Happy holidays! I’m busy traveling around so I won’t be posting much. Took a 25-hour trip from LA to Portland to Tokyo to Beijing and then the next day, a 5-hour train ride brought me to Shenyang. My poor feet have been sitting around too much and I’ve napped so much I don’t know when to be tired. It’s all good though, I get to see quite a bit of family in the next couple of days and hopefully get some relaxation too. 🙂
White elephant pig
laelene Posted in photo blog，Tags: experiences, gifts, money, pictures, white elephant, work
22
December
2011
Today at the office we had a white elephant exchange, which was quite fun! I’m quite pleased with what I got and what I gave. 🙂 Here you can see that this fun piggy bank I ended up getting allows me to free up the water cooler for its original purpose. 😛
A cute piggy bank that I can now use to save up a fund.
I'd been using this toy water cooler to save up change, but now I can actually use it for water!
The Maven
laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: business, experiences, future, maven, opinion, personality
20
December
2011
Oh what a marvelous thing has happened! It has been years since I started developing and talking about my business philosophy, one of the key components of which is a business partner. Finally, I have stumbled across the first viable lead and I am thrilled! I’ll call him Maven, since that’s what he is as per Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point. Maven and I both have a strong interest in business and our conversation recently led us to budding partnership. He has a fantastic idea for a business and I have all the eagerness and complementary skills that he could ask for.
I feel like it’s been a long time coming, so it’s really rewarding to find someone who has a vast number of skills that I don’t, and who needs the very skills that I do have. At the same time, we share many values and both believe in the synergy that can be created to make a partnership more than just 1 +1. It’s just enough overlap to agree on the important things, and plenty of complementary abilities to pack a powerful punch. I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect scenario! If nothing else, 2011 will go down in history as the year I met Maven. A very fortunate experience indeed!
Whether or not we are able to get this idea off the ground (and I am confident that we can and will), I have a great feeling about just knowing Maven. There’s a lot to learn from him and he is a fantastic conversationalist! I’d been craving the kinds of discussions we’ve been having – about business, personal philosophies, psychology, and so many other topics. We’re both very curious, inquisitive folks who think a lot, ask a lot, wonder a lot. I’ve never had someone ask me so many “whys” about my beliefs and it really helps me understand myself better.
In addition, I got a kick out of the fascination we both seem to have with personality tests and what can be gleaned from them. I love reading personality profiles! I feel like I learned a lot about him when I read the description of his “type,” whether or not all of it was accurate. At least it gave me a good basis for understanding the type of person he is. The more I get to know, the better it all seems. With our work ethics, determination, and combined efforts, I wouldn’t put anything past us. You just wait!
LAX backup
laelene Posted in video blog，Tags: cars, driving, experiences, lax, rain, traffic, videos, weather
19
December
2011
Traffic was at a virtual stop when the rain came! They had shut down the Sepulveda tunnel due to flooding, which made what should have been a 10-minute drive back took over an hour extra. Yikes.
Jewish vehicle
laelene Posted in photo blog，Tags: cars, driving, holidays, observation, pictures
18
December
2011
They were certainly getting into the spirit!
Friends for life
laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: experiences, friends, opinion, panda
17
December
2011
So many of my friends have a group from college, or even high school, that they still keep in touch with and hang out with. A good portion of them also have some friends stemming from childhood as well. I wonder what that’s like and if I’ll ever have lifelong friends. The landscape of my life is so variable that dozens of friends have come and gone. The people I spend much of my time with are only friends I’ve met in the past three years or so. I’m so used to moving around and making new friends that it’s hard to imagine knowing someone for that long.
I’ve always hoped that each friendship would be one that would last forever, but as our lives changed, we would grow apart. It also didn’t help that I moved a lot, so many friendships dwindled after not being able to hang out for a long period. The internet has definitely helped to slow down the process of losing touch, but it still happens. At this point, the only person in my life right now who I know will be around for decades is Panda. He’s the best friend I’ve got and anyone else could very well be out of the picture in a few years.
I haven’t given up hope that I can maintain some long-lasting friendships though! I think that business school will offer me a great chance to meet people who I can consider friends forever. In addition, any and all future business partners will probably be great friends and a common interest in our business should keep us in contact for a long time to come. I wish I had a group of close friends who all hung out with each other, but that’s just not the way my life developed. Instead, I will continue to be a connector, bringing together my different sets of friends for gatherings and potentially facilitating some wonderful new bonds.
Cat and mouse
15
December
2011
Missy is a playful cat who just wanted to chase around the mouse. Of course the mouse wasn’t aware of this, so it was frozen until it saw an opportunity to run. I was able to help get it outside, but Missy still wanted to have some fun.
Loofah squash
laelene Posted in photo blog，Tags: food, nature, observation, pictures, plants
13
December
2011
I wanted to see just how large this squash could get, but then it went past its prime. Good thing this kind is good for loofahs when dried out!
Afternoon fevers
laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: behavior, experiences, observation
12
December
2011
I used to experience a phenomenon I called “afternoon fevers” in high school. Every afternoon around 4 o’clock, I’d get a bit flushed, my temperature would rise, and I’d have the chills. It felt like the onset of a fever that would result in me shivering until I could climb into bed to sweat it out. Yet, if I kept about my day, I found that it would burn off before it ever became anything. It was a strange thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was partly mental too.
I had kind of learned to dread swim practice, which started right around that time. I was a sprinter, so all the distance swimming we had to do in practice wore me down. So, as school was ending and it was time to head over to the pool for practice, my body would react. Most of the time I’d suck it up and go through practice, which was probably what both made me sick and cured from it. After all, being wet on a brisk afternoon made it easy to feel sick, but then the intensity of a practice session would heat me right up and burn off any illness.
It was an interesting period that was all but forgotten until I started to feel it again. Perhaps my immune system is weakest in the mid to late afternoon, so I start to feel the effects of stress more vividly. Last week, I began to feel sick a couple of afternoons in a row and I learned to suppress it just like I had back in high school. It’s been awhile since I felt that way, so I bundled up and have been staying warm to stave off any virus that might be trying to bring me down. I can’t be too weak to prepare my applications!
