Category: Day to day life

Updates on what’s going on with us

Memories in an Urn

We got a call to pick up Baobao’s ashes today. We’d paid for and expected an urn. But what they didn’t tell us was that they’d also included a little surprise — an impression of Baobao’s paws preserved in clay! They also did a nice job with the urn with Baobao’s name nicely “decorated” on the urn.

Bao Bao ashes

Bao Bao paw prints

When we arrived at the vet to pick up the urn, Bryan thought we were there to take Baobao home. So when we told him Baobao was in a tiny little box, he got confused and paused for a second. He still has a tough time understanding where’d Baobao gone.

Considerate Vets

I don’t know if all vets or pet clinics do this, but a couple of days ago we got a handwritten card in the mail from our pet emergency clinic about the loss of Baobao. We thought that was very nice of them to send such a card.

And then yesterday, we got another handwritten card in the mail from our regular pet clinic, also to mourn the death of our cat — signed by the head of the clinic himself (whom also happened to by Baobao’s vet). Grace was curious how they’d know. So she called the emergency clinic to find out. It turns out that they contacted our regular vet about the death (from the record in which I’d previously stated whom our regular vet was) so that our regular vet wouldn’t keep sending us reminders for shots and stuff. Now I think that’s very considerate of them to do that.

Another thing that Grace found out about the doctors at the emergency clinic is, they only work at the emergency clinic, not some part-timer who may have a regular job somewhere else (which Alicia was thinking may be the case). This makes me respect them that much more because of their fair prices, no down-the-throat commercial sales pitches and merchandises, and true love for the care of animals.

Nice people make me happy.

Making Decisions on Tough Choices

I’ve been lucky in that most of the tough choices in my life had easy answers — which school to go to; what to do after graduation; whether or not to take that risky startup job in NYC; if uprooting from NYC and moving to California was the right decision; how did I know if Grace was the right girl… etc.

Most of the time these choices would have the answer staring me in the face before I even had to lose sleep over them. But deciding whether or not to end a house pet’s life was an abstract concept that required some soul searching and constructive voices from others to help clear the fog in the head.

In that, this is an open thank-you to Jason and Alicia for all the emotional and moral support they’ve provided in the past month over Baobao’s condition.

We are also very pleased with our pet ER with their handling of our very difficult cat. And they also provide very sound medical and practical advise from various perspectives. For anyone living in the San Jose area, I can’t think of a better place to take his/her pet to in the case of emergency…

Another reason I recommend them is, they don’t sell any products in their clinic. So this could only mean that every penny they earn, they’d have to earn it from the servicing and treatment of the animals they admit, which is a pretty drastic departure from almost all the other day-clinics I’ve been to, where the lobbies are stuffed with overpriced products and brochures. And to know for a fact that they don’t charge much like other day-clinics, it makes me wonder if they actually do this for the love of the animals, not trying to take advantage of pet owners who’d probably pay anything just to get their pets out of whatever dire conditions their pets are suffering from. I don’t know how they do it, but they have my respect and trust. And that’s a good feeling.

Baobao in Comfort

Baobao in Comfort

It took me twenty minutes to decide on an image for this post. But then, it was a lot to take in and a lot of emotions to process. At the end, I decided that projecting Baobao at her favorite place during the last day of her life was the most appropriate and captures a more accurate portrait of her characters.

On January 16, 2008 at around 10PM, Baobao took her last laboring breathe and her heart stopped beating. The life of a cat with strong characters came to an end. The burden of this tough call was ours to make as guardians of our pet. For those who knew, Baobao suddenly exhibited symptoms of acute asthma attacks late last year, and her conditions just kept getting worse after a couple of weeks of seemingly healthy recovery.

In the days leading to her euthanasia, her asthma inhaler dosages increased dramatically from 1-3 puffs a day to 13 puffs, and then finally during her last day, 30+ puffs. Modern medicine was finally overcome by the illness.

Bryan didn’t quite understand what happened. And I scrambled to Google for ways to explain the whole idea of “death” of our pet to our two-and-a-half-year-old. It was especially heartbreaking when he routinely said his good nights last night to Baobao as he prepared for bed time albeit to a photograph of Baobao.

I am glad Wawa also came along with us to the hospital as I think she understood what was going on. She got all freaked out and kept meowing as Baobao collapsed beside her in the pet carrier and struggled to breathe on our way to the hospital. She hasn’t looked for Baobao yet since we got back. So she must knows.

