The Epiphany That Hit Me Like A Truck

Today, for the first time in my 10 years of extensive air travel, I missed my flight to Germany because I left my passport at home.  In the past, I had one or two close calls, but I had always taken pride in my ability to prepare myself for business trips.  As they say, even monkeys fall out of trees.  The ironic part was that I did do a quick inventory check of my stack of Euro, plane ticket and other materials for various meetings, but I assumed my passport was in my travel document pouch because I'm usually quite anal-retentive about putting my passport back where it belongs.

Murphy's Law triumphed today and due to 1) my unusual late departure from the office to the airport, 2) misinterpretation of my instruction to retrieve my passport, 3) delays on the highway caused by a car accident that closed off the highway forcing my brother-in-law to detour when he was driving down to the airport to deliver my passport to me, I sat hopelessly at the airport curb side waiting as precious seconds ticked away until my flight left the gate.

As I sat there watching cars drove by and fuming about my unusual carelessness in pre-business travel preparation, I was overwhelmed with a strong sense of panic and helplessness.  At one point, my emotions were s intense like a balloon that was about to burst, but suddenly my anger deflated as if an industrial strength shop-vac had sucked all the negative energy out of my heart.

I started thinking about my options and the worst thing that could happen to me was to let the airlines rape my wallet and buy a ticket at the airport for the next available flight and miss a few appointments at the tradeshow exhibition.  I would still have my health, I would still have a lovely and supportive wife, I would still have my two adorable sons, I would still have my career, many people would love to be in my shoes.

All of a sudden, I went from extremely stressed to very comfortable with my current situation and I knelt down and gave a thankful prayer to God.  Even though the airlines did rape my wallet to arrange me on a later flight, but I was happy they were able to help me.  If nothing good comes out of this trip, at least I am a happier man knowing how truly blessed I am with everythng that I have and all the people that love me.  My pastor always told me that God works in mysterious ways and I would snicker as soon as his back was turned.  Today, I must admit my experience going from near emtional breakdown to sudden calm acceptance of the situation and even thankful of how lucky I was, it was nothing short of a divine interventon.

On a side note, I did get my HTC Touch cellular phone in time.  I had been playing around with it a lot over the last few days and I must say I'm extremely happy with this little gadget. 

Parenthood Log: Matthew and Jonathan started their summer camp on Monday.  At first they were a little intimidated knowing all the kids would be speaking English, but after the first day, they told us that it was so much fun and they loved it.  I even noticed Matthew and Jonathan speaking more sentences in English while they were playing with each other.

My New Cellular Phone Racing Against Time

http://www.htctouch.com/  

Originally, I was in the market for a nice GPS smart phone, such as the Asus P526, but I found out the Asus P526 did not have WiFi, so I couldn't use my Skype or MSN for free if I was at airport lounges or branch offices.  So I did some quick research and ordered the HTC Touch with the bluetooth GPS receiver and software kit online.  This phone seemed amazing and had all the features on my check list, so I took the plunge within minutes after reading many reviews of this sleek looking light weight PDA smart phone.  I couldn't wait to dump my flimsy, error-prone Sony Ericsson Z520i.

When I placed the order on a Taiwanese web vendor last week, I thought it would give them plenty of time to deliver it to me before I return to Toronto Wednesday night (I used a web vendor because I was still in Toronto at the time).  After carefully reading their shipping policy and estimated processing time, I realized it was going to be very tight, with any mishap the phone might not arrive in time.  So I kept writing emails to the vendor to ask them to rush the order, the vendor promised me the unit would be sent out to me latest by today, so I can receive it tomorrow or Wednesday morning.

Earlier today, when I checked the order status page, it still only showed "payment completed" and not "shipment in progress" or "shipped out".  This made me very nervous and I continued to bombard the vendor with concerned emails and threats to cancel the order because I might not receive the phone before I leave the country for 6 weeks.  The web vendor emailed back to give me the tracing number from the parcel courier and explained the order status webpage update was a bit slow.

Being the infamous control freak that I am, I also called the parcel courier to ask them to prioritize my parcel (because I'm the king of the universe).  The parcel courier was very polite to me due to my company being a large customer of theirs.  They claimed my parcel would arrive tomorrow around noon, but I took their confirmation with a pinch of salt.  I never trust any courier's estimate until I am opening the parcel personally.  Hopefully, this phone will arrive in time so I can show it off to my friends in Toronto and on upcoming business trips to Germany and USA.  What's the use of buying one of the latest phones if you can turn your friends' faces green with envy?

