A Virtual Part of Me

It's not really surprising to learn that how smartphones are changing the world and our lives.  When I was on the train, I noticed that 90% of people around me were using smartphones.  About 70% of it were iPhones.  I was on the train to San Francisco for a couple of times.  Every time I might see different faces but the fact that the majority of people were using smartphones always held true. It's even hard to spot people who are using non-smart phones now-a-day.  It's not even surprising to me anymore that a lot of elderly people are using smart phones, especially iPhone due to its intuitive functions and usage I guess.  Who says old people are resist to change?  Smart phones are proving them to be wrong? :P

Speaking of my experiences, a smart phone has drastically changed my life.  It's like my virtual secretary.  Or an electronic Personal Data Assistant (PDA)?  With it, internet is just at the tip of my fingers.  Get lost and need directions?  Google Maps and other GPS applications are right there to help me anytime.  Checking weather and stocks are so handy.  Oh yeah, time and world clock!  I don't even remember that I haven't worn my watches for how many years.  And if I want to talk with my uncle in Burma, all I need is to check the world clock to make sure that I'm making a call him at the appropriate time. 

Utilities such as calculator, torchlight, to-do-list are all in there as well.  Not sure how long but I don't bother to remember all my appointments anymore.  Literally I don't know any of them on top of my head.  Reasons?  They all are marked and sitting in phone's calendar.  When it's getting closer, the reminders I set gonna reminds me for every single schedule or appointment.  So why worries? 

Needs entertainment? No more carrying of a separate mp3 anymore.  iPod is just sitting in right there.  As a matter of fact, my 32GB iPod is just sitting itself on the charging center most of the time.  As my phone has an integrated iPod so why bother carrying two separate items?  What's even cooler is when my phone iPod gets connected to Bluetooth of our car, we can enjoy our favorite music at the quality of the car's amplifier speaker.  Poor DVDs or CDs are just sitting at the corner and hardly ever got picked them up these days.  Sorry! :(

Want radio?  Breaking and top headlines news?  Gossips?  Netflix?  You name it.  Oh wait!  Can't forget about games.  People of all ages can't get away from it.  Even my girls love to play some educational games.  And they prefer to watch kid video clips on iPad over Nickelodeon Jr on TV for some reasons.  iPad is the hottest gadget at home now.  Once we get home, everyone wants to use it.  Even the laptops are not much in favor now for daily surfing of the internet. 

And yes, camera and video?  In case I forgot to grab my camera on the go, it didn't even bother me anymore. When one can take high definition pictures and video clips easily via the phone, no more complaints anymore of course. 

No more paper newspaper or magazines.  And not even hard copy books.  Thanks to the electronic versions which could easily be carried in your phone without any extra weight and space . 

And it doesn't even stop there.  All the deals and coupons are so handy.  A lot of times, my friends asked me how I managed to find good deals as a busy working mom?  No secret of course.  It's so convenient that those deal sites like Groupons could easily be browsed at my fingertip during those tiny little spare times I could get :P  What's even cooler is that no more pouts or regrets for not printing any coupon out of one's forgetfulness.  Forgot?  No problem!  Just show the coupon bar code in your phone and they could scan it from there.  What's a fascinating technology era!!

And I must add about this personal trainer software as well.  It tells me how many calories I broke during my exercise.  It'll advise me whether I'm doing good or on track, etc.  Literally, without setting a foot in the gym, one can stay fit and healthy economically of course.  It saves me $$$ from they gym membership or the actual personal trainer :P

Possibilities are just endless.  My phone is the electronic versioned of my small little all-in-one.  It's so much amazing that it's drastically changing my lifestyles.  Without even knowing myself, it's becoming a part of me.  I feel so naked without it.  When I'm in one of those rare areas where the reception is poor or no coverage, I feel so strained and screwed.  I feel like I'm a living disabled person who got disconnected from the world.   

