2/27

had a lunch with a friend

who also works in the same area.

went to a relatively small French restaurant--

food was good,

but I think the atmosphere was better. 

spent time proofreading essays after work,

watching tv shows in between. 

thankful.

2/26

got a better hold of the work I have to do

and had a pretty efficient day.

somewhat rushed home

seeing that the weather was starting to get rainy.

didn't really have much to do,

but spent a quiet time in the room

since there wasn't much motivation to be outside with the rain.


found out one of my college roommates

came to New York and found a start-up.

contacted him and agreed to meet soon and catch up.


thankful.

2/25

enjoyed the work done,

but finished the day without being able to reach the amount of work I hoped to do. 

spent the evening resting at home,

fiddling with xterm configurations and watching TV shows.

brother seems to be enjoying work life,

getting that feeling of settling down. 

thankful.

2/24

today's sermon was about Luke 6:37-42,

"why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye 

when you yourself fail to see the plank in your eye?"

went to the monthly English service after the normal services

and had some good time of rest at home. 

thankful. 

2/23

retreat ended.

ate dinner at Fort Lee and went back to Manhattan.

pretty tired.

during one of the recent retreats,

someone played a song with the piano

that just sounded beautiful.

I felt like I've heard it before,

but didn't know the name.

after asking around, 

finally found the song. 

did watch the movie long ago, but don't remember it too well.

thankful.

2/22

got stuff done at work,

then went to retreat.

had a good conversation time with the praise team at night.

thankful.

2/21

got more briefing on the things I will be working on

then got some coding done.

went out with some people after work

and talked.

brother graduated--

wish I was there to congratulate him directly.

anyways it's a relief to know we both made it out of college.

thankful.

brothers

brother recently sent me a couple of pictures of when we were little,

and this one really made me smile. 

2/20

met the new team's manager,

who assigned me to another superior,

who was working from a different office today.

did get in contact with him through the phone,

and I was briefed about the team

and the projects/technologies I will be working with.

already given a sizable workload it seems,

but it does sound interesting.


watched "Pulp Fiction" for the first time,

but it wasn't that awesome-awesome.

thinking about it,

the tarantino movies I've watched so far were all just so-so.

I still want to watch "Django Unchained" though.


thankful.

2/19

first day with the new team,

but my manager was out for the day.

spent the day reading over information about the team.

did get introduced to the team members,

and they all seem friendly.


monitor I had bought around black friday

broke a couple of weeks ago,

but I was able to receive a full refund.

bought myself a replacement,

and it came in today.


thankful.

2/18

no work today.

finally got to do some much-needed laundry, 

got a shirt altered down at orchard street, 

met a hyung for dinner,

then met a group of friends and talked over tea and dessert. 

not much more I can ask for in a holiday.

thankful.

I start the new rotation tomorrow.

excited and hopefully ready for the new team.

2/17

hung out with newport people after church.

got persuaded to go over to newport to hang out more,

and once we were there,

just played cards and talked.

thankful.

2/16

there was less praise team practice than usual--

had a lot of time to just relax at home.

another night out with the Michigan guys,

but I came home early (earlier than them) 

since I have to wake up early for church tomorrow.

thankful.

2/15

it was a good 6-month rotation,

I'll probably be contacting my manager even after I move teams.

really liked my current desk though--

a lot of desk space.

had another Michigan gathering.

stay out til around 4,

doing the usual talking. 

was so sleepy by the time I got home

that I fell asleep while waiting for roommate to finish washing up. 

thankful.

2/14

testers in the London office had stuff for me to fix

as soon as a I got into the office.

fixed them up and got the thumbs up.

met a friend for the first time in over a month, 

ate dinner and talked. 

thankful.

2/13

had enough work to keep my mind busy/entertained during work.

ate dinner with a church hoobae--

very outgoing kid, unlike my first impression. 

finally got myself a cloud server--

found a service that offers a small box (512MB RAM, 1 core, 20GB SSD, 1TB bandwidth)

for an affordable price.

a big step towards pushing myself to start building something. 

thankful.

2/12

thankful for

1) reaching out by my next manager.
my manager in the next team
was one of the people who had interviewed me.
as it is with interviewers,
I always had a sort of fear of him since.
however, he came over to say hello today,
and he seemed a more amiable person than I thought.
but he did assure me that there will be no shortage of work.

2) phone call with Mom.
since Mom's in Korea,
I've only been in constant communication with Dad.
Mom picked up today,
and we had a good conversation.

2/11

thankful for

1) being set for release.
"thank you, the fix is working"
was a relief.
I can now rotate out of the team feeling good.

2) C++ class structures.
gave homework/project help
with topics that I did not completely understand
when I took the course myself.
being able to explain it now brings a sense of closure
from how confused I was with class structures during my projects.

2/10

thankful for

1) the last revival service.

