Have Food, Will Nap?

I have to admit, I love to take afternoon naps now and then; even in class! 10 minutes of nap can do wonders; hence my grades... =P When I came to Austin, afternoon naps has become a luxury. I was told by my supervisor (after one of us got caught napping on the desk) that napping even for a while it is a stigma here in US; it's very bad. We were advised strongly against napping while working especially after lunch. So there goes my nap...

Though I stopped napping since then, once in a while after a huge lunch (which is always) my body would go into a "trance" whereby my eyes would shut and my body frozen (my cubicle mate told me that) for a few minutes. Damn, old habits do die hard!

Is it all right for you to take naps at work? Do let me know how is it in your workplace.

PS: My supervisor told me that he walks around whenever he's sleepy and that's been working for me...

Realizing Your Dreams

I was checking out my friends' blogs and I found this interesting video called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". It's about professor named Randy Pausch giving his last lecture about how he achieved his childhood dreams. There's a book by him with the name "The Last Lecture" which I believe some if not most of you might have heard of it or even read it; I haven't read it yet though but it's on my next-book-to-read list, hehe.

It's an inspiring lecture and make you aware that each of us can achieve our own dreams as long you work hard for it. If you got the time (the video is about an hour 16 minutes long) to spare, do have a look at it. While you're at it, read the book too!

Thanks to Ms.Kristin (aka bunny girl?) for sharing this really interesting video to us all. =)

Have a bike, have Austin!

Tim's mountain bike with road tires, Schwinn frame

That's a Shimano Deore XT groupset and a Bell helmet


Last Sunday morning I did my long run but with a difference; instead of running to some random place, I ran to my supervisor’s house, Tim. I asked him earlier whether could I borrow one of his bikes for training and he said yes. So I told him that I’ll run to his house to get it from him today as he didn’t drive to work for the whole last week; and run I did. It wasn’t far; about 14 km away and it took me around 1 and half hours of running. He wasn’t at home so he left his bike beside his garage and was so kind to leave some energy bar (chocolate brownie kind of energy bar) and a bottleful of water in addition to the helmet and spare tube. I was thankful for that energy bar; I was feeling a little hungry then. Afterwards, I cycled back to my house and that took only 37 minutes! Such huge difference! With the bike now in my hands, I can conquer Austin!

Between two extreme (temperatures)

I've noticed that every single house in Austin are equipped with air-conditioning (AC) for short. Call me ignorant but I never realized that even though I watched countless Hollywood movies. I know that they use it for heating the house during winter but didn't thought they would also use it for cooling. The AC is usually left on the WHOLE day, even when you're not in the house!

It's like having two weather here; one is a cooling 75 Fahrenheit (around 24 C) and the other, a blistering 100 F (38 C) - it sometimes goes up to 40C or worse! I feel too pampered by the cooling AC in my house; I'm afraid that I might not stand the outside heat once I get out of my comfort zone... I'm a sun-lover, I can't be scared of the heat can I?

Tell you a secret; I sometimes push the thermostat up to 80F (27C) and switch on the ceiling fan to save on energy. We're a bunch of Malaysian, why are we scared of the heat anyway? Call me a Green freak if you want...

NI Library

Last week, Hon Mun and I found out that we can borrow many interesting books from NI's repository of books! Most of them are marketing, sales, howto books and some technical books. It's so easy to borrow one; first search for the book you want to read from the NI website, then once you selected it, the librarian will send it to your NI mailbox which then you'll go there and pick up your lovely book. The best thing is, it's FREE! I'm such a true believer in "The best things in life are free" :D

Oh ya, in case you're wondering, I borrowed The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell while Hon Mun borrowed the same and Blink, also by the same author.

