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This is a test. 1.2.3. *anyone*?

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Things that my 12-year-old extremely-hill-billy self found to be intriguing, fascinating, scary, confusing, and or shocking. Sometimes all at once. (A little background: my family and I moved to the US from the other side of the globe when I was 12. None of us spoke English. For this and other details, go read my “about me” page).

These shocking things are in no particular order, but each proved to be comical and foreign to my-then-12yr-old-self (some are still shocking to me).

* People. I lived in a small village and never traveled further than 3 hours away from where I was born. I had only seen non-Chinese people on TV, in black&white television. When we landed in O’Hare airport, various hair colors, eye colors, and people’s sizes really shocked me and continued to for a long while.

* Food - western food. Which to me meant anything that wasn’t Chinese food.

* Language. Did not know a single word of English. No one knew my native language at my school, and not many in the community either. It was an 90degree uphill journey sprinkled with many many thorns, spikes and potholes along the way.

* Smiles / friendliness. When you smile or say Hi to a complete stranger in China, people would think you are slow, stupid, or have an ulterior motive. They just don’t do friendly over there, especially if you’re Asian. Times may have changed some, and westernized a little more since we moved away, but I think these types of views are still very strong.

* Hugs. In the US and many western countries, people hug when greeting a friend or family member. In China, you don’t even see parents hug each other. Nor do you see parents hug their children once the kids are past the Cute Age (meaning, preschoolers at the latest). Feel free to let us know if your Asian family is a huggy-lovey one, coz mine’s definitely not. This is one aspect of the culture I will NOT pass onto our own kids.

* Religion. People around me practiced the inert type of Buddhism - at the most they went to the temple once a year or something. And are/were very superstitious.

* For many months, I didn’t know what a “body shop” was. Every time the school bus drove by some building that said “body shop” I was very confused. As I was starting to learn English from scratch (ABC, colors, numbers etc), body meant, well, body, as in physical body. Your body, my body. At first I thought maybe it was similar to a red district. But then the building looks too crummy to be that. It was after many funny hand gestures and exchanges that my new friends told me what it meant.

* Moving vehicles / boats / airplanes. My parents had two bicycles to transport us around. After arriving in the US, Motion Sickness was my first name for a very long time. To this day, I must be the one driving, otherwise there’s a high chance that I would hurl.

Next I’ll talk about lotions, soft mattresses, flushing toilets, and more. Not necessarily in that order.

To Part II.

Most of the time, I can read the little squiggle squishy slanted sideway stupid words that’s required to be typed out, just so the Internet knows I’m a real person instead of some bot.

But come on! Some of them are just plain hard to read, and hence it takes several tries because I CAN’T READ WHAT THE DAMN THING SAYS.

Earlier tonight, I was requested to type in something again on some screen, maybe it was passw0rd verification or a comment section. I can’t remember what site it was. This time I laughed and smirked a little.

The words on the screen?

men silly

p.s. This isn’t necessarily about Blogger. It’s for all sites that requires captcha.

I’m not feeling very clever on this Monday morning. So I present you Jenni over at Just Chicken Feed who wrote an absolutely riot of a post about The Difference Between One and Four

Go on, it’s really funny.

If you don’t wet your pants while reading it, then you aren’t reading it correctly.

I’ve gone and done it, albeit a little late. It took much strength not to give in. At the end, with what little will power I have remaining, I succumbed to the hypnotizing elements of blog365. And IT’S ALL SANDY’S FAULT. She made it so enticing, especially with the blue and red pill… I do love that movie.

When I signed up, I saw there were already 39 people on my ‘friends list’! Wow. (friends from nablo group) Y’all are as crazy as Sandy.

So, what sort of penalty is applied to those who missed the very first day already?

A young man learns what’s most important in life from the guy next door.

It had been some time since Jack had seen the old man. College, girls, career, and life itself got in the way. In fact, Jack moved clear across the country in pursuit of his dreams.

There, in the rush of his busy life, Jack had little time to think about the past and often no time to spend with his wife and son. He was working on his future, and nothing could stop him.

Over the phone, his mother told him, “Mr. Belser died last night. The funeral is Wednesday.” Memories flashed through his mind like an old newsreel as he sat quietly remembering his childhood days.

“Jack, did you hear me?” !

“Oh, sorry, Mom. Yes, I heard you. It’s been so long since I thought of him. I’m sorry, but I honestly thought he died years ago,” Jack said.

“Well, he didn’t forget you. Every time I saw him he’d ask how you were doing. He’d reminisce about the many days you spent over ‘his side of the fence’ as he put it,” Mom told him. “I loved that t old house he lived in,” Jack said.

“You know, Jack, after your father died, Mr. Belser stepped in to make sure you had a man’s influence in your life,” she said.

“He’s the one who taught me carpentry,” he said. “I wouldn’t be in this business if it weren’t for him. He spent a lot of time teaching me things he thought were important…Mom, I’ll be there for the funeral,” Jack said.

As busy as he was, he kept his word. Jack caught the next flight to his hometown. Mr. Belser’s funeral was small and uneventful. He had no children of his own, and most of his relatives had passed away.

The night before he had to return home, Jack and his Mom stopped by to see the old house next door one more time.

Standing in the doorway, Jack paused for a moment. It was like crossing over into another dimension, a leap through s pace and time The house was exactly as he remembered. Every step held memories. Every picture, every piece of furniture….Jack stopped suddenly.

“What’s wrong, Jack?” his Mom asked.

“The box is gone,” he said

“What box?” Mom asked.

