Should I?

I haven't posted anything about fights, boxing, muay thai for a while. Oh man, I missed training to fight. I really do. For your information, I can't fight amateur anymore because USA Boxing rules no fighter over 35. The same rule applies to Olympic. It's the only sports in Olympic that has age limit. Paris always asked if I want to fight "senior" or also called "master" class. It's not professional. The problem is... where do you fight female amateur boxer? Most 30 something females have family, kids, not working out ok, forget about fighting.

Anyway, I still do boxing and muay thai for weekly workout. It's something I will keep continue on for the rest of my life. I still went to many fight events, smokers, took lots of pictures. Just not doing any posting about them.

But I will post when some events worth mentioning in future. And when I have time. I always doing something, it's hard to get time to blog.

I posted about not blogging as much but facebooking is easier for my friends and family to get update. But.... I actually don't want to do that as much now because I have my coworkers on my friend list and some people that I don't want them to know what I'm doing, feeling. Yes, that's my practice. I separate personal life and work life. I do not like my coworkers know too much about me. It's harder to work together when you know someone too close. My job is about being critic and critic others' design. So maintaining certain distance is appropriate, that's my thought. So, I should just keep blogging here for something I don't want to share with some people.

So, what do you think about this???? My Nike Jordan boots is already 3 years old. I wear it 3-4 times a week. It's not in bad shape but I took it for repaired once. The leather still good, just the right sore is coming off. I'm so temped to get a new one....

Should I or shouldn't I??? It's recession and I try not to spend! But I know it looks good on me....

The Result

Ok, I will tell you my result. The full points for the LEED test is 200 points. The point to pass is 170 and up. You must correctly answered at least 80% of questions. The test consists of 80 questions total, multiple choice with calculation(no calculator is provided) involved. The exam time is 2 hours. Some questions are really long, confusing, tricky and you have to choose 3 out of 5 answers. Those were the hard one.

My result is 176. PHEW~!

LEED AP

After months of studying, yesterday I took my test and ..... PASSED!

LEED, The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is a green building rating system, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction. Since its inception in 1998, LEED has grown to encompass more than 14,000 projects in 50 U.S. States and 30 countries covering 1.062 billion square feet (99 km²) of development area.The hallmark of LEED is that it is an open and transparent process where the technical criteria proposed by the LEED committees are publicly reviewed for approval by the more than 10,000 membership organizations that currently constitute the USGBC.

Individuals recognized for their knowledge of the LEED rating system are permitted to use the LEED Accredited Professional (AP) acronym after their name, indicating they have passed the accreditation exam given by the Green Building Certification Institute (a third-party organization that handles accreditation for the USGBC). From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I started "reading" the guideline reference book since November of 2008. I read it like a story book, without memorizing any main points but just understanding of the credits, requirements, definitions, and etc. The reference book is over 300 pages, printed on both sides. It's boring to read for sure. Took me a long time to finish reading it. Then in April, every weekend, I studied. I spent at least 2-4, 6 hours a week in April. In May, I pumped up the hours of study. It was a painful experience as English is not my first language, the terminology used in the reference book was completely unhear before to me. Specially this rating system is design by engineers and I as a designer found it DRY and too WORDY. And hello,... why so many calculation formulas....

The last week before my test, I was anxious because I still couldn't get 80% correct answers from the sample tests that I took. Every night of that last week, I woke up at 2am and studied for 1, 2 hours. On top of that stress, I was completely stress up at work dued to a deadline. I felt like a Zombie.

The test consists of 80 multiple choice questions. You must get 68 of it correct. Many calculation, tricky questions. And no calculator is provided.... oh my god, ...

The worst moment was the few seconds of waiting for the test result. It's a computerized test that you'll get your result by the end of the test. In my life as a student, I never nervous about tests, or waiting for result but this is the first time.

Why become a LEED AP? San Francisco has the most strict building codes and the most green construction in the country. By 2012, new construction, major renovation of existing building will have to be GREEN. Recently California just adopted statewide green building code and it's the first ever in the states. As a designer, architect, builder you better know your shits and design, built a green building.