The Austin Triathlon

The RM500 receipt

During dinner with Tim, Laurel and Mariel, I asked about the photo with Tim and Laurel together in a tri race and Laurel told me that there’s a triathlon race this coming September, The Austin Triathlon which Tim is joining (Laurel would have also join but she found out a good news; that she’s pregnant!). So I ended up joining the race too, but I’m going for the shorter distance - because I have never join one before - which is called the sprint distance. It’s a 700m swim, 27km cycle and 5km run; half of an Olympic distance. I just paid for the registration which cost me $143.40! That’s RM 500! I used to pay between RM 20 to RM 60 for my marathon races but this is so far the most expensive race I’ve ever joined; I sure hope I don’t get a cold before my race… There is nothing as motivating as having to fork out RM 500 on a race so I’m forced to wake up early almost everyday and train… The crazy thing is, I actually like doing this crazy thing! XD

Wish me all the best friends!

Dinner with Tim and Laurel

Last week, Tim and wife, Laurel invited us for a dinner at their beautiful house. It was really nice of them to prepare lots of American foods for us to feast upon! Laurel’s sister, Mariel who just came back from having her 6-months-long solo backpacking trip in South America also joined us (by the way, she’s only 20). We were served with lots of delicious traditional American dishes like oven-cooked pork with apple puree (I didn’t know apple and pork meat can go together so nicely), salads made from home-grown vegetables seasoned with olive oil, oven-baked bread that came in a can and you eat it with organic honey spread on it (extremely easy to make!), a special potatoes dish that Mariel made and some others I can’t remember. For desserts, we had a nice home-make pie topped with ice-cream! This is the most delicious and healthy home-cooked dinner I’ve ever had in America! I wish I can eat like this everyday…

Shopping in San Marcos

Just yesterday we went to San Marcos shopping paradise where there are a lot of shops located in one area. There’s two huge outlets called Prime Outlets and Tanger Outlets whereby in each of the outlets, there are a huge variety of individual shoplots situated side by side along a single row and they’re all concentrated around the main point of the place. It’s something like a shopping complex but instead of every shop being in a huge contained air-conditioned building like Piramid or MidValley, here it’s open air.

Each of the shops is on its own. Because they’re on their own, they require more spaces hence the whole area is pretty huge! You’ll have to walk a long walk from one end to another end in the heat (luckily it is shaded). I saw there’s even a mini bus to fetch the shoppers from one place to another quickly (still not air-conditioned which makes me think that people here REALLY love the sun). It’s a different concept from what we usually have in Malaysia but in my humble opinion, I rather stick to Piramid and Mid Valley even though I like the sun but I don’t like it when I’m all sweaty while shopping.

Rows of shops

There aren’t many places to rest except a few benches far in between and the restroom (toilet) are definitely rare. Anyway, the goods in most of the shops is quite cheap (if you’re working in US and some still cheap if you’re not) as most of them are having summer sales.

Someone bought a few Coach bags... ;-)

I bought a Levi’s jean (loose straights, my first Levi’s jean :D) for $34, one Dockers original style khakis for $29.99 (really cheap!), one Timberland shorts for $15 with coupon (again, extremely cheap!) and wallet, $17+ with coupon and my Nike athlete shorts, $24 (not cheap, still overpriced as always). All in all, I spent about $200 or so. Not bad for a one day shopping spree. I didn’t get any shirts because the smallest size is S and it’s like the L size in Malaysia… May Yeng told me that her friend (a guy) bought a girl’s shirt in US because of that… The last thing you’ll see me wearing is a girl’s t-shirt… >.<”.

The result of the shopping spree by 4 Malaysians, most of it is from Hann Huei. He scored almost $1000 getting a first placing beating Hon Mun! This guy shops like there's no tomorrow...

Humble me... I got the last placing... only spending about $200 :D

Washington Accord

Sorry for lack of updates these few days... I went off to New York for a trip... Wonderful place.. Will upload photos of it in FB but I won't blog about it though... unless you want me to...

Anyway, I just got an email from my friend in Penang (thanks Pang Siew Kin! =D) saying that Malaysia is now one of the Washington Accord's signatories! For those who don't remember what you learn in Engineering Society (it barely registered in my mind XD); with Malaysia in WA, you can now use your degree that you got in Malaysia and work in any other countries that recognises WA! We're now a full member, no longer holding a provisional status.

Read more about it here!