Art & Wine Festival

Some things get better with age - including art and wine and beautiful Foster City. And the best way to enjoy art, wine and Foster City is to attend the Arts & Wine Festival. It is one of the events that I look forward to every year in the last weekend in May. It contains art booths, wine and beer booths, dozens of food booths and other goodies. It also has live performance from local music groups, local schools and organizations. Besides all these, it usually comes with a carnival, which other cities' Art & Wine doesn't have. It is a traditional "start of summer" event in Foster City.

I go there every year since I moved to California in 2000.  Sometimes, I would also buy a souvenir wine glass or a beer mug.  Unfortunately, I broke the 2001's and missed 2006 & 2007.  2006 and 2007 are two of my most miserable years so I guess I just forgot to get the glasses.  :)  It's a good family event.  Abby loves the carnival ride.  Since she behaves well these days, I think I'd reward her an unlimited rides wrist band for the carnival on Saturday.

Little Guys In, Big Guys Out

I went to see Terminator Salvation over the weekend.  It was a good entertainment but I didn't think the story was strong enough to successfully reboot this franchise.  Without Governator Arnold, this is not much difference from the Transformers.

In an CNN interview, Arnold Schwarzenegger talked about his movie career.  He mentioned that when he tried to get into the movie industry and attempted to use body-building as the mean to get there, his agent told me that he stood no chance.  His agent told him, "Your body is outdated, it's for movies about 20 years late.  The actors now are like Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen.  The little guys are in, the big guys are out."  Hahaha...  I like Arnold's positive and interesting personality.  He made some bad decisions as a politician, cutting the education funding to be one of them, but over all I think he still brought good things to California.  My impression of his movies when I was a child was that he always had a very clear victory and nobody could touch him.  Compared to Sylvester Stallone, who always got badly beaten till the very end.  However, I have to say that my favorite action movie series would have to be Rambo, so hardcore, so simple, and so much fun.

Talking about rebooting a franchise, Star Trek is the clear winner by a margin.  There is just no comparison.  Many consider the 11th Star Trek movie one of the best sequel these years, even better than Batman Begins.  I would agree with this statement.  Even though I love both series a lot, Batman Begins does seem a bit too slow paced here and there.  As for Star Trek, other than the 3 minutes car chasing scene of the young Kirk that I think is a bit irrelevant, the rest of the movie is just so smooth and detailed with good acting and visuals.  I still feel quite stunned by how big difference it makes to the old crappy t-shirt uniform by simply changing the texture of the materials and the adjustment of tightness.  Love it!

Tooth Fairy

Last night, after putting Abby to bed at 10 o'clock, I did my evening routine: walking the dog, cleaning up, taking a shower, then relaxing on sofa watching tv and reading some book.  Around 11-ish, suddenly Abby's bedroom door opened and she came out with a big smile on her face.

Before I said anything, she reached out her hand and said, "Lookie!"  On her hand is a baby canine, with blood on it.  I said to myself, "what the hell..."  She said, "this loose tooth bothers me sleeping so I decide to take it out."  Then comes the question I tried to avoid, "how much do you think the tooth fairy would leave for this tooth?"

I told Abby to go rinse her mouth.  I took a peek into my wallet, only $20 bills in it.  I told her, "I don't know.  Why don't you go to bed first and I'll clean the tooth up a little so that you can leave it under your pillow tomorrow.  I doubt the tooth fairy would want a bloody tooth."  She nodded and agreed with me, then headed to bed once again.

Frankly, I don't quite get the tooth fairy concept.  When I was a child, if we lost the teeth in the lower jaw, we threw it up to the rooftop; if we lost the teeth in the upper jaw, we threw it on the ground.  That's pretty much it.  Redeem baby teeth for money was a totally new concept after coming to United States.  It used to be a quarter or two for each teeth.  But I guess the value gets increased with the inflation and economy as well.  Now it seems to be in the range of $1 to $20, depends on the area and depends on which tooth.  Crazy if you ask me.

I actually thought about getting Abby one of those cute teeth boxes to put the baby teeth.  I gave up the idea since Abby lost some before coming to California.  Since it cannot be a completed collection, might as well sell it to the tooth fairy.

