Erwaman's Personal Journal - July 2008

There's four of them all together - Uncle Peter, Aunt Gina, Alice, and Don Don. They're all a little quirky in their own way, but they are a very open family, sharing and talking about every subject, so they get along very well with each other.

• Uncle Peter. He used to run a supermarket, but now he's a math tutor full time. Usually, it's the parents who force their children to get tutors. Here's what Uncle Peter tells them: "Ok, bring them to my house the first time, and let them spend an hour with me, but then the next time, if they don't want to come themselves, don't bring them." Every student he's had came back.

  He's a people person, a socializer, but he's also a people analyzer. He says, "Give me five minutes to chat with anyone, and I'll have him figured out." In a conversation with him, he'll play with your words and try to confuse you to the point where you don't know what you said or what you're saying anymore, but he has everything straight in his mind. I think it's part of his strategy of figuring people out.

  He understands people very well, and I think that's what makes him such an effective teacher. He figures out how kids think and he adapts his teaching style so as not to bore his tutorees. It doesn't matter what level you are when you begin. He'll watch you do a problem and then he'll know your foundation. Wherever it is, he'll work with it. As long as the student wants to improve, he'll work with him and provide him the tools to succeed. He has students who come in with a 400 math section, and in two months, they can get an 800. He has one student, who's already gotten the 800, but keeps returning for mentoring. He seeks out Uncle Peter for his advice and just comes to his house to chat with him. Some of his students get 800s in math, but their reading and writing scores are still 400, 500. They've tried numerous tutors, but it didn't help. They've asked Uncle Peter, can you tutor me in English, too? They said it doesn't matter that he does not have English mastery, they know that just as long as Uncle Peter tutors them in English, he will find a way to help them improve. I think he's seriously starting to consider tutoring English as well. Knowing him, he'd figure out the rules to grammar and build his vocabulary alongside his students, learning as he teaches.

  Uncle Peter also cooks. He says he lives a simple life: make dumplings, do math tutoring, and chat with people. Give him some food to work with and he'll make you a tasty meal.

  He experiments a lot and learns by messing around. Books aren't his thing - he can't stand reading. After selling his supermarket, he thought, well, tutoring seems like an easy thing to do, you get paid cash for it, it's not taxed, I get to stay home, meet people, and chat. So he started and as he taught his students, he learned as well, catching up on his math and figuring out how to teach kids. Just like cooking and chatting, he'll mess around, make it fun, and learn things about his subject while improving his own skills.

  His sharp mind, sense of humor, and conversational nature make him fun to be around. He's got a lot of contacts, like the NY Islanders owner Charles Wang (which has got me some free tickets in good seats). While I was visiting, a leading neuroscientist from Taiwan, on a trip to the States to speak at some colleges, came to his house to eat dinner. Alice, in her lab research, actually used this neuroscientists' research papers in her gene explorations, and he was able to give her some more ideas for the research.

  Uncle Peter's also really good at buying things, perhaps from his supermarket-running experience. While he was still running it, he'd make special visits to supermarkets all around and compare prices and items, etc. He showed me several things around the house and asked me to guess how much he paid for them. For example, a pair of pretty decent-looking running shoes, which I guessed he paid $20 or $30 for (knowing he's good at getting bargains), he actually paid five bucks for. A new car he recently bought - he went into the car dealership and handed a dealer a slip with a price on it and pointed at the car he wanted. The dealer was like, "No way!" I'm sure Uncle Peter probably countered something about losing his business, but he ended up walking out with the car at his price, with the dealership feeling like he practically stole the car from them.

  If you ever go on a trip, Uncle Peter's the type of guy you'd like to have around. No matter where you go, he'd make the trip fun. He'd know what to do and his company would always keep you interested.