Oh, you know to take the test, it costs $300! So I can't afford to fail :)

Finally, I can enjoy weekend again~! Till.... next January-March as I have to prepare for another professional test :( That test will cost even more, $730 and it's two full days of testing. How stressful is that. But for the sake of my profession, I just have to suck it up and do it.

Ella my model

It was a sunny day at the park. Ella, my neighbor's dog, my model was looking good. She's lean and fit! The kind of model that I like to use :) although a little bit hard to get her attention. She won't hold her poses long enough for me. But with my good skills(Hm hm) I was able to capture a few frames of her.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour

Mama Wong's Sewing Creation Is Launched!

A lot of you know Mama Wong personally. She is one hell of mama. Funny, straight forward, open minded, great cook, great gardener and very creative with her handy crafts. Growing up, Mama Wong trained me to do lots of lots of sewing, gardening, cooking that I am so grateful for as these skills are hard to find within youngsters, or my generation nowadays. I was once thought to be a fashion designer because of sewing. I freaking designed, cut, sewed my shirts and skirts at age 14. But I changed my mind at age 16 to be an architect, then changed my mind again in age 18 to be an interior designer. Wait, this is not about me, its about Mama Wong. Her passion, creativity influences me since a kid till today.

Mama Wong was a registered nurse in England. I think she should be in creative field instead but at that time, creative field was no no. So she channeled her creativity to tailoring and she took up a professional tailoring training course in London. She can made a man suit just like Armani Suit. Then from tailoring, she started to make dresses. Oh, yeah, you guessed it. She made her own wedding dress. Then later, during one Chinese New Year, she altered her wedding dress to make three cute little white lace dresses with pink waistline ribbon for Grace, Me and NN. I remembered I hate to wear it because the material of lace was not comfortable. The lace poked me. All our pajamas, shirts, pants, dresses, skirts, school uniforms, school bags, bed sheets, pillow cases, blankets, curtains, cushion covers, stuffed animal toys, everything you can think of and made of fabric in our household all design, handmade by Mama Wong.

I love love love the dresses she made for me. But.... around 7, 8 years old I had fall in love with t-shirts and jeans. The material of t-shirts is so soft and jeans is so tough that look so cool if it's dirty! These two things, Mama Wong couldn't make it due to the type of material and her sewing machine just couldn't sew through tough jeans fabric. Since I changed to jeans, t-shirts and sneakers, I turned to a tomboy. She stopped making dresses for me. All the girls in the family started to want to choose their own outfit instead of letting Mama Wong decided. I also don't like to wear pajamas to sleep but I wear oversize t-shirts and shorts. She stopped making anything for any us, except she still made our school uniforms. I remembered asking her to make my uniform skirt like the 50's poodle skirt(without the poodle of course). My female classmates were jealous of my fashionable uniform!

Then life was tough and Mama Wong has to work to help with income for the family. She started a home based daycare. She has two helpers, NN and myself. At one point, there were so many babies, toddlers in our house. I remembered, 3 babies, 3 toddlers and 3 preschoolers. Our record was 12 all together. It was a hand fulled. Mama Wong just don't have time anymore for her sewing creation. Till I left for USA and with the tragic life changing event in our family with Grace' incident, Mama Wong had stopped all her crafts making. It was sad.

Until after Papa Wong passed away in 2003 and Grace was located to a care center. Mama Wong was able to start to relax and enjoy a little bit after many years of mentally and physically stress. She started to do gardening, cooking and her sewing creation again.

