9 January 2018
So far this week I don't have much to write about. Work is getting a little more busy. The superintendent complimented me, saying that I do things before he asks.
The ward's quarterly report is due this week, so I started working on that. I was surprised that I didn't fall asleep during the sacrament meeting of the Sabbath of the year.
A visitor shared an experience that he had with Thomas Monson during Fast and Testimony meeting, since he died last week. I was prompted to share the dream that I had with him with Jessica. I didn't share it with the congregation. A post on Facebook describes it, so I will copy and paste it here.
11 January 2018
Work has been busy lately. I can't think of anything to say about it, but I did home teaching yesterday.
Reed Chavez and I visited the Campbell family. I was surprised that the patriarch attended because sister Campbell said that the tax season keeps him busy in the beginning of the year. I met their son, Jack, at the Christmas party, and I was surprised that they had a daughter. Her name is Ivonne. I believe. I never had a sister, and it was interesting to see her interactions with Jack. Brother John Campbell engaged Reed Chavez in a conversation about education, explaining opportunities as he has been considering master's degrees. I shared a quick lesson after expressing my gratitude for John presence. I also engaged the family by asking the daughters name.
The First Presidency's monthly message was intriguingly by Thomas Monson, but I think that someone just put a bunch of his quotes together for the article. It was a reflection on the gospel. Isn't it gloriously that God the Father gave us his Only Begotten Son that we may come close to them by learning of them, their ways, and their doctrines? Their doctrine requires an advocate to the Father to atone for the sins of the people, who come unto God. The path to God is not a journey or a destination, but it a becoming close to their nature. The privilege to repent and come close to the nature of God is their gift by the atonement of Jesus Christ. Isn't great that there is good and bad to choose from, and we can choose to good? Let us choose the good. Let us try to be better.
15 January 2018
This weekend was a little spontaneous. I wanted to rest because I got a headache after Friday's day of work. I had a fever. I tried to aid the fever by sleeping with blankets that would usually make me too hot, and I felt much better the next day. I had to get up and drink water and gargle salt several times.
The weekend was spontaneous because my mom asked if I wanted a haircut late Friday night.
During week, a website company name Wakelet contacted me, saying that they are going to resume the role of Storify as that company will cease its web service in May. The switch was very easy.
24 January 2018
I think that I have not written in my journal for almost ten days because I felt like I did not have anything to write about for a few days and I got busy.
Last weekend Jessica and I visited my dad. Mom went to Thailand because her brother-in-law was ill. His name is Somchai. He died before my mother was able to see him, having two forms of cancer and developed a mental disease.
Since dad was alone, we made a weekend trip out of dad's idea to visit the Oakland temple. Trevor bought the "King Kong: Skull Island" movie, and he has been wanting to watch it.
It is our monthly anniversary day, when we visited my father. Dad bought a gigantic shepherd's pie, and he has been eating it for the previous few days. We ate dad's Tillamook ice-cream for our anniversary tradition. Dad told us about how he got converted to Tillamook. It is a simple story. They were out shopping for a dessert for a gathering, and Tillamook ice-cream was on sale. The cashier said that the ice-cream sells quickly on sale for its quality, and Dad was hooked ever since he tried it.
Dad wanted to leave early in the morning for a temple trip, and I had to reveal that I made plans to watch King Kong with Trevor. The deliberation was quite intense. We negotiated to tighten our schedule.
Dad made pancakes in the morning, realizing that he does not spend much time with Trevor because he usually leaves for work before he gets up, and schedule is too busy.
Our moments with Trevor were meaningful. Jessica loves movies so much that she wanted to watch King Kong right when she woke up ahead of schedule without good times visiting with him.
During the week Trevor and I spoke of an app idea. He loves phone games for their stories, and I thought what if there was an app similar to Audible where one can have access to every story video game with a monthly subscription, and the game development companies can retain customers by notifying old users who may have completed the story of new content or stories. Trevor just loved the idea of possibly offering a great dubbing/voice acting service. I think that the app should offer auto play on every game, so people who love stories don't have to be too invested in every game.
25 January 2018
"King Kong: Skull Island" lacked character development. The characters were based of stereotypes. King Kong's reality or existence is dumbed down to be a violent defender of an island. I don't like movies that glory to bloodshed and violence.
29 January 2018
I was hoping to catch up yesterday, but Jessica and I joined dad to pick up mom from the airport. Mom had souvenirs from Thailand, so we went to Santa Cruz for games, dinner, and souvenirs.
I am able to write at this time because I changed my schedule in order to coordinate with the night crew better. I am starting my day of work at 12 pm and ending at 9 pm. This morning I cooked lunch and dinner for Jessica and myself. I also cooked breakfast too.
