Archive for the year 2007
Lay Off the Web MD
Posted on September 17, 2007 by Ching under Family, Life.
I woke up at four o’clock this morning due to severe chest pain. I thought I was having a heart attack. I ended up waking Brian up, much to his dismay. He said it was only heartburn. I never get heartburn, though.
It felt like there was a brick in my chest. It was like I wanted to burp but couldn’t but somehow I knew that if I burped or vomitted it would make me feel better. I really thought about trying to make myself gag with my fingers but then decided against it because that would just be too gross and painful. Then I coughed. I coughed a few times and white, cloudy phlegm came out. That actually made me feel better.
I was thinking that maybe my lungs were inflamed or something. On the up side the phlegm was white and not a gross green or yellow color. On the downside, I felt like I did when I had bronchitis minus the wheezing.
Brian rubbed some Vicks VapoRub on my chest. He figured that would help me breathe. It helped a little bit but it took a couple of hours before I could finally get back to sleep. Just as I started to doze off, the morning alarm went. I decided to call in a day of vacation and stay home. Brian and I agreed I could use the rest.
I slept until Brian woke me up around ten. The volume on my phone was set to super loud. It startled me. Anyway, I was going to go back to bed but after being abruptly woken up I decided to just stay up. I needed to read my book, Steve Kaplan’s “Bag the Elephant,”
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Shoot ‘Em Up
Posted on September 16, 2007 by Ching under Family, Flickr, Movies.
Please don’t be misled by the categorization of this blog entry. Shoot ‘Em Up
I enjoy a good action flick just like the next guy, but the movie has to be at least somewhat believable. Look at The Italian Job, the Bourne series.. These are good action films. Heck, even Grindhouse is good compared to Shoot ‘Em Up. Brian disagrees. He thought Grindhouse was really campy. I argue that it is supposed to be campy so it actually succeeds at achieving it’s objective. In Shoot ‘Em Up, I have no idea what their objective is.. It’s like an action movie that is comedic, but unintentionally so. Some of the scenes are so stupid and unbelievable that it’s funny. However, that’s not actually the goal of the movie so it fails its purpose. I think the critics were overly generous for giving it a C+ mark. Anyway, here are some pictures of last night’s outing.. (more…)
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Do It Yourself Flashback
Posted on September 16, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
My wife and I were going through some old web sites the other day looking at pictures from when we first bought the house. I got this wild hair up my butt and decided that I wanted to remove the old out of date wall paper from the walls. This was old 1970’s vinyl wall paper that looked like a bad acid trip. I first tried some wallpaper remover goo. this stuff was nasty and smelled like a wet yak on a hot summer day. when that didn’t work I decided to go for a more industrial method. I bought a wall paper steamer and used it to remove the wallpaper. this worked out perfectly, except for one small snag. The previous owners did not prime the walls before putting up the wallpaper. They simply papered over the sheet rock, creating a semi permanent bond between the sheet rock and the adhesive of the wall paper. this resulted in tearing and almost complete destruction of the sheet rock. Here are some pictures of the mess!
I learned my lesson and am starting on some smaller projects in the house. I will be remodeling my whole house but this time I learned a few helpful tips from the “Do It Yourself” website. The have all sorts of great tips and classes that you can take as well as forums and videos. I learned to build a bookshelf, put down flooring and hang sheet rock. I have learned so much that I think this will be a different experience than before, knowledge is power and I have learned more than I even knew before. Hopefully I will be able to show some pictures soon of the finished product, this time I am prepared and not just jumping into a project head first and blind. Thanks to the DVD’s and the many project notes on the site I am prepared to tackle anything.
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Old Blog Entry from 1998
Posted on September 15, 2007 by Ching under Life, Travel.
These are two of the blog entries I wrote about my last trip to the Philippines. It’s hard to believe it has been almost ten years. I think once we find good homes for the animals, Brian and I will have more freedom to travel. I would love to go back. I’d love to bring Brian. He’s never been so it will be really exciting and fascinating to him. I want to show him my home town and introduce him to friends and relatives. Someday we will go. For now, at least I have old journal entries to relive memories.
July 17, 1998: Fat Tuesday
we had a lot of fun last night. sheryll came over and found me and she went and fetched eloisa and maricel. the five of us (counting my sister) all went out to dinner at fat tuesday. i had quite a bit to drink… one mudslide, a gulp of jen’s blitz and several screw drivers. in a way you could say that i made a fool of myself — but was too drunk to realize it at the time. i felt i was entitled to it, though. i suppose i was just way too ecstatic to finally see everyone (after five long years of exile here in kansas)…
speaking of ecstatic, the band that played last night was called “ecstacy” or “X2C” or something that sounded like that. they were pretty cool about everything, despite my obvious intoxication. i suppose i was pretty funny to watch. everyone was probably laughing at me. my sister says whenever i went up to dance with/alongside the band my big gut kept peeping out from under my spaghetti-strapped top. she says it’s not that i look stupid dancing — it’s not like i CAN’T dance. she says i looked pretty cool (i was a little relieved to hear this), but my drunken state was pretty apparent to everyone in the room.
i went to see benjie today. he looks much better now than he used to. he’s still very nice. still kind and generous, but he has this girlfriend. it’s not like i continue to pine after him or anything — i mean, i’m over that (i think). mostly i’m just holding on to old, decrepid memories that don’t even exist outside of my own imagination.
