Month: June 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063000332.html

Craziness. The Tour starts tomorrow and last year’s top 5 finishers are gone from the race. The two heavy favorites are gone. 1 team has been decimated. It’s crazy. I suppose no one is really clean in the sport of cycling, but I’d like to hope that it’s still possible to win without doping. I think it’s probably much much harder to, but I’d like to think it’s still possible.

I’ve been reading “Game of Shadows” about the BALCO investigation. Man, all the drugs invariably do make you go much much faster than being non doped.

Of course, I suppose the question is that if last year’s spots 2-5 were doping, how did Lance end up beating all of them? Hrm…..

I’ve been driving for a bit now, and I find the road manners to be almost equivalent of my experience riding the public transport. Everything seems orderly and mannerly at first, there are lots of clear announcements and everything runs on time and is very clean and efficient. However, unless there is a police officer or metal bars that are exactly one person wide, everyone will just push and shove to get on the train first. I have had people close doors in front of me while I’m carrying Edda and leading Vince while holding a half gallon of milk. I’ve had people close elevator doors in front of my face. There is a word for this, kiasu!

The thing about driving in Singapore that irks me the most is this:

I’m merging on to the freeway and the person behind me is also merging onto the same freeway. He/she will merge first and then accelerate into the lane, thus preventing me from merging onto the freeway because he/she is pretty much right next to me as my merging lane ends. Sigh. What can you do?

Of couse, after I wrote about how we are all in the groove, Edda’s caught a little cough, which was not bad enough to keep her home from school, but bad enough to have her wake up a bunch at night, so we all are working on a bit less sleep. That is, except for Vince, who sleeps like a rock and then is much too much energetic for his sleep deprived parents and sister.

I picked Jeremy up from work today with the kids loaded in the back seat. On the way home, we had this conversation.

Vince: “I don’t like this car anymore.”
Jeremy: “Oh really, what don’t you like about it?”
Vince: “I’m just tired of it.”
Jeremy: “So what kind of car would you like to have instead?”
Vince: “A Lexus.”

!?!?!?!?!?!

Doris: “Well you’ll have to get a job and save up for that because I don’t think we’ll be getting a Lexus anytime soon.”
Vince: “But I don’t have a job and I don’t know how to drive.”

On another subject, we finished the jar of peanut butter recently and I always laugh when Ruby tries to get every last bit out of the jar.

I’m pretty much game for knitting anything. I have a little bit of experience knitting lace. I’m using pretty heavy yarn (aranweight) and knitting Branching Out from knitty.com – you know, just as an experiment – to see the little holes forming and to see the lace growing without straining to see the yarn or worry too much about knitting fine, fine yarn. I do have a ball of Kid Silk Haze that I bought when I just started knitting that I’m eager to try out, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that yet. I have no pattern and I’m a bit intimdated by the difficulty of frogging lace with actual laceweight yarn which I have heard is kind of difficult and also, I don’t think I have the right extreme pointy needles.

Summer is the time for lace – did you join the Amazing Lace KAL? I did, but I haven’t actually entered any of the challenges. It’s always summer in Singapore. I’m looking forward to moving back to the States and enjoying some winter (sweater) weather someday.

I don’t often post about knitting because I’m a really slow knitter and I don’t have that many finished projects, but here are a pair of baby socks I just finished and mailed to a charitable organization.

I did get a comment today about how cheap socks are to buy and why spend so much time knitting little socks. I usually answer something sappy, like they are made with love, but with my abilities, I almost always still prefer the store bought socks (but actually, I don’t wear socks here in Singapore – so it’s pretty much just useless knitting). I like knitting socks and things just to see things emerge from a string and two sticks. Today, I’ve been working on socks knitted from the toe up and I’m learning about short rows. I just follow some instructions and string becomes 3 dimensional, it becomes the toe part of the sock and I can stick my big toe in it and marvel at how clever people can be with string.

Well, first off, Mom and Pop, do you know a Wu Long San from Tai Da, class of 65? mech e? I just found out that I know his son. Do you guys know him? Apparently he remembers you both – or at least your names.

I have to say, i bought a nice jacket. On sale at Sports basement. One of Ray’s friends scored a shopping party there – free beer and 20% off everything in the store. I got this jacket for $55 bucks, and I’ve gotten 3 complements on it so far. Too bad it’s still like way too hot to wear it, but whatever. it hasnt’ stopped me. 😛

Nice Jacket 

Things are groovin’ here at the Lee-Martin household in Singapore. Everyone is back on their regular schedule, so there is nothing really exciting to report – nothing exciting to blog about. We are just living our lives out, each day the same as the other. OK – we’ve only had 2 days that are the same. But, but, but, I take what I can get.