“There was a small gold box that he kept locked on top of his desk. I must have asked him a thousand times what was inside. All he’d ever tell me was ‘the thing I value most,’” Jack said.

It was gone. Everything about the house was exactly how Jack remembered it, except for the box. He figured someone from the Belser family had taken it.

“Now I’ll never know what was so valuable to him,” Jack said. “I better get some sleep. I have an early flight home, Mom.”

It had been about two weeks since Mr. Belser died. Returning home from work one day Jack discovered a note in his mailbox. “Signature required on a package. No one at home. Please stop by the main post office within the next three days,” the note read.

Early the next day Jack retrieved the package. The small box was old and looked like it had been mailed a hundred years ago. The handwriting was difficult to read, but the return address caught his attention. “Mr. Harold Belser” it read. Jack took the box out to his car and ripped open the package. There inside was the gold box and an envelope. Jack’s hands shook as he read the note inside.

“Upon my death, please forward this box and its contents to Jack Bennett. It’s the thing I valued most in my life.” A small key was taped to the letter. His heart racing, as tears filling his eyes, Jack carefully unlocked the box. There inside he found a beautiful gold pocket watch.

Running his fingers slowly over the finely etched casing, he unlatched the cover. Inside he found these words engraved:

“Jack, Thanks for your time! - Harold Belser.”

“The thing he valued most was…my time”

Jack held the watch for a few minutes, then called his office and cleared his! appointments for the next two days. “Why?” Janet, his assistant asked.

“I need some time to spend with my son,” he said.

“Oh, by the way, Janet, thanks for your time!”

x x x x x

The above was a fwd from a friend, and I wanted to share it with you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing the ups and downs of 2007 with me. Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful 2008 and I look forward to hanging out with y’all.

Hi there all the wordpress pros out there, I’d like to ask for some advice.

Forever now, anytime I want to post a picture on my blog, I would upload it to my flickr account and then paste the image URL here. You know, the old < img src thing. Since I don’t have a flickr pro account, and I really don’t feel like going through multiple steps if there’s a simpler way. With all these talents out there, there must be some kind of widget out there that allows me to upload it directly to my wordpress account / files / wherever it is and let me show the pictures that way. I’ll probably find it if I spend the next day or two exploring the internet, reading, learning yadda yadda. I thought I would ask you smart bloggers first!

What kind of picture uploading widget /method do you use? Is it hard to install / learn?

What other cool apps would you have used, or are using that you would recommend?? I want to join the Cool Kids Club too.

Please be as detailed as possible. Imagine you are explaining it to a cow if you will. (Not that I’m a cow, or cows are stupid, but you know..)

Thanks in advance!!!

Nablopomo 2007 - I loved it. I’m overwhelmed with the 6 thousand plus blogs that I have not had time to wade through. Heck, I haven’t even made it around to everyone in my “friend” list yet - SORRY! When the holiday season is over, I’ll likely be able to go around and check out more blogs. Whee!

Broadband provider - The price is going up. By about 55%. I’ll have to look around and see what else is out there. Any ideas?!

Blogger - You suck. Now I can’t do a direct link to my own blog when commenting on any of the Blogger blogs. I have to do a roundabout thing, indirect linking, blah blah blah. Can you fix it please? Yes you’re still better than some out there, who REFUSES to let you comment if you’re not signed up or registered with them. But comparing with the bad ones does not necessarily make you better. It’s like lesser of the two evils… Ugh.

Scrunchies - You know, the thing that Carrie so despises on one of the episodes in Sex in the City? I use them, and I like them.

#####.com - I randomly came across a website the other day, which I cannot link here because of me being a business owner and need to maintain a certain level of professionalism etc yadda yadda, but I NEARLY DIED LAUGHING when I saw the URL!!! I’ll probably be able to share it if you asked privately. OMG I still can’t believe it. It’s REALLY bad, and it’s really silly..

Coming soon - I’m typing up a post about vacationing, tropics, spelunking, and jungles (where we had our brief honeymoon, with Hubby’s sister and a friend tagging along…). I thought honeymoons are supposed to be the married couple only, apparently I was wrong…

In the last week or so, we’ve gotten some blog buzz.

So I made a page where I list all the blogs that have posted mentions of KangarooBoo. I truly appreciate the kindness and sincerity. I thought I’d share with all of you too. The page will sit permanently on my sidebar to the right, immediately below the “calendar” there (or maybe I’ll move it to the header? not sure yet).

Linky Love Page

My little token of thank you.

Grab some tissues before proceeding if your tears run easily like mine.
- - -

A lot of times I don’t believe things happen for a reason, but if I allow myself to take a closer look to dissect and analyze events and sequences in which they happen, I often end up with the conclusion that indeed, things do happen for a reason.

I “met” Sandy because of this year’s Nablopomo. Her blog is Momisodes. She’s funny, witty, talented, beautiful inside and out, and our two-year-old daughters are exactly 6 days apart. From reading her blog, she’s also likely to have the same taste in food choices as I do. I wonder how often we would hit the noodle joints and dimsum places together if we lived closer and close to good ethnic foods.

Unbeknownst to me, Sandy is also a co-founder of ConnectingMoms, and she wanted to interviewed me! I was very excited at the opportunity and said yes. Here’s the interview link, in which you’ll read about some of the things in my past and where I talked a little about our store KangarooBoo as well. Little did I know she also wrote a very moving post about me yesterday on her blog. I cried when I read her post. I broke down and wads of tissues ensued wiping my eyes and nose.

Thank you Sandy for everything. I am so glad to have met you online and hope we will meet in person some day. I’m sure our girls will enjoy each other’s company as well.