On Love

I love Lady Gaga- her music and also her open-mindedness. Every once in awhile, she would said something really insightful during interviews.

She said the following during the interview with Larry King,

"Well, I’m looking for love just like everyone else, Larry. But right now love is in the form of my fans. Love comes in many different forms. Right now I’m passionately only serving them."

Love is like beauty, it comes in all shapes, sizes and forms.

What's your form of love? For me, after many unfruitful attempts at looking for romantic love, I finally surrendered. I've concluded that there's a time for everything and now is not the time. On the other hand, love comes easily through my work, my friends and myself. And I'm going with the flow.

You'd better shape up

Just want to share this comic here. This is pretty much what a lot of us are experiencing right now but don't have the guts to admit it. Thanks CK for the link!

Snow day

Snowing is a big deal here. So far, we've been having 3 days off due to the snow storm. When I was living in the mid-west, I don't remember my school or my office were closed due to inclement weather. Time has changed, nowadays snow storms across many states of different regions are not uncommon.

Here's the timeline of what happened in a typical snow day:

8:00am -Leaving my place, brushing off snow and scraping off ice on the windshield.

8:05am -On my way to work

8:10am - Got a voice message from the office - the office is going to open at 11am due to the weather.

8:11am - Made an U-turn and went back to my place to chill.

....

10:30am- About to get ready for work second time of the day. Brushing off snow and scraping off ice again.

10:35am - On my way to work. The road condition was messy.

10:36am - Got another voice message from the office - "For employees who haven't come to the office yet, please be adviced to stay home."

10:37am, - Made a careful U-turn and go home. Yay!

The road less travelled

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Operation in Progress: pushing buttons

Executing valuation procedures.....eh...you mean pushing buttons?

That's why we have something called Hobblies

Think outside the bun- eat more taco bell
Think outside the box- don't try it in your cube

Work and Study

Lifelong working
Lifelong learning

Keep me in the loop

No Weapons are allowed

This was a sign at the entrance of a street fair. Who are they trying to convey this message to?

Ordinary people like you and me, don't have weapons.

And for those who carry weapons (cops excluded), are they really going to leave their guns/knives/pepper spray in their cars after reading this sign? I doubt that.

Besides, what's the definition of weapons? We all know it is not necessary to have a physical object to harm someone.

Why suits?

Since it was my day off yesterday, I took the advantage of my 'free time' to take care of some home stuffs. I went to my apartment office and tried to find out why the automatic withdrawal of my rent payment was not working.

One thing I noticed though, everyone in the office wore suits. Why suits? Isn't it a bit too stressful to wear suits to work everyday? As a renter, I just want to see some friendly faces who will make sure the renters are happy. It's more than wearing a power suit to be professional.

Actually I would like to see the staff dress down a little bit like the people at Home Depot or Target. It will give me an impression that they are more willing to help. Come on, it's an apartment management office and people usually come in to pick up their packages or reporting some maintenance issues in their home clothes (i.e. possibly pajamas).

I think it is a good idea if you wear to work what your customers wear to work. I wouldn't suggest the staff in the office to wear pajamas to work, but business causal is just good enough.

Let me have your attention

I saw this message at a movie theater today and I found it quite interesting.

Have you seen people who like to check their blackberry under the table during meetings? Perhaps someone should design a similar sign like the above and put it in every conference room at work.

And here's the message:

"Let me have your eyeballs. Please leave your crackberry at your office."

(Sounds bloody, but I don't really mean it literally. ;))

Mobile Office

While I was stuck at traffic this morning, I saw this "mobile office". Even from afar, you can see there's a door and a small A/C was installed at the back of this mini-mobile office. And when you look a little bit closer, you can find the power cord is actually plugged into the truck itself. This truck belongs to a metallurgical services company based on what's printed outside the truck. So I think it's more like a mobile laboratory/office combined.

Well, you may have noticed I've been posting some pictures for the last few days. It's an exercise to help me to be a little bit more observant on my every day life. ;)

Consolation Freebies

I was reading the news yesterday and the foreclosure rate in my city skyrocketed. Hm...not that surprising. Since we all know how the Big Three are doing lately.

A few days ago, I received a real estates junk letter. There were two pictures that caught my eyes. The first one, featuring a home for sale, has a banner across the picture of the home. And the message is "Buy this home and get a free ipod nano." And the other one is "Buy this home and get a $300 Home Depot gift certificate."

Probably the real estates agent needs to put in more efforts in market research. If I'm going to buy a house today, I think I can also afford an ipod. Besides, an 8GB ipod nano is $249 and the national median existing home price in the mid-west is about $178,000. So the freebies is only 0.14% of the value of the house. I know it does take some creativity to get people to buy a house around the market price (especially in my area) right now. However, does giving away an ipod really attract a home buyer?