We played a game of Risk during dinner. You may not believe that we finished a game in about an hour, but we played mission mode. I won in four turns. Lai was trying to destroy Trevor, and Jessica was trying to destroy Lai. Trevor and Lai were fighting over Australia as I was taking over the Americans. I only had to conquer 18 territories and have two armies in each one. Mickey was stuck forgetting his mission from the beginning practically. He supposed to conquer South America, but he conquered Africa instead. Jessica was pursuing Lai in Asia as I conquered most of Europe completing my mission after conquered North and South America. Mickey tried to stop my North American army bonus at Greenland, but he failed. Defending Africa, he had the most armies after me.
Work is slowing down a lot, since we only have one area left to do, completeing the last area on Friday.
On Saturday evening, Jessica and I went on a date with Thomas and Maritza. We walked along east cliff, going to a Korean restaurant after. The Korean restaurant was a little awkward because there were basically only the following four options: soup, rice and meat with salad, a noodle dish, a rice cake dish. The limited options had most of us choose the noodle dish. I chose the rice cake dish, not expecting that it is a soup. Since Dambi, one of our Korean foreign student, served rice cakes to us on a plate with sauce.
During our walk, I was surprised how open that Thomas was. He even has a blog, explaining his philosophy. I noticed it on his Twitter profile, but he spoke about it.
Mom had some khaki pants taylored made for me. They fit me well. Trevor and dad have a pair too. Guy, my cousin, gave some gifts to me. A hat and some snacks. The Thai snacks tasted interesting. Trevor described them as tasting like burnt porcelain and chalk. I like my hat, but I don't like smashed hats. I need to figure out how to unsmash hats. The hat that Guy gave me is unique because the hat bill is long.
30 January 2018
If you don't know me well, I am very health conscious. I have two health worries that I want to write about. When people experience a new health scare, they may worry that their bodies are changing or they have developed a chronic disease.
On the last day of my self-reliance class with the perpetual education program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, my glasses were very dirty, and it bothered me. I took them off not expecting much issues. I need glasses because I have a stigmatism. I don't really know what stigmatism means, but an eye doctor explained to me that my left eye's lense is not shaped circular. It is slightly misshapen, and my eye can flex the lenses to focus on an object. Most of the time, when I strain my eye, my left eye only gets blood shot; however, this time my eye was slightly bloody. Since my eye took about two weeks to clean out the blood, I was worried that my eye was degenerating.
My job has been a little rough on me health wise. The reason is that I have gotten sick four times in a row. Prior to my last illness my friend said that he had recently recovered from pneumonia. On a Friday, I oddly got a headache near the conclusion of my day at work. I thought that I may have been looking at the computer for too long. Somehow an ailment hit me fast. That night I had a fever and chills. I thought that if I slept really warm, it would would help my body destroy the germs. The infection in my throat came quickly too, and soon I felt that I was coughing up mucus from within my chest. I did not feel a fever much after the first night. A friend of mine said that he had pneumonia recently, and his lungs couldn't beat the ailment. I was concerned that I might not be able to beat the ailment in my chest as I never heard of anyone recovering from pneumonia without medical intervention. I called a free nurse holiness provided by my health insurance. She said that it may develop into bronchitis, which can develop into pneumonia, encouraging me to go to urgent care. I got to Urgent care thinking that bronchitis might be as serious as pneumonia a couple days later. I researched on the internet, seeing that it might chronic. When I arrived at the urgent care, I felt fine, but I was still coughing up mucus. My insurance didn't seem to help pay. The form asked me my symptoms, and I wrote that I think that I have bronchitis. They did not seem to think that my symptoms were serious because I sat watching TV for an hour and a half. After watching TV for about an hour, I started standing in front of the reception office casually, watching TV and leaning against a chair. The receptionists were surprised that I had not been helped after an hour and a half. When I was finally received into a room, the nurse seemed frustrated because my symptoms were most gone already. I felt really dumb. The doctor came in after. He was puzzled too. The doctor was nice enough to do a general check up too, and his good intent to help relieved my disappointment. He said that bronchitis is recoverable, and the mucus will go away. He did not diagnose me with anything. I feel fine now, and I am happy that I have not had my fifth sickness yet. I told my parents about my experience at the urgent care, and he said that my mother used to go get bronchitis for a few years in a row.
4 February 2017
This weekend is our last weekend hanging out with my family before we move. Yesterday we visited after cleaning the Allendale Church. We had a nice Thai dinner. We played a couple of games after.
