How to Improve Your Nook for One Dollar

Our house has a nook which we love. We might very well have moved into this house because of this nook. It’s a perfect spot for Arwen to read books, take cat-naps, or to shirk. At some point we notice that the surface has become rather unflattering so I want to do something about it.

This is what I get from Dollar Tree for a hefty amount of $1.00! A scroll of cover with wood pattern.

This is how it looks when spread out. Don’t be discouraged by how wrinkled it looks! Everything is gonna be okay!

This is the difficult part which requires some carefulness. I measure the dimensions of the nook surface as precisely as I can, and map it out on the cover. Then I trim the cover to have the exact shape of the surface. Unfortunately, the cover is not as big as the entire surface so I have to prepare several smaller pieces to put together like a puzzle. (It’s a price for being ghetto!)

It’s now showtime! I carefully peel the back of the cover and apply it onto the surface. In this picture below, 2 pieces have been applied and everything is going well. The weather seems nice outside too.

And here is the end result! The pieces stay together very snugly. The transitions between the pieces are not at all noticeable unless I deliberately look for them. No gaps and everything.

We are overall very happy with how it turns out. All of that for $1.00! Thank you for reading. I hope you’d find this helpful!

My Company's Values

Thank you, A-ron, for your help with this post.

One day, at the monthly meeting of the company I was working for, the CEO owner told all employees to write down what he/she would consider the most important thing in life, and text message it anonymously to this one number. The app would gather all of the responses and build a “word cloud”, and the company would base on that results to form the company’s core values. Below was what we got:

“God” was the most common answer, and “family” came second. If you look closely, you can see that the “God” response can arguably be a lot more significant, since there are other similar answers such as “church”, “faith”, and “hod” (which is a typo in case you’re wondering – “g” and “h” is next to each other). So I thought that was really interesting (while comforting): what on earth was the company gonna do about this kind of response? Were we gonna have morning praying times? Would there be weekly Bible studies, company-wide? Considering how non-religious the CEO owner happened to be, I was curious of what we would decide to do.

Later on, it was revealed to us that the company’s core values would now be: Passion; Loyalty; Pride; Integrity; and Trust. Well, that was a lot more generic and politically correct than, say, “God-centered” or “religious”. The 5 chosen values seem like something out of a business textbook, or something an owner would want their employees to go with. That’s why, to be honest, these core values might have had been decided way before we had that company meeting when us employees were bestowed the false sense of democracy. I might be wrong, but I was rather disappointed. A false sense of democracy is so depressing when it’s seen through.

How to Make Fried Rice

I don’t really cook. As I have mentioned before in my previous posts, during the years I lived by myself, I invented “dishes” to cook for myself. Among them, my fried rice is among the successful few, something that I can actually let other people eat. Arwen actually craves for it at times. This post is about how I make it.

The ingredients:

- Eggs (I love eggs!)
- Hot dogs.
- A small bag of frozen veggies.
- Leftover rice (not in the picture).
- Whatever leftover meat/food that you may have (optional). Here I have some ground beef from the burritos last night.
- Soy sauce.
- Cooking oil.
- Pepper.

Step 1: Dice hot dogs into little cubes. I try to make them the similar size of the diced carrot in the frozen veggies bag.

Step 2: Heat the oil. About 2 spoons is enough. The hot dogs will produce extra grease. (What “spoon”, you ask? The one you eat with, of course!)

Step 3: Fry the hot dogs. So I don’t like raw meat. Packaged hot dogs are debatably cooked but I don’t like their texture right out of the bag so I fry them up until the color turns darker and the shape somewhat distorted.

Step 4: Add the veggies. Stir them up with the hot dog cubes so they become slightly cooked and mixed well with the hot dogs.

Step 5: Add whatever else meat/food. Do the same as step 4: mix them up good.

Step 6: It’s time to add the rice! The rice portion is roughly the same as the amount of what you now have in your pan/wok.

Step 7: You guessed it! It’s mixing time, again! Stir fry everything together until they are well-mixed.