Parenthood Log: I arrived Taipei on Friday morning, one day before Matthew's kindergarten graduation ceremony.  I was so tired and jetlagged that I had to staple my eye lids open when I visited my team in the Taipei office on Friday.  Saturday morning, I woke up very early and took Matthew and Jonathan to the kindergarten around 8:30 and ushered them to their respective teachers.  The ceremony was extremely long and crowded with eager parents filming or taking pictures constantly.  When Matthew got his graduation certificate and said quick thanks to his teacher for all the things he learnt in Kindergarten, the teacher was close to tears.  Finally, Matthew thanked Junko for doing homework with him throughout kindergarten years and he also thanked me for flying all the way back from Toronto to attend his graduation.  That alone was worth the last minute ticket I paid for the flight.  The rest of the performances of singing, piano, and dancing by different classes in the kindergarten was also very impressive.  Both Matthew and Jonathan were very proud of their performances in the graduation ceremony.  We're going to convert the segments we recorded on our video camcorder and the pictures we took on my trusty Nikon D70 on recordable DVD's, so they can watch it when they grow up. 

The More You Work, The More Work Piles Up Waiting For You

Have you ever felt like this?  Just when I thought my work schedule finally reached an all time high on the impossibility meter, my workload just doubled in merely weeks.  After the unstable oil price came the sharp rise in metal prices, immediately followed by China government policy to cut VAT refunds on exports.  Therefore all the costing since last year had to be revisited, re-evaluated, and re-negoatiated with both our suppliers and our customers.  It felt like the last 3 months was one long non-stop meeting for costing analysis and pricing strategies.

A month ago, the company announced expansion plans and restructuring of different overseas division offices.  As the bosses favorite "go to guy", I was given the "privilege" of  flying around around Asia and North America like I was trying to personally inflate the airline's stock price by inceasing their ticket sales.  All these were placed on top of my already demanding workload.

Spent the last two weeks in Vancouver and Toronto negotiating contract extension for a few key managers and went on a hiring spree to fill new positions ceated from our expansion plans and to replace long time coworkers who decided to move on to pursue other personal goals.  One new experience for me out of all this was training and overseeing large number of new recruits.  I must admit, checking other people's work for possible errors was much harder than doing the tasks myself.  On top of working long hours in Toronto office during the day time, I also stayed up late into the night to work with my team in Asia to tidy up some loose ends.

It felt like I would never stop biatching until I sat down with my best friend N.  We haven't seen each other for almost 2 years now, only occassionally writing emails to each other or talked on the phone.  He, too, was stressing about his workload.  Two years ago, he was slapped with a big wad of cash by a recruiting firm to jump ship to work for his company's main competitor.  Ever since then, he's been riding the stress train, the corporation was trying to squeeze every drop out of him to compensate for the money they slapped hm with.  Looking at each other, we agreed we looked like mad men being pulled in all directions by unseen godly forces.

At least I was not alone in my situation.  My best friend was feeling the same kind of pressure working for his company.  Guess grass is not always greener on the other side once you take a closer look.

Parenthood Log:  I had been traveling around a lot for the last couple of months.  During the first few days of my arrival in Toronto, on our usual phone calls, Matthew asked me if I was going to attend his kindergarten graduation ceremony.  I told him that I was probably not able to, but Junko will record everything on video so I could watch it.  I guess it devastated him because he told everybody that he was very sad.  So I called the travel agency the next day and booked a short 5 days trip back to Taipei so I can attend his graduation ceremony this weekend (travel agencies are all freaking blood suckers, price doubled when I told them I needed an urgent ticket back to Taipei).  I will never forget how happy Matthew sounded when I called him to tell him that I bought a plane ticket so I can see his graduation.  He even said he would practice piano really hard so he'll do a great job on the song that he will perform in front of all the parents.

Last minute plane ticket = insanely expensive.  Watching my son graduate from kindergarten = priceless.

