((little fat notebook))

Crunch time

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: business school, education, experiences, future

09 January 2012

It’s down to the wire for my HBS application and I don’t think I’m going to make it. I have been unable to get in touch with two of my recommenders and the third says he did it, but the system didn’t register anything. By the time we start work tomorrow, second round applications will be due (and all too soon overdue). It was disturbing to come to this reality, since I really want to get into b-school this fall, but at least there is still one more round. While that round is extremely tough since most of the class will already have been formed, I hold out hope that I will be able to stand out.

I’ve still got another day and a half to get my Stanford GSB application submitted in time for round two, so I’m going to put all my effort towards that and this time I will not fail. I will spend all day tomorrow making sure my recommenders get those recommendations in before we leave work. I won’t accept another missed deadline!

Trip through China

laelene Post in photo blog，Tags: china, pictures, travel, vacation

08 January 2012

Here’s a look at what I’ve been up to while I was gone! Click to enlarge and view more details.

: Off I went, heading first to Portland in the early hours of Christmas.

: Came across a colorful piece of art by James Dupree at the Portland Airport.

: A cute napkin on the plane from Portland to Tokyo.

: Looking down at the vastness of the ocean just before reaching Japan.

: The smallest crane is just a dot to the eye and was made with tweezers under a microscope.

: Yum, I just had to try the ramen in the airport! I tasted very rich and fatty, perfect for my starving belly.

: The captain brought our attention to the lights of Seoul, South Korea, and the blackness beyond that is North Korea.

: I saw a bunch of bird nests in the trees now that they are bare in winter.

: I arrive in Shenyang and enjoy a feast of a dinner at a hot pot place with great service.

: I celebrated my 26th birthday with some relatives and the cake came with a cute cutter. The candles originally said 28 because they thought they’d get 28 candles to use, but we fixed it!

: That night, we stayed at this nice hotel right across the street from my aunt’s.

: This is looking up at the auditorium in Lingshan where the Buddha is. Each petal is actually the same size and each row has 48 petals! Apparently they got this from one of the sites where the 2008 Olympics was held.

: The front statue moves as the story of Siddhartha’s birth is told and nine dragons bathe it. Back on the mountainside, grownup Sidd overlooks Taihu Lake.

: The seats on Juneyao Airline are pretty cool! They offer good service too, even gave my cousin a kid’s book to read (which she loved).

: We finally arrive at our new place on Hainan Island and enjoy a wonderful view.

: The golf course down the street, called The Dunes.

: It’s a very scenic golf course with this cool rock formation.

: From one of the courses, you get a great view back at the clubhouse.

: Now I had no idea what a muesli was, so I didn’t try it, but the rest of breakfast at the Four Points was good.

: A pretty hibiscus flower sat just outside our deck at the Four Points.

: Apparently a popular Chinese movie was shot in this area, particularly at Le Meridien, off screen to the right.

: If you fancy lounging, this is the spot.

: There was a new housing development being built (Shimei Bay Nine Mile), so we checked it out. Here’s the master bedroom.

: Outside, you can’t see much, but the insides are nice and each has a small pool in the yard.

: The parents went across the street to get some fruit and came back with all kinds of weird tropical stuff.

: A Chinese police car parked behind us so I decided to get a shot.

: The golden coconut on the left is special to Hainan Island, but its water doesn’t taste as good as the normal coconut.

: A beautiful white sofa at our new place!

: What a fun circular tub! We fit us three cousins in easily for a silly photo shoot.

: Only on the last night did I realize I could use the alarm clock as speakers for my music! Not that I really listen to any, but I had to try it out.

: Even the moths are prettier in the tropics.

: It was a beautiful sunny day down at Sanya, the southernmost part of China.

: These elephants were sprouting flowers.

: Looking out across the South China Sea.

: We’ve got to talk a ways to get to the big Tianya stone.

: I spotted a couple of teeny little fish!

: Someone was out enjoying the day in that parasail.

: My first time witnessing coconuts being picked. The guy had special hook shoes to climb with and the guy below is holding the wire to let down the coconut bundle slowly.

: Well, they may not want pictures taken of their products, but I’m pretty sure they won’t mind me documenting their strange translation…

: Chunyuan Seafood Square was recommended to us for dinner. You pick and buy your own groceries in the back, then pay a fee to get it cooked by one of the many restaurants, each with a couple of tables.

: Those red dots with white outlines may look fake, but these crabs actually grow them!

: And so it was time to go, after being the first island people to stay overnight at this new development!

: We saw a bunch of Buddhist nuns and as it turns out, they were on my flight.

: We got sandwiched between two layers of clouds for a bit and got a peek at a gorgeous blue sky.

: What a pretty box they served lunch in on Hainan Airlines!

: As we got ready to land in Fuzhou for a break before continuing to Hefei, I spotted the waterline.

: We approached Hefei and I caught a glimpse of a temple. I don’t usually see them from above!

: Want an Apple Store? Oh yeah, we’ve got them in spades! Want a real one? Umm…

: The lake outside our place in Beijing was frozen over, but people were still out walking.

: Since it’s a manmade lake, the fish need holes drilled so they can get to the surface. They had frozen over, but were opened up again.

: Snow in Beijing! It was my lucky day to get to see snow in a city that rarely gets it anymore.

: Awesome, my Delta flight had USB ports so we could charge our devices!

: No longer were there buttons on the side of your chair for these commands. Now it’s all on the TV screen.

: Our takeoff was a bit delayed while we got de-iced to ensure a safe flight.

: The mountains below only barely peek out here and there. Is it fog or pollution?

: You can see a whole bunch of sailboats sitting in the harbor as we take off from Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport.

: That is a lot of water way up high in those mountains!

: A view of the marina at Marina del Rey.

: I could see a lot of other aircraft making their descent into Los Angeles International.

: Hey, that’s my suitcase!

: It’s a tradition to stop by Sam Woo’s after coming in from LAX, and I couldn’t resist a delicious bowl of my favorite, the wonton hefen noodle soup.

On the go

laelene Post in general blog，Tags: experiences, family, travel

27 December 2011

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. 🙂

Best pet EVER

laelene Post in video blog，Tags: animals, aquarium, behavior, fish, pets, videos

23 December 2011

This little fish is SO awesome! I wish I could just bring it home.

White elephant pig

laelene Post 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. 😛

black oversized piggy bank with white dollar signs

A cute piggy bank that I can now use to save up a fund.

mini water cooler for desktop use repurposed as piggy bank

I'd been using this toy water cooler to save up change, but now I can actually use it for water!

The Maven

laelene Post 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 Post 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 Post in photo blog，Tags: cars, driving, holidays, observation, pictures

18 December 2011

a spirited display of hanukkah candles atop a car on the freeway

They were certainly getting into the spirit!

Friends for life

laelene Post 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

laelene Post in video blog，Tags: animals, behavior, cats, play, videos

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.

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