• Aunt Gina. She has never worked since she came to the U.S. She's stayed at home, raised the children. She does housework, some gardening, and socializes. A very simple life, but she's always been happy. She just discusses things with her children, her husband, and guests that frequently come over. She cooks, cleans, chats, gardens; carefree and cheerful. She seems very satisfied with life and is quite happy.
• Alice. She also absolutely loves her dad; she even wanted to marry him when she was younger, until she understood that he was already married.

  She is very smart. I didn't even understand why her parents even asked me to come help her with SATs. I did a few sections with her, and she's easily got at least a 2300. I even had difficulty finding practice tests she hadn't done, yet. There were perhaps fifteen SAT books on her bookshelf, and she had done all the practice tests in them, some multiple times!

  I learned her dad wanted a second, fresh voice to speak to her, to inspire her. He said, as a father, he's probably invested more time in his daughter than any other father. He says it is difficult to get her to do anything without his company. He's literally sat next to her for hours and hours just watching her do practice tests because she wants (needs?) his support. Uncle Peter told me also that she's very good at delaying things - he might assign her a section to do in the morning and she'll manage to drag out the time and next thing you know it's already evening and she still hasn't started. He claims she's lazy, but from what I observed, I feel she's very self-motivated and works hard.

• Don Don. In contrast to Alice, he is a poor academic student, often sleeping in classes. He's studying violin at Purchase College. He also plays er4 hu2 and piano.

  Don Don's two great passions in life are violin and video games. Think of any game you've played, whether oldschool or just released, and he's probably played it. Perhaps even done a speed run of it. He has perfect pitch and can play you many video game soundtracks on the violin.

  Currently, his main video game obsession is Super Smash Brawl. He's mastered all the advanced techniques of wave dashing, lagless landings and recoveries, etc. He watches and studies YouTube videos of Super Smash and practices moves over and over again in training mode and on reduced speed. Apparently, many of the world's best Brawl players live around his area, and he's played and beaten the world's second and eighth best Brawl players. He's always thinking about different strategies and analyzing the game to figure out how to beat his opponent. He'll spend a couple hours practicing violin, then train Brawl for a few hours, then go back to violin, etc.

  He also plays a mean game of ping-pong. According to him, his dad used to wake him up in the night to play ping-pong and say he couldn't go back to sleep until he beat him. At first, his dad would give him a 20-point handicap, so he'd only have to win one point to win the match. Then it became a 15-point handicap, then 10 points, then 5, and eventually no handicap. He wanted to sleep, so he'd lie in bed thinking ways to beat his dad. He never took ping-pong lessons, but he just thought about spin and experimented and learned by trying out his own ideas.

• A song was stuck in my head before this trip, and apparently, it was stuck in other people's heads as well. Actually, just two lines of a song. I forget who sung it first, but as soon as the tune reached our ears, we were all singing it. The song was Eddie Money's Take Me Home Tonight, and the two lines were: "Take me home tonight/I don't want to let you go till you see the light." At many random times throughout the entire trip, someone would just start singing/humming these two lines, and usually others would then join in.
• I have no problem doing it, and no one else does, either, I guess, because we all did it. Jaywalking. But why I remember doing this in Atlanta so vividly was because William Chen would dash across the street at the most dangerous times. And, while doing this, he would hold his hand out like a traffic cop gesturing "STOP!" We all yelled at him, telling him he was going to get hurt (or killed).
• There was a restaurant a block away from our hotel (the Westin) called Hsu's, but unfortunately it was the more common xu3 from xu3duo1 rather than my xu2:

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  The restaurant was a bit pricy, but they did give you a good amount of food per dish. We all seemed to get very fitting fortunes; mine was: "Listen to your friends in the coming days to find the answers you seek." I ended up having many deep conversations with Jon Lin and not only did I discover much depth in him, I gained many fresh insights in various topics of life.

• Everyone from a NJ FBLA chapter took the same airplane flight, so we all arrived at the hotel around the same time, and so elevator boarding was difficult. It was taking so long, I was willing to take the stairs to our floor (33, and the lobby was floor 5). But what we soon discovered was all the staircases were emergency exits and the doors to the stairwell had alarms on them! This bothered me because if I had stairwell access, I would've taken the stairs as often as possible for the exercise.