How much does Abby's tooth worth?  Well, I cannot tell you.  All I know is that I need to buy something in cash today to break that twenty.

How Many IMs Are You?

Many people have multiple instant messenger accounts on different platforms.  Some people go from simple to complex, some the other way around.  What kind are you?

I consider myself not an enthusiastic but sort of an old-bone when it comes to messengers. 

I remembered starting to use ICQ in mid 90's.  My ICQ# is in early 6 digits, though I haven't used it in years, I am surprised that it is still active.  I stopped using ICQ because back then it didn't store the contact list on the server, therefore when you change a machine.  Also because of the increasing amount of spam, I decided that's enough for me.

Yahoo! Messenger was a pleasant little thing.  It used to be pretty light weight and easy to use.  MSN came out roughly the same time, but until recently it didn't offer the offline messages.  Therefore YIM had my favor, besides, most of my friends were on Yahoo! around that time.  Things changed after I graduated and started to work.  For some reason, MSN seemed more compatible with the firewall in the office.  Not sure whether it's because of the same reason, but my friends started to jump ship to MSN.  Eventually I had no choice but to comply.

For a while, the concept of an universal platform for IMs were quite popular.  I worked on a project similar to Trillian when I went to graduate school.  I didn't stay on it for long because I realized soon that I am a person who adores simplicity and purity.  The all-in-one deal sounds good but it's the different characteristics in each IMs that make them interesting and special.

Later on, I also used AIM, Skype, Google Talk, Pidgin and then Apple's iChat.  I have pretty good experience with most of them except AIM.  I just simply don't find it that friendly.  I try it out just to see what's the big fuss of AOL.

These days, I mainly use MSN and Google, simply because they don't seem to have much issues with my office's firewall.  I still hop on other IMs from time to time at home to keep in touch with family and friends.  I guess in some way it is like kung-fu - when you first start, you like to learn more styles; after a while you want to just extract the essence and stick to the styles that are simple and get the jobs done well.  Meh, that makes me think of the Apple vs PC commercials.  Have I mentioned that I am a very easily distracted person... :P

Abby's Poem - Part 2

1. Abby's Acrostic Poem

Awesome!

Blue is her favorite color!

Yay for her!

Great at softball!

Allergic to onion!

I like ice cream!

Lollipops are tasty to her!

2. Oreo

Oreo the dog,

loves me.

Oreo the hamster,

loves his food.

Oreo the cat,

loves you.

Oreo can be...

any animal's name.

3. Nature

I saw a bird in a tree,

it turned around looked at me.

In the forest I saw a bear,

I was scared because it turned and saw me.

I helped a snail get across the street

because it almost got killed

I LOVE NATURE!

~~ Abygail

Abby's Poem

~~~ Dad ~~~

Dad is the star

Shining in my heart.

Dads are the people

Who work the most.

Dad is the one

Who always makes me breakfast.

~ Abygail

The Big Wave

Abby's school had a "No TV Challenge" during the Literature Week about a month ago.  To participate it, the students need to try to last a whole week without television.  The family also should try not to watch any TV programs in front of the students.  If the students successfully accomplish it, the parents would sign a form to certify it and the students would be rewarded with a book of their choice.

The schools in United States encourage students to read much more than I could remember when I grew up in Taiwan.  Instead of teaching the students to understand the very details of the meanings of the literatures, they encourage the kids to just read more.  They teach the kids how to choose interesting books and the books that fits their reading level and skills.  I wish I had that kind of environment back then.

Anyway, Abby chose this book called The Big Wave, written by Pearl S. Buck.   It was a famous story of a Japanese boy who must face life after escaping the tidal wave destruction of his family and village.  The book won 1948's Children's Book Award of Child Study Association.  It's an interesting story, but might be a bit too cliche for people who grows up in Asia since we have heard too many stories about how people fight against the nature and always live positively.  Pearl S. Buck also won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel The Good Earth, and in 1938 received the Nobel Prize for literature.

In the book, Abby put a sticker in it and gave the book to me.  Thanks girl.