Mimi's Bird - Update

The baby bird is still alive and kicking. Woke me up around 7:00 am this morning with it's chirping. Mimi fed it cherries and banana yesterday and it's droppings are all red. I hope bird's stomach is ok with a fruit diet. Today will go search for cage and possibly bird feed. Won't name the bird until we are sure it will be ok.

Mimi's....bird

Mimi went to the park this morning and brought home a bird. The bird is still a baby and 2 other big birds were biting it and pushed it off it's tree. It looks like the left leg and the left wing is hurt or broken. Mimi was the first to find it and insisted on Minnie bringing it back. I'm not really sure what to do with it. It can barely walk and it can't fly and if put back to the park the wild dogs and cats will eat it for sure. Also I know it will break Mimi's heart if we just leave it be. When she woke up from her afternoon nap today the first thing she went was to find the baby bird under the chair where it was standing before. She didn't know that we put it in our front door area and thought the bird was gone. She then ran around the apartment crying and looking for it and won't stop crying until we showed her where it is at. I guess we will try to feed it and get it well. I hope it will live. I don't think I am ready to explain to Mimi about life and death.

Nightly Battles

Every night Annie, Minnie, and I pit our wit, patience, and strength of will versus Mimi. This is because every night it a battle to get her to go to bed. After she goes to bed it is also a battle to keep her asleep.

Mimi’s sleeping hours is 11:30 pm to 9:30 am which happens to be to be very close to Annie and mine sleeping hours. This is because unless Mimi knows that we have turned off all the lights and that everyone is actually in bed, she will have someone she can keep playing with. After lights out Mimi then tries every trick she can think of to get us to turn the lights back on. This includes running around, jumping and climbing on things, peeing, pooping, wanting nana, wanting nana again, bring her toys back into the room, trying to read a book, pretending to sleep on the floor, etc… When we finally have her convinced it is time for bed, then she decides who she wants to sleep with, either with Annie and me, or with Minnie. This involves a long process of going back and forth between the rooms bringing her pillow and blanket here and there. After all this and the fact she is dead tired, she will pick a room, lie down, and finally go to sleep within 5 minutes.

Sleeping is another battle. In Minnie's room it is ok because Mimi has a big bed for herself. When Mimi is sleeping with Annie and I, it becomes much more problematic. Mimi is a light sleeper, and she also tosses and turns all over the bed. Therefore when she tosses and turns and hits either me or Annie, she will wake up and start crying. So to keep her asleep Annie and I have to position ourselves so that Mimi occupies the maximum area of the bed. Therefore we end up sleeping like this where normally I would be at the bottom edge of the bed…

There are other configurations but usually it is Annie and I sleep in an L shape occupying 2 edges of the bed and the rest of the bed goes to Mimi. Someday Mimi will sleep by herself and will get her own bed, until then all we can do is keep up our strengths and hope that this little girl won’t make 3 grown adults go crazy.

Traumatic Band-Aid Experience

Mimi actually likes to watch these videos I have of her. Every time I am on my computer she will come up to me and say ‘Watch Mimi’. Then I open up the folder with her videos and she selects the thumbnails of the videos she likes to watch. Her recent favorite is this one which is her first experience of us trying to put a band-aid on her. Mimi about 2 weeks ago had a mosquito bite and she kept scratching it until the skin broke. So in order to decrease the risk of infection we decide to put a band-aid on the wound. I guess for her it was quite a traumatizing experience as you will see. Luckily she got over it and is able to laugh about it now. When she watches this video she would say ‘Mimi likes to cry’ and when I ask her if putting on a band-aid hurts she smiles and say ‘no hurt’.

Diet Update - Curiosity and Malnutrition

I am not sure if I really like this diet. I think it has results however it’s more like losing weight due to malnutrition then actual losing weight in a healthy fashion. Also I think this diet is tailored for all the soft Taiwan guys in which weighing 120 pounds is considered already overweight. It isn’t for the average 200 pound American overweight guy. Right now I think my system is in shock because my hands are shaking, however it could also be due to the vast amounts of black coffee I have been injusting. 3 days though doesn’t seem enough. Right now my curiosity of seeing how far I can take this is outweighing my bodily urges to drown myself in a McDonalds Big Mac. So we will see how it goes….