I could not even imagine how gadgets would gonna evolve ten years from now.  Now, they had already shaped our daily lifestyles.  And with more and more advanced technology, it will change and aid our daily activities even more.  I feel that they will be more influential to our lives and would become one of the integral parts of our lives for which they already did even now.  The only bummer might be the "cost".  Hopefully it'll gradually drop and make them much more affordable for everyone.  I often wonder to have a little robot as my house maid which will be sharing the workload of my house chores.  Let the innovation evolve and keep them rocking and rolling!!

Happy Birthday, Auntie Suu!

She's the only ray of hope for our country (Burma) and our people.

She's the most inspirational one who consistently shows us her devotation, perseverance and "never give up" attitude.

She's the first one who shed the light of Democracy to our country.

She's an exceptional one who selflessly sacrifices her family over the country she loves where ordinary people like us couldn't do.

She's the first Burmese lady ever to win a Nobel prize.

She indeed is an EXTRAORDINARY Lady.

She's our leader, our idol, our hope and our pride.

Happy Birthday, Auntie Suu!  We love and support you forever!

Monday Blues

Getting back to work on Mondays has never been harder for me.  The same repetitive thoughts has countlessly triggered my mind: "Two-day weekend is not really enough!"  Guess that I'm in infinite loop about those thoughts! :P  (Oops, excuse me about my software programming technical jargon :D)

Trying to be back on routine during Monday mornings seems to be like the hardest thing to cope with.  Out of all alarm sounds, the one which usually rings on Monday mornings seem to be the loudest.  Trying to push my lazy butt off the bed again around 7am appears to be really hard, especially one can stay in the bed until 9am or 10am during weekends.  Yeah, yeah, 2-day is a good amount of time to get one spoiled.

Thanks God that Sophie's kindergarten was just over.  That means, we don't need to send her to school on or before 8am.  And I got enough buffer to get to work late.  Otherwise, it'll be one of those stormy messy struggles to get her to the school on time.

Staying back late for Chinese drama series and baking and making some desserts are coming back to me now.  The payoff is the lazy dozing eyes before my monitor.  Even my regular motivator which is a cup of my morning coffee didn't seem to help a lot today. 

Doing research and reading tons of materials for my new project are just helping to make my eyes even heavier.  All I see is so many texts and paragraphs right before my eyes and they tend to get blurry from time to time.  Arrrr!!!! What's a dragging day! 

My new week's outlook is getting to Friday again, what do you think? LOL :P  Awww!!!  Monday Blues!

Happy Father's Day!

Courtesy of Google

A lot of times, I feel that dads are overshadowed by moms.  Most of the times, many media focus or emphasizes on a mom's gratitude and her sacrifices for her children and her family.  There definitely got countless highlights of media on a dad's gratitude as well.  But I bet that the ones for moms surpass the ones for dads.

One of the reasons might be that a mom has to bear more hardship for her children starting from the point of pregnancy where a dad doesn't have to.  Furthermore, women are meant to take care of her family whereas men are meant to support his family.  That was especially true during old days where a mom's role is to take care and keep well of her children and husband and the house whereby a dad works to make money to support the family.  However, I have to say though that this definitely is fading away nowadays even though some cultures are still practicing this.

Even a man and a woman are to put equally, a woman's nature still makes her to take well care of her brood whereas a man's nature makes him not a very good caretaker compared to a mom.  When it comes to taking care of her kids, a mom simply couldn't help.  Even the female animals solidly proves for it. 

Whereas most of the men do not like to take those hassles of taking care of their kids.  They just naturally do not seem to fit well for doing that.  The responsibilities they got to bear for their families make them emphasize more on the financial outlook to meet the needs of food, clothing and accommodation of families.  And they leave the rest responsibilities to their female counterparts who naturally seem to fit more for the roles.  Well, a lot of dads these days share the half of those responsibilities of their kids but still moms naturally are willing to sacrifice and take care more for kids.  Then, a lot of times kids are closer to their moms than dads because they simply spend more time with moms than dads.  And that probably gets us to the point where dads are usually overshadowed by moms.

