Dancing Monkey!

Showed the kids how to make animation with their own drawings today. It was amazing how a simple 2-frame animation made them laugh so hard :D

Running an Emergency Room.

This was my typical day (Well, sort of):

Client B came in with a deadly emergency project. The team loved the challenge. Our brain juices were twirling; our motor hands were rolling. We were all ready to save some lives.

Then, Client A said, “Wait a minute. I was here first.” Our doctor replied, “You can wait. Don’t be such a cry baby. Can’t you see we have some lives to save?”

The doctor turned back to cut open B.

A buzzed: “I think I am dehydrated.”
Doctor replied A (while operating on B): “Nurse, please give him some IV.”

A buzzed again: “The IV machine keep beeping.”
Nurse replied: “Let me fix it.”

A buzzed again: “I have constipation. I am all backed up.”
Doctor replied A (while still operating on B): “Don’t worry. Nurse will insert some suppositories in you.”

After went to the bathroom, A buzzed again: “Doctor, I poo-ed and I don’t feel like I am dehydrated anymore. I think I am good now.”

Doctor cheered (while still operating on B, blood all over the hands): “Wonderful, I am glad your problems are resolved. Please go home and get more rest, and you will be all fine.”

Many hours later, B was safe and looking good.
Doctor finally got a chance to sit down.

Her brain said: “It is 3 am. Go to bed now. You need to get up at 6:30 am.”
Her heart said: “I wonder if we resolved the clients’ real problem. Or we just resolved the problems they thought they have. Shouldn’t professionals be more proactive, and not just responsive?"
Her brain said: “You did the best you could. No matter how obsessive you are, you only have that many hours in a day.”
Her heart said: “I wish we can hire more doctors, so we can do better jobs.”
Her brain said: “But who is going to pay for it?”

I guess not everyone could get everything that they wished for… even in Christmas.

Look! What’s behind that boy?

Friday night, the kids and I watched Jack Black’s The School of Rock (2003). We had so much fun. While we were crazily rocking and dancing along at the end of the movie, something on the screen caught my eyes. There was a big Grand Marnier display bottle behind a young drummer. The bottle appeared on the screen for more than one second while the 10-year-old playing cool music.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not the kind of over-reacting parent. I design and create liquor advertising every day. That’s why I usually get excited to see product placements on movies. My responses usually were “How cool!” “Very smartly done”or “No good. Too obvious.” But this time, I was like “What the?!”…

I was actually hoping that it was not a product placement. Maybe just the set designer wasn’t thinking it through; at the same time the director failed to notice how politically incorrect it was to place a kid next to a liquor bottle. Or, maybe it was acceptable for them because this film was meant to be a little controversial.

Despite that, it was a very enjoyable movie. And the young performers in there were amazing.

Halloween Decoration Weekend with Special Guest – a Little Black Cat Came from Nowhere.

Yesterday morning, a little black cat showed up at our front yard and made itself at home. It is a lost cat and it still has its collar on. Unfortunately, the collar has no phone number or address. I am not sure if our Halloween decorations gave it a sense of belonging, or Joey befriended it while we were putting up the decorations. Either way, it is just not leaving.

So, a few hours later, we had no choice but to feed it and made it a temporary shelter box, marked “LOST CAT” on all sides, hoping its family would come look for it and see this box… no luck. And the cat was not staying in the box, it preferred to stay under our car. Which is quite disturbing. We really don’t want any freshly grounded cat meat under our wheels.

Today is the second day it is staying under our car. It even quietly watched us and chased us a bit while the kids were riding bicycles in the backyard. My son hopefully asked, “Do we have a pet now, mom?” Sorry no, mommy has too much to take care of these days. Tomorrow, if it is still here, we will have to call Animal Care & Control to take it away. I wish the cat all the best. And somehow I feel that I will miss it.

Flashback a week ago, Joey and I were talking about his brother-in-law having Asthma partly caused by the allergy to his family’s cat, but the family still keeping the cat. I said to Joey, “Why your sister rather sacrifice her husband than to give up the cat?” What a stupid question, I didn’t understand because I never had a pet before (except for fish and turtle.) Now, this incident gave me some led to step into other people’s shoes and a taste of how it feels.

Wahoo. I am glad I didn’t ask other stupid questions such as, “Why Hillary Clinton still staying with Bill after the Monica incident?” … Surely I don’t want a taste of that.