  Later on, we discovered that past floor 12, the doors to the stairwell were not rigged with alarms. So Jeffrey Glusman and I walked down the stairs from the 33rd floor to the lobby level to see if perhaps the alarm-rigged doors would only activate if opened from one side. What we discovered: the alarm would be activated from both sides. Well, we assumed this because there was a security tag on the door hooked up to a wire on the stairwell side of the doors. We also discovered the stairwell went down to floor 0. Anyways, since we couldn't exit on the lobby level, or any floor beneath it, without activating the alarm, we had to go back up until we reached an unalarmed door. But rather than exit on floor 14 (there was no floor 13), the first unalarmed floor, and take the elevators up, we decided to race up to the 33rd floor. I decided to time the race so I could calculate my horsepower. I pulled out my cell phone, navigated to the stopwatch, hit start, and began dashing upward two stairs at a time. Holy crap was I exhausted by the 33rd floor. Those runners who do the Empire State Building stair run sprinting all the way must be ridiculously fit. Unfortunately, when I flipped open my cell phone, the stopwatch had reset. I learned that when you flip close my cell phone while the stopwatch is running, it automatically resets. But at least I got the workout I wanted.

  I advertised this "fantastic workout" to the other WP students, and the next evening, six of us tried it: me, Max, William, Lulu, Bentro, and Jon. My first run had been with slippers on, with stuff in my pockets like my wallet, my cell phone, pens, and paper. This time, I returned with running shoes and only Max's watch on. Lulu, Bentro, and William jogged/walked the stairs, while Max, Jon, and I raced it while timing ourselves. Since the staircase was narrow, we staggered our starts and just timed ourselves individually, comparing times at the end. Though I tried to pace myself better for this second attempt, I still felt I tired more quickly than I did the day before, probably due to soreness. When comparing results, I was first at 3:07, and Jon was second at 3:10. Then, on a whim, we continued climbing till we reached the roof door (floor 75), which was locked :-(.

  Bentro said the hotel was 770 feet high, and with about 75 floors, each floor was about 10 feet. I estimated my weight at 160 pounds. My time was 187 seconds. Using F*d/t, I calculated my vertical power to be 0.513 hp or 383 W. A pretty meaningless and inaccurate figure (since horizontal distance and frequent turning were not considered), but fun to calculate. Hey, maybe if I do such calculations for every stairwell I run, I can make some meaningful comparisons to gauge my stair-running fitness.