Few years ago, she made a few toddle dresses for me to see if I can sell it in USA but at that time, I didn't do much with it. I gave her $100 because I gave away two of them to friends who had baby girls. They love it so much because it's handmade, one of a kind, very cute, soft material and most of all, those little toddlers just love to wear them. Mama Wong keeps making them even thought she didn't know who to give, where to sell it. She just love and enjoy the process of handmade crafts. One day, a friend of her went to her house and saw her sewing products. Her friend wanted to buy it from her but Mama Wong never sell any of her products and she didn't know the skill of selling and she said "any price you want to give lah!" You know how much she got from her friend? $3 dollars. Her friend is damn cheap. She was so upset because she thought those kind of craft worth a lot. The material itself cost more than $3. She complained to me all the time about this one incident. I want to help her but I'm not a web designer and it's takes a lot of energy to create the website. I used to think about being a street vendor to sell her crafts but that takes even more energy.

One day, NN shown me a website called Etsy.com and that gave me an idea. But I didn't do much at that time because it was winter time, it gets dark early, cold, wet and I'm just not in the mood to be outside doing some photography for Mama Wong's dresses. But that is one of the thing on my 2009 TO DO LIST.

Yesterday, my creativity level was in super high mode. I made three impressive porcelain ceramics which was unbelievable because I just started to use porcelain clay last week and I couldn't make anything because of the texture is very different. After ceramic class, I went home and weather was sunny. I decided to take pictures. First I plan to go to a children playground as background but the playground at my neighborhood was too shaded. Too much shadow. I did it at my backyard but the lighting direction from natural light was way off. However I don't have choice. Without proper equipment to reflect and redirect the light source I decided to just snap it.


After that I edited the images. I wanted to create a theme of "Blue is for Girls" without realizing Etsy.com item listing didn't allow grouping. But here's the preview of the group. Then I spent the whole afternoon setting up a shop.


Mama Wong's Sewing Creation is now launched!
New design for banner and more items will be added soon. I guarantee to you that you will smile when you see her crafts. It brings back a lot of sweet memories to me. Mama Wong is in her 70's and her eyes, hands are no longer sharp and active but that didn't stop her passion and creativity.


Tag: Smocking, Dress, Girl, Toddler, Children

Let your friends and family know if they like handmade crafts. Mama Wong also do custom size and design too. I keep the price reasonable. Most of what you pay for is the material she uses called LOVE.

Robbery

Last night was a night! At 8:40pm, I was done with Muay Thai and Boxing class. I sat at the front desk with Paris, my boxing coach and R, the staff on duty. We were watching last weekend boxing fight between Juan Diaz vs. Juan Manuel Marquez and bs as usual. A gym member left the place... then he rushed in at the front desk said a guy across the street got jumped! We got up immediately and ran out side. I saw across the street, some people were struggling. It was dark. We can't really tell what happened. But we heard a guy was screaming, yelling. I immediately said, call 911! As soon as I said that, we saw a fire truck honking from 50 feet away as they passed by they saw the incident too. Then one person ran first and another person chased him and yelled. At that point, I thought it must be robbery, not gang related. The fire truck started chasing too but it was going on opposite direction of a busy one way street. At that point, Paris started chasing. We all follow him chasing the robber. I was yelling behind, P be careful! P be careful! The fire truck drove to an intersection and block the coming traffic. When it did that, we were able to ran across the street. 4 people about to corner the robber. He realized he has no chance. he stopped and put down what he robbed, a laptop and then started running. Paris chased him down at that point but... let him go. The firemen stayed in the truck all time and when they saw Paris left the guy loose, they came down from their truck. We were like, P, why you let him loose? Paris said, he's too young, he'll be in Juvenile Correction. I don't understand why the firemen didn't came out from their truck to help chase the robber. Anyway, the victim was a twenty something Asian kid. He was shocked and shaking. He couldn't say a word. Poor kid. The firemen tried to ask him if he wants to report to a police, he was just not answering, and totally shock. We kept trying to tell him it's ok, he's safe, he's lucky. Don't worry. Then we walked back to our gym. By that time, I realized.....Paris didn't even wear a pair of shoes. He was running with his socks on.

Unemployment rate in California is up to 10%. It means crime rate is up too. Be cautious walking down the streets. In recent months, I have heard a lot of snatch robbery specially on cellphones and laptops.