Lately, we have been getting patches of fog in the mornings that will hang around until after noon. By the time I leave for work, plants are still ornamented with visible dew.

Today the clouds moved in and stayed all day. We even had a few drizzle of rain falls in the morning.

Is summer really gone?

It is usually a steep step from summer to autumn. The temperature drops over night and next thing you know….its scarves, sweaters and Uggs season already. (OK. that was inaccurate. the Uggs never really left us completely even during summer….)

I like the change. The dazzling sun breaks the world into brightness and shadow, blazing air and cool shade.
But the overcast has a similar blending effect as snow that casts a shade of grey on everything and muddling the boundaries from earth to sky and everything in between.

I felt comfortable enveloped in this grey, wet air.

On the morning of 9/11 ten years ago, I woke up late.

I had lab duty that morning which meant I needed to be at the lab door with keys in my hand at 8am sharp to let students rush in, print out their homework, and rush out to be late to their 8am classes.

I first had to go see my supervisor for keys. My supervisor was what seemed like a mid-aged woman to me at that time. Thinking back, she was probably only in her mid 30s, which I wouldn’t consider as mid-aged anymore. “Mid-age” is a relative term. The older you are, the later you tend to push back the definition of “mid-aged” to make sure it stays far far away from yourself.

My supervisor didn’t like the fact that I was rarely on time. But I was one of the few students that was willing to take the 8am shift. 8am for college student is like 4am for normal working adults.

I found her in the cafeteria watching TV with other staff. I walked up to her worried if she would give me a lecture on my tardiness in front of everyone. To my surprise, when she turned around and saw me, she quickly reached out her arms towards me, cried,” Oh! Poor baby!! You must be very scared!!”, then pulled me into her chest, and gave me a tight, almost choking hug.
“What?” I asked!
“Didn’t you see the news?”
If I played back my morning for her, it would go like this: woke up, rolled out of bed, grabbed my backpack, ran to the shuttle stop, got on the shuttle, arrived at the parking lot, and ran here. That was when I and almost everyone I knew used cell phones made by Nokia. That was when all I did or could do with my cell phone was to either make phone calls or send text messages. I had no access to news without a computer or a TV. I had no smart phone!

My supervisor started to explain the news to me. I heard fragments of “world trade center”, “plane crash”, “hijacking”, etc.
I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. I was more interested in getting the keys so I could open up the lab in time and have less angry students at the lab door waiting for me.

After I got away from my supervisor and arrived at the lab, there was already a line formed by students who looked as half asleep as I was only angrier. After checking everyone in and finally settling in at my desk, I checked news. The rest is history.

If 9/11 never happened, memories of my on campus job at the lab and my supervisor would have faded away just like it did for other random college jobs and the staff that came with it.
Funny how 9/11 created a link that connected my supervisor to me. Ten years later, I could still recall her voice, her face, her arms reaching out to me that morning.

I graduated 3 months later. It was a miserable time to be a fresh college graduate. The country was in despair.
Not knowing what the post 9/11 future would be, not having any hints of hope, I found myself at a cross road.

When I woke up this Saturday, I saw a huge American flag at my neighbor’s front porch.
“What’s so special today?” I asked my husband thinking July 4th passed a long time ago, I knew that!
“Its the 10 year anniversary of 9/11″.

Ten years! Wow!
How things have changed!
How things have remained the same!
Whatever I thought I couldn’t overcome at that time eventually find ways to work themselves out.
At the end of day, it’s not too bad.

3rd Speech today! Yay!
Feedback on Improvements:
1.More volumn. Speak to the people at the far end of the room.
2.Open up with a quesiton, pause for 2 seconds for a response
3.Punch up and beginning and ending. Have a stronger ending. Close with more of a punch.
4.Notes: user bigger fonts and put it more in the front so won’t look down so much.

Feedback on Positivies
1. Releveant for audience
2. Factual and logical
3. Eye contact
4. Humorous (really? I thought people were a little bored!)
5. Catch 22 reference
6. Little use of notes (when I did use it, I used it hard!)

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One Less Car to Save Money, Ourselves, and the World

The 405 freeway was closed for construction July 16th and 17th between its two busiest intersections, Santa Monica and 101 freeways. Local residents called it the weekend of Carmageddon.

A radio show after the weekend asked people to call in and talk about how their lives were affected by this event. One woman in Hollywood called in and said that her life was not affected at all. She said cars were overrated because her family of two plus a baby had been doing just fine with one car for a couple of years by then. She lives and works in Hollywood. She bikes everywhere. She bikes to work, bikes to go shopping. Her husband has a longer commute so he drives to work. On weekends, they share one car. I can’t remember the details of the baby’s arrangement. I seem to recall that she even takes her baby on a bike. After a while, they sold her car to become a one car family.