• The third night we were there, after everyone had competed, somehow or other we started a pillow fight in the girls' room. It was so much fun, the next night (also the final night), we invited more people and had another pillow fight from approximately 2 AM to 4 AM. The girls' room was right next to Mrs. Souto's (our adviser) room, and somehow, despite all the screaming and hitting noise, we never got a knock on our door from her. Perhaps she was awoken but just didn't bother stopping us and let us have our fun. I learned David was a pretty violent person when angry and fighting.
• There was a McDonald's across the street from the Westin, and several of us bought food there repeatedly for cheap meals and late-night snacks. I'm not sure why (or if accidentally) William called McDonald's "McDick's," but after he called it "McDick's," we all started referring to it as "McDick's."
• Lulu, William, and I went to the World of Coca-Cola, a coke exhibit newly opened in May 2007. Apart from the very stylish and comfortable furniture (I highly enjoyed every chair or bench I sat on) and all the propaganda (I enjoyed watching Coca-Cola commercials from around the world), we got to sample over 50 different Coca-Cola drinks from around the world. Our favorite drink was Smart Apple from China, a highly carbonated fizzy drink with a light apple flavor, and our least favorite drink was Beverly from Italy, which looks like water and is initially tasteless, than starts fizzing, then becomes bitter, then tastes alcoholic, and then leaves you with a NASTY NASTY after-taste. Another favorite brand was Bibo - their Kiwi Mango flavor was my favorite. Another terrible drink was Diet Coke Cherry - actually, all 8 or so varieties of Coke tasted pretty bad except the original, classic Coke. William mixed all the "bad-tasting" drinks in one cup, and though this cocktail did taste better than any of the individual drinks, it also left you with about four after-tastes. We left the World of Coca-Cola each with an 8-oz bottle of Coca Cola Classic, and it was a very hip, stylin' glass bottle. Back at the hotel, we took several pictures posing with our bottles, inspired by all the Coke commercials we saw.
• Bentro's famous line: for transitions, for surprises, for random moments: Shunanananana...
• Last year, at FBLA states, I roomed with Jeff Glusman and Dan Parry. According to Glus, he went to sleep alone and woke up with me next to him in bed, though I vaguely recall him being awake when I climbed in. He said it was a very disturbing experience, but he was not traumatized. At nationals this year, I decided to actually pull such a prank on him intentionally, but it didn't turn out very well. I got in bed successfully without awaking him, but I woke up long before him, and after waiting for several hours, we had to half wake him up, so he was already annoyed at having been awoken to care too much about me being beside him. Also, he said he had awoken earlier in the night and had discovered me next to him already. The next night, I tried the same prank on Jon, but he didn't have any reaction. The prank was also weakened by us both being awoken by someone else.
• We decided to order the movie 21 and watch it together. We then decided to order delivery and eat while we watched the movie. While waiting for the food to arrive, we watched some TV, and listened to this commercial: "Don't drink energy drinks. They have calories...they have sugar...they have guarana...Drink this energy drink, our special mix..." It was probably the most hypocritical commerical I've ever seen. Oh, at the World of Coca-Cola, we also tried a drink called Guarana. It was decent.
• I was looking at a spinning item rack in the hotel gift shop when I heard money clang on the ground. I watched through my peripheral as I saw a lady turn, hesitate, start bending her knees, hesitate, bend her knees some more, hesitate some more, stand up, turn, and then walk away saying, "Oh, someone else will pick it up." She was right. I picked up two dimes and a penny moments later. FYI, I found $1.13 all together during the 5-day trip.
• On the plane ride to Atlanta, Jon Lin was hungry after eating his 3-inch turkey sub and asked me if I wanted another one, too. I said, "Yeah, I could go for another one," so he replied, "Want to ask the stewardess for another?" We had many opportunities, but neither of us mustered the courage to do so.

  On the plane ride back, we got the same meal - the 3-inch sub (except this time I ordered tuna), a small bag of Fritos, and a Hershey chocolate bar. This time, I asked the stewardess. "Excuse me, I was just wondering what you do with the extra meals. Do you save them and re-use them on the next flight?" She replied, "No, we just throw them away. Would you like another one?" "Yes, please." William also got a second, but this time Jon wasn't hungry and passed on a second.

