right now that’s available for 70 Swag Bucks, which takes me about 2.5-3 weeks to earn.  So in these two months I’ve earned $15 worth!  Not bad, eh?

Plus, pretty consistently throughout the week, there are Swag Codes given out, which are worth anywhere from 1 to 5 Swag Bucks.  Codes might be found on the widget (which I have up on my contact page), the toolbar (which you need to download), on the blog, through their Twitter feed, or on affiliate sites.  Just about every day there is a new one put out there somewhere, so it’s a bit of a scavenger hunt to discover them.  Sometimes they’re unique and regenerated for each user, while other times they are a common one that everyone can use.  They’re all set to expire within a few hours of being put up and you’re not supposed to post active codes and apparently that can get you banned, as does unnaturally excessive searching.

congratulations, you won 5 swag bucks

I felt so rich when I got this!

To make things more interesting, there are also themed days, like Twitter contests on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Megabuck Fridays (where it’s easier to get multiple Swag Bucks).  Every now and then, a predictive poll is put out, where all those in Swag Nation (also known as Swaggernauts) guess the result of something, like the Heismann Trophy winner or the gas price in the new year (both of which we got right).  For getting those polls right, Swaggernauts are rewarded with a code worth multiple Swag Bucks, but only for a limited time!  The gas price one was out for only an hour, but was worth 5 Swag Bucks.  That’s big money in Swagland!

Panda and I have both been pretty into it, telling each other when we get a Swag Buck, which then fuels the desire of the other one to get one too.  In that way we’ve had a lot of fun sharing and competing.  It keeps things interesting and challenging!  I probably wouldn’t have gotten into it had it not been for him and now we keep each other going.  I’m glad that we have these little bonding moments throughout the week and I know that my account would have sat there inactive for many more months had it not been for him!  So if you’re into free things, you should go try it out as well.  Enjoy!  🙂

[edit jan.14.2010] So I started to notice I was getting Swag Bucks really quickly and to my surprise, I got two new referrals! I get a Swag Buck for each one they earn from searching, up to 100. Then one of my old referrals finally began to use his! This is really exciting. If you’re interested, message me so I can invite you to my group where we tell each other when Swag Codes are out so you don’t miss them as easily.

A meal at BCD’s

laelene Posted in video blog,Tags: , , , ,
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For those of you who don’t have a BCD Tofu House near you, here’s your chance to see what it’s like! Since eating Korean food is practically an art, I thought I’d walk you through the experience…  First off at any Korean restaurant they give you plenty of little appetizer/side dishes.  It ranges from kimchi, a staple, to potato salad to iced pickles.  At BCD’s, the main courses are tofu soup bowls, which you can get with bugolgi and kalbi and other such meats if you desire.  They also start you off with a little fried fish, which I always love.

Right around the time you get your tofu soup, they bring hot stone pots in which the rice was made and scoop it out for you, so moist and fresh and steaming. I love that they throw in a few random peas for you to find.

serving rice from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Then they pour water into the stone pots to soak the rice that got burned into the sides a bit.

soaking rice from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Once you get your boiling soup, you must act fast and throw in the egg! I like mine cooked thoroughly, so it’s always a rush for that…

breaking the egg from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

After having some of the soup, it’s time to find the egg! It tends to blend in with the tofu, so you might have accidentally ingested it.

digging for the egg from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

If you ever need service, all you have to do is press this button (most people have no clue that it’s a button!) and your table number will show up on the display. A doorbell kind of sound will alert the staff that a table wants attention. No more awkward attempts to get your waiter/waitress’s attention!

the service bell from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

And completely irrelevant, but rather amusing was this billboard in their parking lot. Please excuse my over-enthusiasm.

kitty sex billboard from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Shorty Awards

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: ,
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Please take a moment to vote for Shorty Awards, particularly Opportunity Green in the Green category!  Pass this on to all your Twitter friends and followers too!  🙂

Asian to American generational gaps

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , , , , , ,
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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.)

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.

Vote OppGreen for the Green Shorty Award!

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: ,
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Opportunity Green is entered in the Twitter Shorty Awards in the Green category and I want you to support them in taking first place by voting!

Here’s what to do:

#1 Go to http://bit.ly/8u7KFw.