What motivates us people?

My daughter started to learn piano 2 years ago. She never really showed great interest in it so she refused to practice it most of the time. But she likes to go to the class every Saturday for half an hour, so we just keep sending her there. Three and a half months ago, she cried in the piano class two times in a row, then told me it was too hard and she didn’t want to learn piano anymore. I asked her to go four more lessons and if she still decided to give up, then so be it. And then, a couple weeks later, all of the sudden she became loving the piano and started to practice it every day since then. There were two possible reasons for this change. Possibility #1: my neighbor’s teenage son can play piano very beautifully. One day, my daughter heard him play. When we came back home, she still talked about how good he played. Possibility #2: Her baby brother started to learn piano three months ago and he loves it and practices it every day.

I am wondering what really motivates my daughter: the inspiration by the greatness, the peer pressure, or the eagerness for competitions?

Now, what about grown-ups? What motivates us? I wish I could say that we are pursuing for the greatness - or at least for money, glory and sex. But hell no, I believe a lot of us are being motivated by fear right now: fear of losing jobs/clients, fear of not being able to provide enough for our loved ones, fear of …

PS. Come to think about it. This fear thing is not all bad. At least, it can come in handy when we workaholics need to work three weekends in a row. Instead of getting the usual response from our spouses such as “This is ridiculous. You are just being selfish and greedy,” now we can simply give out a puppy sad face and say, “ Honey, this is how people survive these days. What else can I do?” And you would gain her/his understanding and support at a 100 percent. Not all bad indeed.

LOST – Not Reality, Actuality…

About 9 years ago at our worry-free pre-kids days, my husband and I went camping with a group of about 10 friends. We rented a tiny island at one of the rivers in Maine. The island can fit 3-4 tents and the rest are just trees (and of course some deer, snakes, wildlife, a wood made portable toilet and all-you-can-drink river water). The campground owner dropped us off with his motorboat and then left. No cell phone signal there. The only way we could reach him or any other human beings was to roll our canoe for 2 hours downstream to his office. That meant it might take us 4 hours or more to roll back upstream, so we never bothered.

On the second day, we fine campers decided to paddle our canoes for fun. It was a cloudy day and some waves were kicking in. Before long, one of our friends’ canoe flipped, then Joey (my man) and I came to the rescue. While we were on the rescue mission, the waves got bigger. After made sure our wet friends were fine, Joey and I rolled our way back. Only to find out that no matter how hard we paddled toward our campsite, we were farther away from it. Not only that, the wind blew us out from the shoreline and into the middle of the river. We kept rolling with all our strength, and then finally Joey said, “Don’t fight with Mother Nature.” We let the wind blow us downstream, and Joey guided our canoe back to the shore.

We landed in our neighborhood island, meaning that there was no way we could walk back to our campsite, but we decided to go search for other human beings. Joey led the way, cut down tree branches and moved aside tall plants so I could go across. Finally, half an hour of hiking in the wild wood later, we found another group of campers. They let us rest on their bench. Joey and I stared at the river worried about the friends we just rescued. Two hours later, they showed up walking toward us. Their canoe got blew a lot farther downstream than ours. We all sighed with relieve and happily to be together again.

When the sky became clear a few hours later, our newly-met local camper paddled us back to our campsite with her canoe. She said she wanted to warn us when she saw us paddle the canoes out that morning. "This river could drown people in this weather." she said. Well, how did we know. We were just city people tried to escape from cell phones and Internet for a few days.

There were three things I learned from this lesson:
(1) Don’t fight with Mother Nature.
(2) Chicks dig guys who have survival skills.
(3) Always bring chocolate covered coffee beans in your pocket. Cause you don’t know when you would get stuck in a place for many hours without food and coffee.

Teamwork with 72 Kindergarteners.

The Kindergarten graduation was important to my daughter. Therefore, I held myself accountable to make this celebration look good. I had so much fun designing/making invitations and programs. But this piece of artwork I especially enjoyed working on. I drew the school building in Adobe Illustrator, blow the art up to 12 ft x 9 ft and printed it out on 90 pieces of 11x17 papers. Each graduating kindergartener colored one of the papers. Then, I tiled them up and tape on the back. Voila! A gigantic backdrop perfect for the Kodak (or Canon) moment!