• While waiting in line to pass the security checkpoint at Newark Airport, Jon speculated to me, "What if you loaded your bag with explosives, guns, chain saws, swords, and other banned items? Would the security guard just pull you aside by saying, 'Sir, please step aside and open your luggage,' as if you were just another customer who had exceeded the 3-oz fluid limitation? How would the X-Ray attendant react? How would the security personnel respond if you said, 'Oh, I didn't know these items were prohibited on the airplane. That's too bad. I guess you can keep them then.'" Amusingly enough, the security personnel pulled Jon aside and asked him to open up his suitcase. I don't remember why though, but I did joke with him, "Jon, why didn't you leave your AK47s at home?"
• All of us visited the Georgia Aquarium, the world's largest. Apart from the majestic beluga whales, the cute and very energetic sea otters, and all the other water creatures, another popular attraction for some of our group was a Dippin' Dots vending machine. Several of us bought a packet of Dippin' Dots that the machine was selling, but what attracted us even more was the coin return. Every dollar refund came back as a $1 coin. So we fed our dollar bills and quarters into the machine and pressed the coin return button. I ended up with 4 John Quincy Adams dollars and one George Washington dollar. Besides these, others also got a James Madison dollar, a Sacagawea dollar, and a Susan B. Anthony dollar. The last time I encountered a machine like this was at Islands of Adventure in Orlando, where a locker machine refunded in Sacagawea dollars (I got 10 then, and I saved 4 of them in my coin collection.).
• We were eating our Hsu's take-out in the Marriott hotel when Jon came up with this game to play: We'd each take a pen and paper and number from 1 to 10. Then we'd all decide on the same 10 people to rate in physical attractiveness from 1 (ugly) to 10 (beautiful). Sharon, Glus, me, Jon, and Hilary played. Though we only rated 10 people and there were a couple discrepancies on which person we were rating, the results showed significant differences in rating for both boys and girls between players of both the same sex and opposite sex. There seems to be a wide range of preferences among us. Disclaimer: I have a very low physical beauty standard. Personality, character, intelligence mean much more to me.
• Max had to leave early (Sunday morning) in order to get to Governor's School of Engineering and Technology on time. Well, apparently, he borrowed Jon Lin's room key in the morning and then returned it to our room. Later on, while Hilary, Sharon, Bentro, and I were rushing to get to the voting delegates' meeting, Max called me and asked to borrow my room key. I met him and gave him my key - then ran off. Later that day, after Max had left and we were done with our meeting, I met up with my two remaining roommates, Jon and Will. We got to our room - "I don't have my key - I gave it to Max." "I don't either, I gave mine to Max, too!" "Uh...I don't have a key." We couldn't get in.

  There wasn't anything important left in the room - Will had his Lenovo in his backpack - so we just hung out in Bentro/Glusman's room and the girls' room until we left for Underground Atlanta, at which time I fetched an extra key on my way out of the hotel.

• Mrs. Souto treated us all to Benihana, though we suspect she paid using the school's money. Watching the chef cook in front of us and do tricks was cool. But the serving sizes were small. Hilary had reserved ahead of time, but she had called the wrong Benihana in Atlanta, so we ended up having to wait 20 minutes.
• The FBLA marketplace was a bustling place, with companies and candidates campaigning and marketing their goods and services. I played Wii Golf and Wii Tennis; ate free popcorn, beef jerky stick chunks, Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, and lots of candy; took a funny picture with a life-sized Paul Cohen (NJ's FBLA president, running for national Eastern Region VP as the only candidate) poster; played Connect 4 on a shrunken 6x5 board; entered drawings for a free XBox 360 and a free iPod Touch; and won two bouncy balls playing Plinko.
• I started bouncing the two bouncy balls I won outside in the Marriott lounge, and I accidentally bounced a ball into a plant. While searching for the ball in the dense plant, I pulled out an empty beer bottle!

  