#2 See the box with “I nominate @oppgreen for a Shorty Award in #green because…” filled out for you?  Well, add in your own reason, or choose one below!

#3 Click “Tweet your vote!” and follow the instructions.

#4 After you have voted, you should be able to see your tweet listed on the page.

I nominate @oppgreen for a Shorty Award in #green because…

they always keeps us informed about what’s going out there!

they are so passionate about building the green community!

they share great content, from clean tech to eco-fashion!

they facilitate the movement to transform business!

they’re the best at starting green conversations!

they get what “going green” is all about!

they just plain ROCK sustainability!

their green conference leads the way towards change!

they’re paving the green path and not looking back!

they know what’s up in the green space!

And see what else the voters have been saying.  🙂  They truly are tech-savvy and used Twitter for their OG25 competition, streamed tweets live at the conference, and put out so much great content all the time.  So what are you waiting for?  GO VOTE!

Reigning matriarch

laelene Posted in photo blog,Tags: , ,
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world's largest toblerone

Seriously the largest one ever! From Switzerland, of course.

Blogosphere, really?

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , ,
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Sooo I’ve been trying REALLY hard to find blogs to follow, but something is wrong.  The blogosphere is not quite as I had hoped.  I recently joined 20 Something Bloggers after this sudden motivation to start connecting with other blogs.  So far I’ve been keeping a low profile with this blog, with just about 15-25 unique visitors a day.  I haven’t told many of my friends about this blog (except recently, when I was publicizing the whole job competition thing), I don’t really follow personal blogs (I seem to lean towards news and other informative ones), and I haven’t really made any blog friends (except for some loose acquaintances, but pretty much the “blog friends” I have I knew in real life first).

I’ve come across a few decent ones that I may or may not follow long-term, but nothing that draws me by the belt loops and makes me want to them like a faithful puppy.  Is there something wrong with me?  Do I just not connect with 20-something bloggers as well as I’d hope?  Perhaps I should be looking elsewhere.  I’ve met some really nice gals so far and started to read their blogs, but it seems that I only obsess about things I find on ABC7, like 20/20, and CBS, like 60 Minutes.  Once I get into those, I stay up all night reading.  Blogs?  Not so much.  Perhaps my standards are too news-focused in this blog search.  Perhaps I need to learn to read less educational and informative in an immediate way.  Perhaps I need to learn to connect with my peers a little better.

I don’t really know what it is, but it is somewhat frustrating to read blog after blog only to find much of the same.  Drinking, partying, fashion, drama, sex, complaining, and cursing.  None of which I’m interested in.  Is that what my generation is all about?  Or there’s a blogger who writes about entrepreneurship, which is great, but his pompous tone is just too annoying for me to read regularly.  Plus it seems everything for him comes back to sex and materialism, neither of which I want to hear about.  In fact, I ended up going from one girl’s site to the blog of this lady, the Pioneer Woman, as she calls herself.  Her entries were far more interesting to me than all the opinionated ones of those my age.  Then again, I always had a soft spot for the countryside, snow, animals, and farms (or ranches I guess are close enough).

I know there are plenty of great blogs out there that I would love to read!  Now where are they?  I need some help navigating the blogosphere.  Having been a loner for this long, I don’t know what to do with myself and there’s no instruction manual for me to turn to!  Then there’s also the problem of RSS feeds… I’m the “send me an e-mail when you post” type of person, but most people just have standard RSS feeds, which means I’ve been adding them to the Google Reader that I don’t use.  Great.  Now I need to get used to yet another thing to check on a consistent basis!  Can the reader perhaps e-mail me a daily summary?  Hmm…

Happy Birthday serenade

laelene Posted in video blog,Tags: , , , ,
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For my first ever video, I thought I’d share a happy moment that occurred in my motherland.  🙂

happy birthday serenade from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

September 9, 2008 was a great day for the guy holding the flag and running around.  He won his race at the Paralympics, on his birthday, and got serenaded by the stadium! He’s blind, so the guy running with him was his running partner. At the Paralympics, blind runners are linked with their partners and have to stay within a few feet of each other, with the actual competitor crossing the finish line just before the spotter. It takes a lot of teamwork to be a blind runner!

And for the race he won, which was a 5000-meter run…

men’s 5000 meter from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

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