Taiwan’s Past and Future

Yesterday marks the day in which Taiwan inaugurated its third presidential elect Ma Yin Jo. It might come as a surprise that Taiwan, as unstable as its relationship with China, is one of Asia’s freest societies. It is one of the few nations in Asia which can elect its own president and has vast freedoms of speech and press, so much so that it is actually hurtful to the image of Taiwan. You see on TV people screaming at each other, politicians throwing things at each other, and even saying very disrespectful and uncultured things to everyone and anyone including the president. However that is Taiwan, you take the good and the bad which comes with freedom. This freedom actually only started recently. Taiwan held its first presidential elections in 1996. In 2000 history was made when the ruling party KMT, who ruled Taiwan for over 50 years through its martial law period, was ousted for the pro-independence party DDP. This year the KMT regained the presidency with its softer stance on Taiwan/China relations.

My family was quite disappointed with the outcome of the election this year. Our family has a very negative history with the KMT government back in its martial rule period. Several things happen from back then which can never be forgiven. However the present is what it is and the Taiwan people has made its choice. The DDP party will need to grow and learn from this defeat. For KMT and President Ma, though the viewpoints are different everyone wants Taiwan and Taiwan people to be prosperous, I wish him luck.

The Battle of Weights

It is very true that American portions are much bigger then Asia portions, for example take the American chain restaurant Burger King. If in Taiwan you order a Whopper, it only packs about ¾’s the whop compare to the American Whopper, and the BK Big Fish…not so big over here. Also in Asia there is a lot more emphasis on eating vegetables while in U.S. I can’t really think of a vegetable dish outside of salads…potatoes don’t count. Therefore you can see why Americans are easily more overweight on an average compare to Asia.

All my life it seems I have had a battle to maintain in ideal weight…well from ages 0-6 I think I was considered skinny, then I moved to U.S. and my skinny phase was over. I didn’t get back on the right track until around middle school when I was playing basketball and running a lot. College was really bad but after college I worked out obsessively and got my weight down until about 5 years ago when I came to Portland and started my job at Pixelworks. The new job required a lot of traveling and it is very hard to keep up a habit when you constantly have to adapt to travel situation and places. Since then I have to say I have put on weight and need to take off more then just a couple pounds.

So Annie has been pushing me to try this 3 day diet. Today was my first day and it has been….weird. Here is the menu for today

Breakfast –
1. 1 Toast with peanut butter
2. Half a grapefruit
3. 1 cup black coffee
Lunch –
1. 1 toast with tuna
2. 1 cup black coffee
Dinner –
1. 3 ounces of meat
2. 1 apple
3. 1 cup green beans
4. 1 cup grapes
5. 1 cup black coffee

If I happen to get hungry during the day I can drink as much black coffee or green tea as I want.

So this is my diet for the next 3 days. I have made it through the first day so far and feeling bit strange. When I get hungry I drink black coffee which suppresses the feeling and now I am totally high on caffeine mixed in with intermitten hunger and suger low. So we will see how this diet goes by end of Wednesday, I have a feeling the effectiveness will be minimal. I just hope that someday someone really brilliant will be able to make a real diet pill in which will allow you to lose weight however still eat everything and anything you want.

Mimi's Second Birthday 5/15/2008

The Month of May seems to hold a lot of personal significance for me. It is the month in which Annie and I first got together as a couple, it is the month in which we got married, but most importantly...it is the month in which Mimi was born. This year we celebrated much more lower key then Mimi’s first birthday. For Mimi’s first birthday there was a huge party with buffet for 30 people and balloons. In the Chinese culture the first month and the first year is pretty important for the child. I guess in old China kids were having problems living to those points so it is marked traditionally with big celebrations (If you follow tradition you aren’t even suppose to name the child until after it’s first month!).

For Mimi’s second birthday I took half day off work and we took her to Sheraton Afternoon Buffet which is one of the best buffets in town. Annie’s mom and dad came up to celebrate it with us, Annie made a cake, and Barbara’s and my parent’s gift made it just in time. Overall I enjoyed this birthday more then last years. Last year was a party, but this year was for Mimi and us. The only thing that could have made it better was if my family was here also. Here is a message from Mimi to you Barbara, mom, dad. Enjoy!

Happy Happy Weekend!!!

Sorry about the lateness of this post, I had the hardest time getting hold of a color scanner. However, persistence prevailed and I finally got what I need to update this blog.