However, just because a dad doesn't or couldn't spend as much as time a mom does, it doesn't mean that a dad doesn't love his kids as much as a mom does.  Some of the things are hard to judge superficially.  I'm speaking it out of my experiences.

There got two dads I've known of both of whom are the most important men of my life.  They sure do have very different personalities.  Papa being an average dad who appears to be the one who doesn't really care much to us: my brother and me.  It was until I've come to know of the other side of him later.  It was when I learnt that some of the things are impossible to judge by one side of the coin.  Most of the cases, it's necessary to flip the coin to see the other side of it to get a complete picture.

He being one of the best dads I've ever known of.  He proves me wrong that all of those statements I've mentioned about an average dad in earlier paragraphs.  He's one of those rare men who is willing to devote and spend all his time and does whatever it needs to the girls.  A lot of the times I can't beat his patience to girls.  He's more than willing to sacrifice his career for his family.  He always picks the family over his job or his personal preference whenever it comes a choice for him.  What's an incredible and rare dad I've known of! It's beyond words to describe how great dad he is.  He deserves more than enough for being entitled of "one of the best dads". 

They say "Any man can be a father but it takes a special man to be a dad". 
To me, "A dad is one who doesn't say his love by words but who rather  prove his love by gestures and what he does for his kids".  Both of him and Papa best explained it.  They don't brag aloud by saying it but they rather prove it silently by doing it.  Actions are louder than words, aren't they?

Those two great dads in my life might have very different personalities but they meet at that one point: "having a special quality of being a dad". Happy Father's Day to those two great men of my life and all Dads!

Words can strike the lives

(Courtesy of Google)

"Words".  We use them everyday as a communication medium.  Literally they are used to convey the intended messages to their recipients.  They could make one happy, overjoyed, sad, cry, upset, depressed, feel loved or rejected, just to name a few.  They have the power to make your best friend your enemy or your enemy to become your friend depending on how you use them.  Don't you agree?  I have some analytic to prove or convince this :)

A lot of times, when we speak them to the recipients out of our feelings. Without paying much attention or emphasis, what we communicate mostly reflect how we feel or what we think.  It's particularly true for our daily informal conversations with people around us. 

Recently, I came across a Facebook status where a mother rephrasing her about-4-year-old son's words to her.  Her son told her that he didn't want her anymore and wanted her to pass away.  A 4 years old might have just told them to his mom out of his anger without really meaning much but apparently it might have hurt his mom a lot.

Yet I was so shocked while I was reading it.  A series of thoughts automatically triggered in my head simultaneously.  The very first thing which stroke my heart was what if my girls say the same thing to me?  What's more was that the words which I often communicated to my loved ones (my mom and dad, my husband, my girls, etc) did hurt them, especially when I was mad?  An accidental brief encounter of a Facebook status message makes me re-analyze myself which really is a good thing by the way.

When one is really mad, it's exactly when one easily falls into the trap of making such mistakes.  Being blindfolded by anger, it's so easy to make unintended words which will hurt and break someone's heart for which one wouldn't use under normal circumstances.  One of the best examples of it lies within myself.  My rational thoughts and common sense simply diminishes by then and the anger will trigger anything which would hurt its recipients (especially my loved ones).  He usually is my main victim.  Probably he has the most tolerance so I might have taken advantage of him?

The bottom line is that words aren't retractable, just like once one has spit his or her saliva.  Or just like an arrow one has shot to its target.  Reckless ones are the most dangerous.  The grapevine in the working environment or the gossips and rumors in our daily world best explained it.  One's bad foul reckless mouth could destroy the life of someone else forever.  Even the receiving party is forgiving it might at least leave some accumulated wounded marks to them. 

Words are one of the most powerful intangibles.  They could be your charm to win one's heart or they could be the killer weapon which will pierce one's heart.  We need to make sure that when we say it, we mean it.  Speak sensibly and use wisely to avoid any unintended regrets later on.    No matter what, we always need to remember that words can strike our lives!

(Courtesy of Google)