That was the moment the light bulb in my head went on!
Why does everyone need to drive their own car every day? It is not a birthright after all!

According to the NY times, in the US, families own an average of two and half vehicles per household, and more than 35 percent of households own three or more cars.
One car or two cars per family might not be right for every family. But is there room to downsize? Can we share a car? Starting from one day a week? Or use alternatives such as riding a bike, taking a bus or a train, or even walk? Some may say, “Oh!! But it is going to be very inconvenient.” or “I am losing my freedom” How much is that convenience or “freedom” costing us?

Base on data from AAA, in the year of 2010, it costs on average $8,500 a year to own or operate a car.
Can you use an extra $8500 a year? How many different ways can you think of to spend that $8500 on things other than cars?

Moreover, having less cars per family brings more than financial benefits. It provides a greener environment, reduces traffic, creates safer communities, and promotes more public transportation systems which in term produce more jobs. While people debate electric cars vs. hybrid vs. hydrogen cars, a simple, quick and easy method to conserve energy is to reduce the number of cars we own per household or how many times a week we drive our own cars.

Another strange car phenomenon is that we drive to the gym, get out of the car and get on the treadmill. Why not drive a little less, walk or bike a little more? It saves money on gym membership, gas, and you get to breathe fresher air than that stuffy and sweaty gym air.

Some might say the alternatives to cars, such as biking and walking, are unsafe. In the first example, the woman on Hollywood bikes everywhere and sometime bikes with her baby. I will admit that I was a little scared for her. The number one concern I have with biking in Torrance is also safety. We will continue to drive our cars rather than bike if safety remains a concern. More cars on the road make it more dangerous to be on a bike. It is a vicious cycle. Somehow this cycle must be broken so more people will bike or walk. A new awareness to drivers is needed so it becomes safer to bike. As it becomes safer to bike or walk, even more people will join in! How is that for a new and improved cycle!!

Every family has different circumstances. The important thing is to stop and question ourselves from time to time. Can we use one less car? Can we drive a little less to save money, ourselves and the world?

This is a pocket speech. Not having enough time to come up with a new topic, I cheated a little and used a trip report…..:)

Although I had a report to start with, I pretty much had to rewrite it at the last minute to make it into a speech. During the speech, I forgot words/sentences. I think the Ah counter counted two digits repeated words. He said I used repeated words to fill in the blank stares. But the whole group was so nice and supportive. I still felt good afterwards.

I use to think receiving constructive criticisms is the best way to improve. Now, I am having second thoughts. Even though we don’t tell people what they did wrong, simply encouraging them to keep trying might get them to where they wanted as well. It might take longer. But it is a happier and less stressful journey.

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When I first started working at John Deere, my former coworkers in the car navigation business cannot understand why tractors need GPS systems. “It is a wide open field”, they said, “How can you get lost?”
What most people including myself at that time did not know is that farmers have much higher demands on GPS technology than the consumer or even the military market. Agriculture has been quietly but rapidly revolutionized by GPS technology in the last ten years.
In this process, farmers are becoming more technology savvy than ever.

We visited Idaho in April.
The potato farmers here just started their planting season.

During the Idaho trip, we visited five farmers. It has truly been an eye opening experience for me. I found that not only our farmers can navigate current technology with ease, find creative ways to solve problems, they also have an open mind for new technology, and are good at coming up with ideas or demands for future products.

At the first farm, the owner pointed us toward a truck, and said,” we are about to load the seeds into the planter.”
“Where are the seeds”, we asked each other, “All we see are potatoes.”
After we uttered these words, we quickly realized that the seeds for potatoes are potatoes.
We were just glad the farmer didn’t hear this discussion.
But not all potatoes are good seeds. They have to have eyes, several of them!! Eyes are small holes on the potato for sprouting. After they pass the “eye” test, they are cut nicely and evenly into half to increase production.
It is a careful, manual selection process. But that’s where the manual process starts and ends.

From that point on, potatoes are automatically loaded into the planter, the planter is attached to the tractor that drives and steers itself in along a pre-calculated line. As the tractor goes down the field, the front of the potato planter opens up the dirt and digs a hole, the next part drops a potato seed in it, the last part closes the hole and smoothes over it. By now, a seed is planted.
It is a seamless operation but requires careful configuration to make sure everything is set up correctly. I watched an operator set this up with ease and impressive speed.

生活是如此充满戏剧性
悲喜剧都有
只有你想不到的
没有别人做不到的

怀孕了，很久没有吃沙拉了。怀念沙拉，冰咖啡，生鱼片。

突然觉得感动
打算给某人挂个电话
同人不同命阿
要感恩