This past weekend there were 2 happy occasions. The first is May 10th being Josh Peterson’s 31st birthday. Josh has been one of my best, and one of the first, friends I made when I moved to United States way back in 1984. We were both in the second grade and he wanted to be my friend because he thought I was a ninja and that I could teach him the secret ancient eastern martial arts. Since then we have been through grade school and high school, hiked the Grand Canyon, and he being best man for my wedding. I don’t know many people who can say they have friends since they were 6 years old. When people ask me how we stayed such good friends for so long, I have always replied that I don’t have many friends, but the ones I make are the best. Here is a picture of our second grade class. Josh is the one in front on very left with our teachers hand on his left shoulder. Guess who the ninja of the class was.

The second event was of course Mother’s Day on May 11, 2008. When I was young I didn’t really appreciate everything my mom did for my sister and I. Being young and stupid you kind of take everything for granted. It wasn’t until when I left home the first time for college that I start understanding, and it wasn’t until I had Mimi when I knew. From moving to U.S. to raising us up in Boise Idaho which was alien of a place back then as Mars, the time, effort, sacrifices my parents did for me and my sister cannot be described. I just hope that we turned out to be a son and daughter and they can be proud of and that Annie and I can raise Mimi as good as they did for me. This picture is one of the oldest pictures of mom, Barbara, and I. I think it must have been taken around 1981. Happy Mother’s Day everyone!!

Third Anniversary

Annie recently was reading my blog and said 'hey how come it's all about Mimi and there is nothing about me in it?'. Well this is unfortunately true and in my defense I pointed out that there is very little about me in there also. It's not that there is nothing interesting about me or Annie, it's more that since Mimi came along...all of our pictures, home videos, time, basically our life centered on her. So my blog tend to reflect that, plus Mimi is just super photogenic. Something interesting to note is that Mimi's Chinese name is Xin-Yu which can be interpreted to mean 'center of the universe'.

However today, May 7th 2008, is the perfect day to talk about Annie and I because 3 years ago on this day we got married. To celebrate, Annie and I went to one of our favorite restaurants in Taipei...the Antoine Room in Sheraton Hotel. French food that I swear tasted better than anything I had when I was in France. Great food served in tiny portions through 7 courses.

So Annie a couple weeks before our anniversary digs up in the archives this video which I have not seen since...well May 7, 2005. This is the actual movie which was played in our intro during the wedding dinner. When I watched this video I get all red and plug my ears because it is extremely sappy, very corny, and utterly disgusting. However everything I said in here, to this day, is still completely true. I love Annie very much and I am an extremely lucky guy to have met and married her. Enjoy the video, and oh yeah...if you can't stand sappiness like me, try turning off the audio

Mimi - The Starbuck Poster Child

So I own some shares of Starbucks stocks and yes I know Starbucks has this bad reputation as a big evil corporation which has it’s tentacles in everything. However...I know deep down you thought ‘Akeelah and the Bee’ was a entertaining good wholesome family movie and though it was drubbed ‘The Starbucks Movie’ because they provided the funding, there was not one sign of the coffee goddess symbol or a person downing a cup of joe in the whole movie. Plus you got to give the guys who started this company some credit for being smart and innovative because if someone came to me and said they were going to start a store which sells a commodity product at a premium price I would have just laughed and told them they were crazy.

It seems though that reputation sometimes precedes good financial planning because despite constantly outperforming its financial goals, the Seattle company’s stocks has been steadily declining and trading undervalue for over 1 year now. Therefore to stop the hurt of my profolio I think Starbucks should make Mimi their poster child.





It is my belief that when people start seeing pictures like these they will start associating Starbucks with Mimi’s attributes of cuteness, lovability, innocence, and her open joy of drinking a short, 1/3 foam, caramel topped, whole steamed milk from Starbucks. Yes this is a marketing plan which will definitely work. As for payment…well Mimi doesn’t ask for much, maybe free steamed milk and some of those mango cup pudding she really likes. Throwing a couple hundred grands to her poor college tuition saving parents would be nice though.....

Lin's Internal Family Accident Report: April 30, 2008

On the night of April 30, 2008, while in the middle of the her usual hyper active jumping on the bed excercise, Micole A. Lin (aka Mimi) slipped off the end of the bed, fell forward and struck her forehead on the hard floor. The bed lies approximately 1 feet above the ground. Luckily there were no bleeding or severe injuries just some swelling in the forehead area. After a bout of tears which subsided when comforted by her mother Annie Hsu, Mimi's nanny Minnie immediately applied first aid in the form of a pack of ice to reduce the swelling. Attached is the physical evidence of the scene.

Witnesses include the victim's father Jim Lin who has the foresight to document this tragedy in a short but incredible cute video testimonial from the victim.