The house feels unusually empty even with two adults, a toddler and a cat. It’s hard to comprehend just the mere presence of life can fill a room, and the void of it can make even the most crowded space empty. But it does.

I once read a quote that goes something like this: “We don’t just live. We survive.” After living through the grief of losing a family pet, the quote rings ever more faithful to its core as we try to cope with the loss. And so march on we must with our own lives after saying a heartbreaking goodbye to our friend. March on, we must.

Malaysian Yong Tofu

We owe my cousin a meal. So Grace decided to dish out her Malaysian cooking skills to give ourselves a treat while returning my cousin his favor.

Now, I don’t know how Grace does it. But her cooking has been pretty kick-ass for quite a while now. And her latest rendition of the famous Malaysian Yong Tofu (thanks to Jai’s recipe, actually) with Malaysian curry made returning my cousin’s favor a glamorous event. In fact, I am pretty sure he now owes me a meal because of this! Ha!

Sorry Chi-hoi, we pretty much finished the leftovers as well. Maybe next time we’ll bring some over if you asked Grace really nicely… 😉

Ways to Stay Awake and Focused Without Caffeine

I’ve been doing some pretty hard times trying to put together a beta release for Neely’s venture. And since caffeine and I don’t really mix well, and through trial and errors, I’ve discovered a few ways to keep at it without external chemical stimulants (that work for me anyway)… Besides, I think chemical stimulants are just for the weak-minded… 😉

1. Take a shower — this helps to keep me stay awake for at least until that ‘freshness” wears off (about an hour or two?).

2. Keep the stomach full — it’s amazing what an empty stomach does to the morale. By having late night (or early morning, depending on how you want to look at it) semi-meals, I can plow through quite a bit of code more clear-headed. Maybe the stomach protests hunger by telling the brain to shut down in order to conserve energy.

3. Get lots of rest prior to “the long haul” — people don’t realize how tiring it is when the brain is bitch-slapped for hours on end for attention intensive tasks like programming. So sometimes I do activities that are relaxing and don’t require the brain for a while, like playing with Bryan for 20 minutes.

4. Get up and walk around about once every 30 minutes just to get the blood flowing.

5. Drop and do some push ups.

6. When “in the zone”, stay in the zone. DO NOT STOP until you can barely keep your eyelids open. Sometimes I stay in the zone even when I am asleep. All my dreams would be about how to solve particular programming problems I’d gone to bed with — pretty freaky.

7. Power nap for 15 minutes — this is usually followed by a quick shower. All this before diving into code.

Starting usually at around 2AM, I’ve managed to stay up until around noon of the same day by doing these things. And they seem to work well for me personally. I mean, I’ve tried coffee and even RedBull. But they just make me super duper hyper that I end up not being able to concentrate at all. So I guess my body just isn’t made for coffee…

Bookshelf

Sixteen years ago, living in Thailand, I didn’t really have any collection of books. What my dad had in the study room was what I read, albeit most books were political in nature (which is probably why I have been so keen in politics since).

Fast forward to the late 90’s when I was an art student, I actually started to have a small collection of books — arts (of course) and many philosophical in nature (my “soul searching” days, like the kind my brother is experiencing right now).

When I moved from New York City to the Golden State, I essentially ditched all those “soul searching” and literature arts stuff. Well, partially it was because I got married (what more is there to search for?), and another reason was that a totally different part of the brain took over — I started getting more interested in programming, web development and Linux server administration. And as a result, my book collections grew accordingly. You know you’ve met a geek when you see a shelf full of books with programming and other geeky goodies.

Now, after four and half years, the pendulum has swung back to other hemisphere of the brain (the half that makes society civilized and bearable) — arts. So I’ve slowly started ditching and donating my tech books. In their place, the shelf is slowly being filled with books of arts related topics.

Now if only I have the time to actually read through each and everyone of them from cover to cover like Brian seemingly to be able to do… then life would be all good.

Rediscovering Simplicity

I’ve been sweating bullets with this project I’ve been working on with Neely — he’s supposed to be demoing it at a major conference in New York with a partner in a couple of weeks. But I am still not quite where I’d like to be in terms of polish and grace.