July 20, 1998: Tabuc
today is our first morning here in tabuc… i haven’t written in a while as we were kind of busy. things have been quite hectic the past few days.
my friends and jen and i went to MARS last friday. it was packed. it felt pretty cool to be lost in a crowd of beautiful people. after a few minutes there, we took off to do a little drinking next door at the cable car.
would you believe a bottle of cuervo gold costs a couple thousand? sounds like a lot — but it’s in pesos (philippine currency). they just tack on way too many zeros at the end of everything. if converted to our currency here, it should be about the same if not cheaper.
we did (body) shots… we did a lot of sitting around, catching up and bullshitting. i wanted to return to MARS and do some serious dancing. however, after the tequila shots, a few sips of HIV and the complimentary mudslides (offered by the owner) which we didn’t even finish — i don’t think — i couldn’t even walk, let alone dance. they said that jen and i were sooo drunk we were puking our brains out. i guess we both went a little bit overboard. i mean, wouldn’t you? from so many drinking restrictions here, to total freedom.
it’s funny i noticed an odd similarity… here in kansas they stop serving alcohol after midnight. over there, at fat tuesday’s the other day, they stop serving water after midnight. you can drink as much booze as you want, but if you need water: tough. funny, huh?
jen and i got home around eight am the following day. mom was a bit furious for we had to leave for the airport by ten… everything was blur. jen was still pretty much the vegetable, to the extent of puking at the end of our flight to cebu where we were met by my dad’s brother cyrus.
tito cy still hasn’t changed. he still looks pretty much the same, only chunkier now. we stayed at their house in dumaguete overnight, because jen and i were still pretty exhausted from all the exertion.
then we went to opao, across from the elementary school, to visit with my paternal grandparents. finally, we get to tabuc. i saw a lot of familiar faces from the days gone by. my heart teeming with joy —
it feels good to be back.
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Berlin Experience
Posted on September 15, 2007 by Ching under School, Travel.
I took Brian with me to the Berlin experience informational meeting today. It is the second and final meeting about the Berlin program.
I found out about the Berlin experience when I first began the MBA program at Wichita State University. During the MBA orientation last year, Dotty Harpool came in and talked to us extensively about the program. Having been in the same MBA class, Thuy, Chad, and I initially decided that we would take advantage of this great opportunity and enroll in this section of the capstone course.
The Berlin trip and our anniversary trip to Jamaica were actually the primary reasons that Brian and I applied for our passports first thing this year. We are huge planners so we wanted to ensure everything was in place for our future trips abroad. I was thinking that I could take Brian along with me, so that we could spend the free time allowed during the trip sightseeing together. Since the school will cover my plane fare, we would only have to buy his and spend for food and lodging.
Anyway, after our trip to Jamaica Brian and I decided that we would probably nix the Berlin idea. I figured if I was going to use vacation time at work, I’d rather it be for pleasure than for school. So we were thinking we might just return to Jamaica again next summer. Then we are now getting into planning for our home remodel and we are really desperately wanting to get out of current house so we are thinking we might nix the Jamaica idea as well. We figured we could just spend our vacation time working on the house. If you are to get what you really want, then small sacrifices have to be made.
For that reason, I skipped the first informational meeting about the Berlin experience. Thuy and Chad attended along with several others. When classes started this sem, they actually asked where I was and why I didn’t attend the meeting because they were thinking that I was still planning on participating in the Berlin experience with them. I explained that we had second thoughts about it and that I planned on enrolling in the regular section of the capstone course instead.
It seems like most of the people I know and have grouped with in past projects are going to enroll in the section that goes to Berlin. It’s looking more and more like I’d have work with a new set of people in capstone so I began to rethink nixing the Berlin experience idea. Maybe I should go afterall? It is a really great opportunity. So when I got the email about the second informational session, I decided that I would attend.
Anyway, I found out during the informational session this morning that spouses, friends, and family are not permitted on the trip. Bummer. I really wouldn’t want to go anywhere without Brian. So we are back to the previous plan.
I’m not usually this flakey and indecisive but these decisions are not to be taken lightly. If you currently in the MBA program at Wichita State University and are interested in the Berlin experience, you can find additional information here. Here is a sample agenda/itinerary:
And if you decide you want to participate, you may enroll for the Berlin MGMT 885 capstone course by completing this form.
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