I got up at 6:30 with my new schedule. I had breakfast, and I rode my bike over to the church, arriving by 8 am. The essentials of cleaning the building are cleaning the chapel, bathrooms, and garbage cans. I cleaned the chapel, vacuuming, and my home teaching companion arrived about the time that I finished. I felt bad for leaving him so early, so I took out the trash. There were a lot of trash. It seemed like the bathrooms were not cleaned and garage were not taken out for a long time. I sang 'I love to ride my bicycle' on the way home.
7 February 2018
When we arrived to visit my family, we ate lunch; although, Trevor just finished his shift at work. When I picked him up, he was planning to meet Mickey to clean the chapel. I already cleaned my church, so we didn't go urgently. Trevor asked Mickey the progress, and he said that he was practically done. We invited him to come and play some board games. We were not able to start playing games until after dinner.
We played a game of Risk and Machi Koro. I dominated so much that we needed to come back the next day to let people challenge me. The next day Trevor used my strategy to an extreme, destroying me in Risk; however, we played a Tokaido game after, and I won that, tying with Mickey.
February 12, 2018
Preparing to move to Oregon is in full swing. I changed my sleep schedule last night. I got up this morning at 2:30 AM because I am going to have leave at 3:00 AM to arrive on time for our appointment with our new apartment.
I realized that I should read scriptures at this time because I scheduled blog posts during breakfast instead of reading the scriptures according to my usual routine.
February 19, 2018
I didn't have time to write in my journal last week because of moving. My lunch hour was split in two because I had to eat breakfast and lunch during work. The move was hard on Jessica. She had to stay up all night on Friday night packing the car and cleaning the house as I slept because I was going to drive. We left the next day at about 3:40 am in order to arrive for our appointment at 4 pm with the apartment manager. We were able to time it well, and the drive was smooth. The semi trucks just slowed us down.
I am trying to engage in the community of Portland especially in the realm of music and cycling. My mom and a coworker confessed today that they are considering cycling to work. I want to join a community band with Jessica, but it is hard to convince her to work at it with me. It was coincidental because my grandfather recorded a StoryWorth entry about his thoughts on music last week; plus, there is a lds music conference and concert this weekend. I hope Jessica would join me.
March 4, 2018
I finally was able to transcribe the story about my grandfather today. It has been a couple weeks since I have written in my journal. I think that I should just publish this entry, and commit myself to writing more consistently next week.
I love Multnomah Village. They have Multnomah Village days every first Friday of the month. We went out, and eat Vietnamese Pho. Walking around town, we did not go into any stores because we were not shopping.
I did my taxes yesterday. It took about four hours with TurboTax. It worked out well. I also decided my 401k investment strategy. I am not only saving with 401k, but I also will invest in ROTH IRAs. The first is saving money pre-tax, and the latter is post-tax. Columbia Stone matches up to 4000 dollars in 401k, and most people can only invest 5500 dollars maximum in ROTH IRAs. I plan to maximize both benefits. I got to choose where my money is invested, and I did not subscribe to the profiles that the 401k company described. My profile is mix of balanced, conservative, and growth. I have a good amount of diversity in my portfolio. My aggressivefunds are ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds).
I chose ETFs because my self-reliance facilitor recommended them.
Last Sunday Jessica and I side swiped our neighbor's car. Our garage is too tight especially for our long car. We has to get a new parking spot because our original parking spot was very stressful to fit in. We had to envision the best methods of parking in the garage to simplify our lives.
Work has been good. I started making changes proposals last week. During my first week, it snowed and the roads were frosty, and I slipped, hitting my hip on the asphalt. I realized that, since I slipped at a seemingly random spot, I should not risk slipping at another more risk part of the road. The next day was the only day that I missed riding my bike to work, since it snowed again the next night.
On the week before we left our ward in Campbell had a fundraiser. The attendance was low, but there was a gloriously crafted Snorlax cake that i
I had to buy. I believe that I bought it for 60 dollars. It tasted good too.
Last Sunday, I started posting my tweets on Facebook because my friends may feel that I have abandoned them, since I rarely go on. Social media is a waste of time, and I have uninstalled all my social networking apps to focus better on life. I just tweet via sms text messaging. I am surprised how receptive people were to my simple tweets.
On example is that Jasmine came in the early afternoon last Saturday, so we can have game night with her and Lucas. We played my favorite face card game. It is called B.S. It is kind of like Uno, but the next person always has to put the next number on the stack of cards. It doesn't matter if you have the next number or not. Put something down. You might get away with it. I tweeted that I won the first game by luck, and Jessica won the next two games by trickery. My Facebook friends loved it. I basically don't have an audience on Twitter. I just tweet for Trevor Hicken, my little brother. The added audience has changed the way I use Twitter.
We tried to play a European version of Settlers of Catan, but the play was very different and clunky. We only got a couple rounds before they had to go home for the night.