Quick Update For Those Who Still Remember Me

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a year since I blogged regularly (not counting the couple of updates I wrote here and there).  I had been keeping myself very busy lately, both at work and at home.  So much to talk about, but I'm feeling so rusty to post them up, it's almost like I'm a blog virgin again.  >_<

For the past year, to keep my mind off depressing things like losing great grandmother and grandmother, I occupied myself with a game called RF online.  It's a fun game, but there were too many cheaters who used illegal botting software or game accelerators to become invincible.  So, I decided to stop playing and started selling my gears, so far I made quite a good profit.  Hopefully, I will have enough to buy myself and my wife nice cellular phones.  (mystery voice: real money transaction of game items is also against the game's rules & regulation!!)

I want to get a stylish and lightweight phone for Junko.  My pick right now is the Samsung SGH-F308, which is known in Asia as Beyonce's phone (from the TV commercial).  I wonder what color I should get?  I guess black is always a safe choice, I might consider white also.  I'll see once I'm at the store and see which one looks more hot.

I want to get a PDA phone for myself with built-in GPS, based on Windows Mobile 6.0 so I can use Skype on my phone when I'm traveling around the world and save on international roaming charges.  The lead runner right now is the Asus P526.  I'm not sure if it supports Push Mail technology, then I could also save myself from getting the crackberry.  It's like going from crack to another drug.  I'm sure Push Mail technology will be just as bad as crackberry, but at least I don't have to spend money on a second mobile device.  >_<

The last half year I had been traveling around for business so much that I was gently reminded again of the amount of days I spent at home.  From February to May, I was average below 50% at home, especially month of March, I was home only 5 days.  The amount of traveling allowed me to catch up on reading.  I bought big boxes and big boxes of books from Amazon and they were collecting dust on my bookshelf.

So I was reading 2 books a week while I was traveling.  I finished off re-reading David Eddings Belgariad series (5 books), Malloreon series (5 books), the supplemental books Belgarath The Sorcerer and Polgara The Sorceress (2 books).  It was a great saga of 12 books, the story flowed very fast and I found them to be very exciting.  I definitely categorize them as must read for fantasy lovers.

Then I read different sci-fi and mystery novels before going back to my true passion in fantasy books again.  So I'm now plowing my way through Dragonlance books starting with the Chronicles Trilogy, the Legends Trilogy, The Second Generation, Dragons of Summer Flame, Dragons of a New Age, the War Of Souls Trilogy, then the Lost Chronicles Trilogy (well, the first volume anyway, second volume is due to release July 10th, and third volume is still in the works).  I read half of them as teenager before, but it's always interesting to re-read them now that I have a more mature (relatively speaking, compared to 10-15 years ago) perspective on things.

At least I will have 2 weeks of peace at home in June before I start traveling to Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto and Dallas again starting mid-June.  T-T

Parenthood Log: My passion for reading is starting to rub off on the kids.  I always had a habit of reading to them before tucking them into bed.  Lately, Matthew started reading the picture books to me using the Chinese phonetics beside the actual words.  They also love listening to me reading the Narnia books, even though these books are quite long, but they are content with a couple of pages on a weeknight and a chapter on weekends.

Where to go from here?

Many,many times in the last 3 months, I would log into my Xanga with the purpose of writing an update, but as soon as I saw my posts about the funerals of my grandmother and great grandmother, I would pause and re-read my posts in memories of the two loved ones.  After that, I could not bring myself to write any longer or I would start to write but never be able to finish one post in a coherent manner.

The pains were very real, very deep, and they had not disappeared fully with the passing of time.  They were not as intense as 3 months ago, but I would always wonder how one could continue to deal with more and more family members passing away as the years go by.

I guess this post would be a start, follow by another one in the near future, and another one would be written soon after.  Just as more posts would displace the position of the funeral entries further and further down the page and finally out of sight, so would my pains of losing two of the most important family figures in my life.  I guess time does heal wounds, but things will never be the same again.

Parenthood Log: Over the last 3 months, the whole family traveled back to Toronto after all the funeral ceremonies came to a conclusion.  My parents-in-law were down in Florida visiting my wife's sister, who just had another baby, so Junko took the kids to Orlando for a brief visit.  During the visit, the kids got to visit Disney World, so they were extremely happy about that, because we had to cancel our original plan to visit Disney Hong Kong due to the 7 weeks funeral ceremonies.  We just developed hundreds of pictures last week, including ones from Disney World, it should be a lot of fun organizing the pictures with the kids into different photo albums.