I have been hit hard with so many things during the past 2 days. 

I really hope that these messages were recorded--

I would love to share it for others to listen. 

2) the praise team party.

pretty much all the meat that we could eat.

good laughs from the members

from jokes,

playing around, 

and conversation. 

also, 

Newport is starting to rise as a very likely location for my next living arrangement.

2/9

back to back revival services today,

one covering for yesterday,

which had been canceled due to the weather. 

both messages today were.. powerful. 

I'm going to try my best not to forget what I have learned today. 

2/8

thankful for

1) getting out of work relatively early.

because of the supposed storm coming,

there were a noticeable amount of people working from home

and even those who came were beginning to leave after lunch.

director of our team came by my desk,

offered me gum,

gave me a jokingly stern look,

and said "why are you still here."

gladly, I finished for the day.

2) watching a movie that was better than what I expected.

browsing through movies to watch--

it appeared that I watched most of the recent movies with good ratings 

that came out in DVD/Bluray. 

one of the only remaining movies with a good rating was a movie called

"Seven Psychopaths." 

sounded like some blow-em-up action movie with no plot,

and wondered how it got such ratings. 

as I watched it, 

the plot was, well, better than I thought.

it took some time to start liking it though--

it was only during the second half of the movie that I started laughing from the dark humor that it built up in the first half.

ps.

3) takoyaki.
always passed by a small japanese corner shop call otafuku
that sold takoyaki amongst other japanese street food.
decided to try their takoyaki on my way back from work.
pretty good stuff. 

2/7

I ask myself from time to time

"am I really thankful for these"

and the normal response is

"yeah, more or less" 

but I'm surely not sarcastic in any of these.

anyways

thankful for

1) being able to fix those bugs. 

my go-to boss was out doing interviews today,

and I thought I'd have an easy day;

but alas, 

an email pops up reporting a bug in one of my enhancements. 

took me all day to fix it--

trying to reproduce the scenario,

finding out the cause,

and figuring out the solution. 

got it done though,

and the feeling of a job well done

makes it easy to forget the 

hours of head scratching. 

2) the reggae subway performer.

on my way home, 

a man puts a chair in the middle of the subway car I was in,

tells people to relax

and starts singing

"every little thing gonna be all right" by Bob Marley.

while playing the bongo. 

he then throws an egg shaker to a commuter, 

who started shaking it,

uneasily at first,

then with some attentiveness once she realized that it contributed to the music.  

did put a smile on my face.

2/6

thankful for

1) the sunlight.
went outside for a short walk during work
to get some fresh air
and realized that I haven't had that much sunlight during winter,
since I only saw it when I went to work
and during the short commute to a lunch venue.
just a couple of minutes under the sun made me feel illuminated.

2) outing with co-workers.
it was one of those days I was wondering
"what should I do after work"
when a co-worker asked if I want to join a couple of people
to hang out after work.
had a good conversation.

3) monitor and speakers.
I'm no stranger with watching movies,
but normally I watch with the lights on,
doing some other things while watching.
today I just felt like watching the movie,
so I watched with sound turned reasonably up
and the lights turned off.
movie was Skyfall,
and I had quite the theater-esque atmosphere going on.
movie was alright,
but it doesn't come close to Casino Royale.

2/5

thankful for

1) Michigan winning a game against Ohio State.
Michigan's basketball team suddenly rose to the top this season,
and today, they beat Ohio State.
it was a close game,
and I was jumping around by myself in my room
with every shot that was made.
Go Blue!

2) funny videos.

good laughs are always good.

2/4

thankful for

1) getting first choice preference for the last rotation.
it's known to be a pretty intense team, though.
thought it would be a good experience before choosing a final team.
who knows, I might end up liking it and make it my final team.  

2) being able to help out.
new audio equipment got delivered to the church,
and I got to help out carrying them into the vision center
along with some other praise team hyungs + team leader.
sat around and talked afterwards.

2/3

thankful for

1) good finish to the retreat.
we returned to Manhattan without problems.
I'll try to describe what I learned with action than words.

2) the superbowl.
watched with some friends.
didn't really care who won until
there came a time when the game was close,
and we somehow decided to have a dinner bet on who wins.
I was then cheering close to the degree of a Michigan game.
won the bet.

2/2

second day of retreat.

message really hit home.

plus the events were enjoyable--

these new kids are really funny.

2/1

thankful for

1) january.
good start of 2013.

2) retreat.
probably won't have much sleep, but it will be a good time.

1/31

thankful for

1) granola bars.
bought a couple of boxes of granola bars last week
and have been eating them for breakfast.
they go very well with the coffee or the occasional soy milk.

2) http://youtu.be/aTLySbGoMX0
apparently it's an unlisted video so I can't embed it here.
the animation technique is pretty innovative,
and the story is pretty cute.