Being a vegetarian...

So I have been a vegetarian for about 4days and a half now. I decided to stop and reflect on what I actually achieved by doing so.
I feel a lot healthier. Sometimes it drove me nuts seeing people eating meat or just smelling it around, but somehow I could restrain myself from biting into one.
There are a couple of good things about being a vegetarian. First it makes you feel and eat healthier, but I guess that also depends on how you choose and diversify your menu. For example, I can be a vegetarian by just eating bread and still feel sick and overweight. On the other hand, I can be a healthy vegetarian by choosing to eat more veggies, salad, fruit, tofu, rice and watever that is non-meat. My 4days and a half focuses on diversifying my eating items. It was quite difficult, but not impossible. I used to even say I would die if I can't have meat in a day... now that statement seems pathetic :)
2nd thing, people says being a vegetarian can help you become less bad-tempered, which is a character I possess. The nutritions and vitamin in fruits and veggies plays an important part in balancing your mineral intakes and increase your blood flow. (excuse my non-scientific language). Other theory which I just heard today was that, meat are produced by slaughtering animals during which time they were under so much pain and distress. Therefore, the meat output from there pertains that pain and distress of the animal while being killed... As a result, if you eat meat, you take in yourself that pain and distress, and you will have a bad-tempered. It is not scientifically, but it makes sense to me. Sometimes I take those explanations pretty seriously.
3rd thing, I can contribute more for a cleaner enviroment by eating no meat. Cattles have been raised just to get killed and be served as food for us. That process exhausts the land, the cycle of biological world and the environment.
I actually became more environmental conscious after watching "An Inconvenient Truth", a documentary film on Global Warming by Al Gore. I highly recommend this!!!!!

Anyway, I think I will do this on a regular basis, maybe a week per month! :)

turbulent time for Wall str, turbulent time for us

as our team leader left for not just for a better opportunity out there but also because it is way beyond his limit to stand all the company craps including unskilledfull manager, mean colleagues, and quite a stubborn-but-always-think-he-knows-stuff CEO/boss. 

Anyway, enough of that. It caused me thinking if what I'm doing is right or I am wasting my time on a career I don't see much future with. Actually it got some potential, but I never thought I would turn my steering wheel to the media industry. I'm too much of a Democrat to be able to work in this oppressed and undemocratic enviroment. I'm good at being blunt, and thats what I want to be. I'm gonna see how things are turning out in a fe month. One good news though, we might be on air sometimes in December. I would love to see that happens.

Frustrations over people...

I really need to put this message out:

2 Nga: GROW UP! I'm sick of you acting stubborn and irresponsible. You told me to tell to your face that you made a mistake. Yeah, I can do that, but I won't. Have some respect for yourself and start taking things seriously, okay!
Thats harsh, but I really need to tell you since I'm still your friend.

And another frustrating thing at work happened. I'm sick of people not taking responsibility, sick of people who can't care enough about our team's work, but always try to get in the way and make things harder for us, sick of people who think they have a lot of experience in this broadcasting industry but never intend to teach us anything, sick of some people of other teams never doing works and the only thing they're good at is to distract us with all their noises and laughing.... Argg.. Maybe I'm a bit exargerating, I'm just really mad.

It also troubles me that how much people believe in the news without double checking the source or ask questions about it. If you don't know about the scandal and you read it just from a blog or a personal site, how much of that scandal is relevant, why don't you try asking more questions and make some objective judgement about it. Think it once, think it twice. Infomation is everywhere, it can't question, but you can. Be critical!

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oh yeah, 1 side note: I think I got food poison last night. I work up in the middle of the night with a terrible stomachache. I tried to puke but nothing came out. I was squirming and sweating for like 15 minutes. Finally some bad stuff went out of my system, and I was feeling a bit better. Man, I almost thought I had to be hospitalized. It was so painful.

Another week has begun...

Time flies by so fast when you work (... not when you enjoy it)

I can feel my team growing and bonding, now that all the misunderstandings have resolved and I learned how to control myself. I can't ask for better team members. For the first time, I really feel the excitement and the effective collaboration to come to a finished and well-done project/product, however you want to call it. 

You can call me a nerd but lately I think I've become a CNBC addict. I even "sacrificed" FRIENDS for CNBC's Squawk Box today. Maybe its because I've been listening to CNBC news in the morning too much that I developed a skill of processing all the info/discussions being broadcast. It gets exciting to hear the question and then anticipate an answer from an expert on CNBC. I've learnt a lot more about the US Economy (esp. the stock market) over the last 1 and a half month more than what I did in college (or maybe I didnt study hard and seriously enough back in college). 

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Marissa, Augsburg's Int'l Admission Counselor, is coming here in about 3 days. I'm so excited to see her. I'm going to take her to my high school and have her talk to some of the kids here about Augsburg College. It made me feel the Auggie Spirit again.

Missing Augsburg so much!