Neely’s been telling me to just code for the immediate requirements and nothing more. But my philosophy has always been to look ahead just a little more and prepare for what’s to come as “no-brainer” feature requests. Apparently this type of thinking has been hurting my development time on this project…

I rarely read Wil Shipley’s blog entries because they are usually quite long and sometimes very technical. But just out of the blue I decided to read “something” today. And there I came across his coding strategy and philosophy on coding for only what’s necessary and nothing more.

I’ve always understood the idea of “push it out to the market first and fix it later”… But I just never felt right implementing that in good conscience knowing that I am purposely releasing a faulty software only to fix it when complaints flood in. But the way Wil explained it made a lot of sense to me and I think I am going to make what he says in that article my focus from now on — if there ain’t complaints, it ain’t broke. And if there ain’t requests, it ain’t a useful feature.

Live and learn…

Another Year

It seems that every year starts with a lot of hope and aspiration but only to end it with a lot of new hope and aspiration waiting for another year to begin…

And of course, this year is no different. I have a few “resolutions” in mind… only if I have the time to actually think them through and write them down… Hmm, I should put down “eliminate procrastination” on my list of resolutions… Check.

A Whole New Cat

After Baobao’s near death experience, it seems like she’s gained a new perspective on life. It’s like we’ve got back a whole new cat since the incident.

A few observations we’ve made:

1. She’s a much gentler and kinder cat now; she’s actually okay with random strokes by me, Grace and even Bryan! She even let Jason and Alicia pet her!
2. She now appreciates every inch of the apartment; she now sleeps at places she’s never slept at before!! This is a big thing for her.
3. She’s a little more talkative now; she now talks to Grace quite a bit more than before.
4. She’s not a bitchy and mean when handled. We’ve successfully fed her medications via a syringe and even administered inhaler puffs through a home-made mask (modified 1/2 gallon milk bottle) with much success (much fewer hisses and less intense struggles).

I wonder if this means some other animals can also appreciate life more after encountering near-death experiences…

Strange Behavioral Note

Ever since Baobao came back from the vet’s, Wawa has been acting strangely:

1. Refusal to approach Baobao and even gets hostile (hissing) towards Baobao;
2. Refusal to eat her favorite treats if they have been touched by Baobao;
3. Stays in our room with us during the night even though her favorite sleeping area is by the window in the living room;

Baobao, on the other hand, is enjoying the time of her life.

Grace thinks it’s the smell of the clinic mixed with the scent of other animals; I have no freaking idea what’s going on… but that assessment seems probable…

Cats…

Respecting Death

Confronting death isn’t something one does often nor is it something one would choose to come to grips with if given alternatives. We almost had to make that decision on behalf of one of our cats today — and it was painful.

Wawa (the friendlier, skinnier cat of the two) uncharacteristically came to the bedroom and meowed so loud that it woke me up this morning. She’s never done that unless something was wrong especially when Grace had already been up in the kitchen all morning! Soon I learned that Baobao was having another asthma attack and had to be rushed to the vet for emergency care…

After a series of events, the ER vet finally delivered the bad news — there’s a chance our cat may not make it… and I needed to give her permission to euthanize Baobao if her condition drastically plummets beyond humanly tolerable level even without my presence. Also, given Baobao’s feisty personality, it may be in everybody’s best interest to euthanize her so that she wouldn’t have to suffer through another asthma attack should she refuse to take any prescription drugs.

That’s when it hit me that all of a sudden, I’ve been entrusted with a monumentally important decision to make on behalf of another living, breathing mammal… After talking to Jason and Alicia, we thought we should probably give Baobao a fighting chance for survival — after all, she’s tried so hard to stay conscious and alive having been labored to breath all day. So we brought her home with some prescription drugs to see how much we can squeeze from the marvels of modern medicine and her own will to live.

One side note, on the vet’s billing statement, apparently the oxygen (something we take for granted) was the most expensive item in the entire treatment process. I found it ironic that often something that is free and abundantly available sometimes will cost the most if the alternative is unacceptable. On the flip side, it’s also good to know that things that are free and abundantly available are also priceless — the air, love, life, happiness, health… etc. Some of them are irreplaceable while others cost handsomely (monetary and emotional wise) to gain just a little… I wonder if people becoming more and more materialistic has something to do with this — trying to replace something that’s, in essence, irreplaceable with material belongings that ultimately nobody really gives a rat’s ass about during the final moments of one’s life.

But that’s an entry in itself and maybe for another day…