• On the first day, at the Newark Airport, after the security checkpoint, we passed a vendor advertising $50 Continental discount passes and free T-Shirts if you signed up. While the rest of the WP kids walked by, I stopped and chatted with the vendor, asking him if I could sign up. He asked me how old I was. I said 17. He said you had to be 18. I asked him if I could get a free T-Shirt. He said I could if I could get my friends to sign up. So I convinced the two 18-year-olds, Hilary and Glus, to return and sign up (it was free! and you get both a $50 coupon and a free T-Shirt!), and I got a free T-Shirt as well!
• The day we left Atlanta, we took a copy of USAToday (delivered to our hotel room) with us and we worked on the crossword together. We spent much of the two hours+ wait at the airport (our flight was delayed) working on the crossword and then we finished it on the airplane, guessing some final letters, just to finish the board. I checked the answers today, and we only fudged five letters. Some of my favorite clues and answers:
  • Beauty lover: BEAST
  • Tell all: COMECLEAN (The theme was CC.)
  • Key word: ENTER
  • Positive end: ANODE
  • Not of the cloth: LAIC (a layperson, a nonprofessional, hence neither white nor blue collared)
  • Warmth, food or a soft bed: CREATURECOMFORT
  Doing crosswords with friends is really fun!
• There was a Peach Mart convenience store across the street from our hotel, and I went in asking if they sold peaches - the closest thing they had was a glass mug with a peach picture on it. I left the Peach State on Monday never having ate a peach. I did have an apple though. During the convention, I also met students from Oregon and Wisconsin, the Beaver and Badger states, respectively. I asked them if the respective animals were common in their state, and they all said no. Does NJ have a lot of gardens?
• Getting on an elevator was so difficult sometimes, we came up with boarding strategies. There were 10 elevators, 2 which serviced all floors, 4 which serviced floors 5-45, and 4 which serviced floors 4-14 and 45-70. If the lowest or highest floors in an elevator's service range were activated, the elevator would reach that floor before changing directions. So rather than try to board on floors 5 and 6 (the lobby floors), sometimes we climbed up to floors 7 and 8 and rode an elevator down to 5, then stayed on it to go back up. Also, once I rode a '4-14, 45-70' elevator to floor 45, then ran down the stairs to 33.
• Lulu, William, and I decided to take the MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) to get to the World of Coca-Cola to spare us some sweat and also for the experience of testing their transit system. The one-way tickets were $1.75 each, but each added a random $.50 service charge, bringing the total cost to $2.25/ticket. Buying multiple tickets together resulted in no discount either. We had the option of riding either north or west, and as our destination appeared equidistant either way from Five Points station, we chose west because north led to the subway station across the street from our hotel whereas west was into uncharted territory. We rode a grand total of one stop on the MARTA from Five Points station to Dome/Philips Arena/GWCC/CNN station:

  

  Also, why do you think it's called Five Points when only four lines intersect there and you can only travel in four cardinal directions from that station?
• So, at the awards ceremony, Max Chang ended up winning third in Business Calculations and the Management Decision Making teams from NJ - Whippany Park and Piscataway - took top two. We beat Piscataway at states, they beat us at nats. We're sure Max was watching the awards ceremony via live feed from Gov School, and we cheered heartily for him and sent Glus to claim the award and... money! We were also exhuberant when our Management team - Lulu, Jon, and Will - won - they had trained SO hard, meeting on a weekly basis to do practice cases and presentations. I imagine the thrill the team members must've experienced is comparable to pressing "Click here for your admission decision" and seeing "Congratulations!" explode on your screen. Results after so many weeks of toil really cause a surge of emotion.
• The excited Management Decision Making team then promptly lost their $200 check award, as we soon discovered outside the awards hall. After much frantic searching, we found an FBLA official who had picked up our dropped check. We also discovered a camera bag that Sharon had left behind.
• During the 4-day convention, there were many workshops we could attend. I planned to attend the "De-Stress for Success!" workshop, but I wandered into the wrong ballroom and found myself in a workshop entitled "What The Heck Am I Doing With My Life?" Well, I think this mistake was fated because I had reached stagnant waters in my life. I took some notes during the presentation, and here are some points that were particularly thought-provoking for me:
  • Four things to do when choosing a career:
    1. Pick something you like, not for the money. How much money is enough?
    2. Pick a career for you, not for your family. Live out your dream, not your parents' dreams for you.
    3. Don't stress about what the hot industry is. If you spend all your time figuring out what the hot industry is, you'll be bouncing around for the rest of your life.
    4. Consider how long your working life will be. 20% of the work force changes jobs every year. Each generation will have more job opportunities than the previous generation.
  • Three things to consider (and balance) when choosing a career:
    1. Passion. Doing something you are passionate about is risky. Why?
    2. Talent. Nobody wants to do something they are not good at. If you have to work, wouldn't you rather do something you're good at?
    3. Enjoyment. You won't love every job one-hundred percent of the time.
  • What would you try if you knew you could not fail?
  • Now what?