I think I’m gaining weight. I really like my weight now, I’m the same weight I was when I started college. I feel good at this weight, like I’m not carrying around extra stuff and at the same time, not putting a huge effort to control my food intake.

Now that Jeremy and I are getting more comfortable with Edda’s situation, we’ve been indulging in extra calories. It always happens this way, when we are stressed, the pounds are shed. When we are happy, we get fat. There has been a steady stream of desserts after dinner (usually ice cream) and cookies in the house. Usually, I don’t allow such luxuries in the house as I know I will eat them, but Edda’s school and therapists want Edda to practice eating cookies so there are extra cookies around the house. Edda eats very few of them, we eat most of them.

Did you know that British for cookie is biscuit? Everyone was telling me to buy biscuits for Edda and I would walk up and down the grocery isles looking for bland biscuits when what they wanted was a good ol’ Oreo or Chips Ahoy… Have they managed to get rid of the trans-fats yet?

Vince’s summer vacation is over! Woo hoo for us! Vince is happy, I’m happy.

The family had a nice weekend, very busy which is how we like it. On Saturday, we went to the Botanic Gardens for the first time. Ruby’s allowed to come to the Gardens, it was very nice. Edda loves plants and spent almost the whole time walking around, which is a big deal for her. She made her way up and down various hills (very small) and some uneven terrain and made efforts to not eat any of the plants which was nice. Ruby also was on her best behavior. Not too much barking at other dogs.

Then Edda had a nice therapy session and I went off for the evening with my friend Kate and Jeremy and the kids went to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in our local park. Kate and I spent the evening at Holland Village at a pasta place and shared a bottle of wine and had a nice time, talking and gossiping. I was on my third glass of wine before I remembered that I was suppose to drive home from Kate’s house.. So I didn’t do that, I took a cab home and I went over this morning to pick up the car.

As for Jeremy’s evening, Vince wanted to leave the play as soon as the wicked witch showed up, so they left early and watched some kids playing soccer near our mall.

Today we dropped of the kids at Gowri’s house and went to have lunch and walk around a nature reserve. We saw fish, birds, a crocodile!, at least 3 monitor lizards and a big ass spider (it was as big as my hand).

Fast moving lizard:

We didn’t get close enough to the croc to take a picture of it. I was a bit scared of it.

Danald asked how much my father influence me on the choice of majoring engineering. My answer is not at all.

My Daddy was in Taiwan when I graduated from HS- the high school you all visited. I communicated with my Daddy by writing letters. The letters must go through Hong Kong through the Big Brother who helped us for over 12 years to keep my family in touch. We did not have telephone or computer then. My Daddy wrote us probably 4 times a year. In one of them he mailed us a check of $100 or $200. It was more than enough for three of us to live for a year. My Mom was a very good budgeter. My Mom could read my fathers letter, but she could not write. So, my Mom asked my to write letter when I was only 9 or 10 years old. Even all the neighbors asked my help to write letters to their sons or daughter in Shanghai, just across the river.

My uncle – my Mom’s younger brother had the best education in our extended family at that time. He was a high school graduate. He did not have chance to go to college due to family financial difficulties. After he graduated from HS, he became a pharmacist since he knew a little bit English. He always wanted me to go to college. As a matter of fact, he wanted me to go to Soviet Union for further for studies in 60’s. I was very happy and eager to learn Russian when I was in high school and college. I majored Engineering because it had good job prospects at that time.

Life sometime is hard to say. Few years later I left Mainland and went to Taiwan to learn and finish my college education. Then I came to the USA to earn my graduate diploma.

– You have to bike to work in 95 degree weather cause your car is broken
– You hit a car on the way to work. (I nudged it. nothing serious)
– You get to work and find out you forgot your underwear
– Find out that the tape system you were planning on using is even more complicated and headache fill than you originally thought.
– You find out that the Stanford Bookstore doesn’t sell boxer shorts.
– And the zipper is broken on the beloved day pack that your sister and brother-in-law bought you a long long time ago.

In other good news however. It’s Arif’s birthday (Friday) and we went the Planet Granite where we took a lesson. It was nice. I think I might have to pick up climbing…hrm