Friday night and...

normally I would be asleep by now since I have to wake up at 4:45am every Mon to Fri. But tomorrow I only need to be at the office by 8:00 (yeah, still have to be at the office on weekend!! arg..) so I'm indulging my staying-up-late habits, just to feel less like some one in the working class. hehe

anywho... last weekend, I got my first official salary (not a paycheck, we're not that advanced yet). Mom asked me as I was holding the money in my hands pondering "what're you gonna do with it?" Somehow the first thought that came right across my mind was "investing in the stock market" (although VNIndex is going downgrade like dropping the ball on NYEve), and the second thought was "putting it in the banks and enjoy some gains from interest rates (most VNese banks' interest rates now are almost close to 20% per year *faint*). That being said because I have no idea with that much of salary I receive every month, when am I gonna be able to afford 1 house, or even just an apartment.

Mathematically, I earned about 5 million Dong monthly (dont be misled by the "million", watch the foreign exchange US$1 = 16,500 Dong), and 1 middle-class apartment at the moment is about 3 to 4 billions each. Lets say I spent only about 2 millions monthly (which is quite a generous number, since VNinflation could reach 23%, I should be spending a lot more)... anyway, then I can save 3 millions a month. So a 3-billion apartment can be bought by me after 3,000,000,000 divided by 3,000,000 = 1,000 months = app. 83 years.
Wow, I need to work about 83 years more with this job to get an apartment.
Haha, of course I didnt take into account of rising inflations and the fact that I might get promoted and earn somemore, but those numbers I just calculated does make sense and help explaining why we are still so poor, and why some of us want to takes so many risks with the financial markets.

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Anyway, lets talk about something else.
I finally watched Mamma Mia the other day with my buddies after a week desperately trying to get some1 to go with. The trailer seemed so well-done and it prompted to watch it, and it certainly didnt disappointed. I used to listen to a lot of ABBA songs, I can still recall some of the lines, and it was so exciting watching Mamma Mia because its the movie in which you can sing a long even its the first time you see it. The music, the songs, they're all being put rightly to each scence. Love the cast too, Streep is awesome esp her voice, Pierce is still looking sharp, poor handsome Colin Firth, he turned out to be gay in the end, Amanda acted well too. Its a musical so most of the scenes appears quite dramatic, but I love it.
This is probably the best movie for this summer.
Looking forward to it when it comes out on DVD :)

Jobs updated...

So I guess I kinda have a job. Im not saying it officially yet because only the hiring decision was made but I havent signed any contract yet.

This job can be called translator/interpreter. It might sound easy and simple, but when I actually started doing it, it reveals a lot of interesting dynamics, thats y I decided to keep working here when the economy (everywhere) is still slumping.

What I do is that I basically have a team of 5 (up until now), we have to listen to CNBC news, which airs at 5:00am (In the FREAKING morning), and then translate that news right away, and then our company will rebroadcast CNBC news with Vietnamese voice-over-by-us for our local audiences. Theres very much pressure to it because we basically have to translate a 10 minutes news within 20-25 minutes to make sure we air ontime. However, our company, which is a media company, has not started to broadcast anything yet, so everything we do now is basically practice until NOVEMBER. And its gonna be worst in november, because by then I need to be at the office at 4:30AM .... Luckily the office is quite close to my home. Anyway, there're a couple of pros for this job that I really enjoy:

- Dress code: None (well, of course not too much revealing, but seriously though, I can dress in leggings, a baby doll tee and no one would complain. How sweet is that!!!!)
- Half-day work: I get paid as much as my friends do but I only work half-day. Well, now I work from 5:30 to 12, but once it airs, I can work from 4:30 to 10:00AM and then Im off... Not bad, huh
- Great team: My team consists of 3 girls and 1 guy. They're all young except for the guy (see the pictures for reference, although 1 of them does not belong to my team)... so we all get along so well and have so much in common, like the Japanese obsession, the Japanese style, manga, and a lot more to discover
- No traffic for me: yep, at 5:30AM, I basically have the whole road for my self. Rush-hour in Hanoi is getting crazier day by day... I am so glad I got that off my chest.
- English Practice: Since CNBC broadcasts economics news all around the world, I have actually been learning tremendously about the global economy, the stock market and also listening-to-english-news skill.... I feel a bit ashamed cuz sometimes the team members can hear a lot better than I do... hehe
- Pressure: Working under pressure is probably the best way to be productive for me. Once I stepped in the office, the work begins. I have no time for Yahoo Instant Messaging, Facebook, Forums whatsoevers... I really rather have a part-time job which I can be busy and efficent than a full-time job which I always have spair time to net-surf and not produce anything.

Anyway, thats so update about my job for now. Thanks anyone whos still stopping by :D

You will never know enough about a person!

Yes, thats what I've been learning a lot. About human and how imperfect they are. I can pretty much stand any ugly characteristics such as laziness, or impatience, or greed, or inefficiency, or similar things like that but for sure I can never live with dishonest.

Human have sins. All my friends have flaws. I need to learn how to deal with them. But this friend of mine whom I just met a year ago lied to me about her life, her exes that she dated and made it seem like they were all bastards, when in fact she was the one that cheated on them and lied to them about her past. There is this one thing, but I should not say it out loud, just cos its little private for her. But its unbelievable that she even lied about it, so everyone can look at her like an innocent girl.
I actually realized we did not get along and stopped hanging out with her. Now more of the truth is being revealed... I guess its time I ended things.
I sound kinda mean, but I really dont believe much in changing people...

Now I know why my sister was right. Eventually the friends back in those days of junior high or high school will be the one will understand, love and be honest to us no matter what happens, or whoever we have become.