Step 8: Congratulations, you finally get to use the only raw ingredient we have: the eggs. Crack several eggs and throw them into the mix. I would use 2 eggs per person. Feel free to add more or less to your liking. Egg is love, egg is life, though!

And once again, it’s mixing time! You will mix until the eggs are cooked nicely among other ingredients.

Step 9: Add soy sauce. This part is tricky because I don’t really measure how much I put it in. Basically a good dash at each area and then mix it up well so the soy sauce would blend well with the rice and change the color to light brown.

Step 10: Add pepper for flavor. The effect is negligible unless you accidentally drop the whole jar into the pan. So be careful.

And we are done! It’s time to serve and enjoy!

My Grey Hound "Tragedy"

I saw waiting at the bus stop in Lawrence, KS, for a Grey Hound bus to get back to OKC to my dear wife. It had taken me 30 minutes to find this “bus stop” because “707 Vermont st.” was NOT a bus station: it was Lawrence Public Library. The place for the buses to stop was across the street from the library where we could see the bus stop signs and the benches for people to sit and wait. The Grey Hound bus was supposed to arrive at 2 PM, but it was delayed until 3:30. So I sat there and waited. I would have no problem waiting for a couple hours: I had my Kindle Fire, my sketch book, and my bottle of water. Little did I know, it wasn’t gonna be just “a couple hours”.

(Some sketches I made while waiting for the bus.)

The GH bus kept being delayed. Every time I checked their website, the expected arrival time would go a bit further out. So I waited and waited. Eventually, I got bored of reading and sketching people walking by. I wanted the wait to be over with.

The bus finally left Kansas City at 5 PM instead of at 1 PM like scheduled, and it would get to Lawrence at 5:40. I was filled with joy. I would finally get to go home!

At 5:40, at lot of buses came to the stop, but none of them were Grey Hound. I tried to make sure I wasn’t missing it because of the other buses blocking my view.

And then I saw the Grey Hound bus, not stopping but driving by. Not driving by Vermont street but the street intersecting with it. And it never turned around to stop at the bus stop. Puzzled, I asked a bus driver of one of the city buses, and he said that the GH buses didn’t stop there. They stopped at another spot around the corner. In another word, the bus didn’t stop at its street address; it stopped at a spot which was hidden from the actual address where the other bus stops were located. After four hours of waiting, I had now missed it.

The sad feeling was too much. There wouldn’t be another bus until the next morning. Lawrence to OKC was about a 5-hour drive. Using a cab would cost me $500 – 600. My wife wanted to come pick me up, and she was 7-month pregnant. I didn’t know what to do or what to think. Having a self-victimized-worthy life, I couldn’t help but felt so sorry for myself. I wanted to cry though no tears came out. I turned to God and shouted,

“Oh God! Why?!”

“Will you please help me?!”

“But of course you won’t. I can’t expect the GH bus to miraculously come back. Of course you won’t.”

Atheists believe that things happen because they simply do, by chances and without meanings or purposes. As a non-atheist, I tend to do the opposite: to expect a reason or a goal to all occurrences. Because God knows a lot more than me. Because He knows what’s best.

“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” - C.S. Lewis.

I needed to calm down and think. If this misfortune was somehow purposefully the “best”, what was I to think and to do in this situation? Then I remember this quote:

“One of the best questions you can ask when something negative happens is this: ‘What does this experience make possible?’” – Hyatt & Harkavy, Living Forward, p. 513.

Here are some of the things I could think of:

- My wife really wanted to come pick me up. If she started at 7 PM, she would get to me at midnight, and we would be back in OKC around 5 AM. That would not be a good idea. Not talking about the $12 toll fee for each direction, the gas, the damage to our car for driving 10 hours straight. If anything went wrong with my wife and her 7-month pregnancy, that would be the absolute worst, the point of no return, something to never recover from. Therefore, even though this was what we were impulsive to do the most, it was actually the one path we ought not take.

- I personally knew of someone who had cancer and had several years left. But while everyone around him was sorrowful and hopeless, he stayed strong and comforted people, telling them that God was going to take care of everything. Someone who had many years of life taken from him could still have peace and courage; what was I being depressed for when I has merely a day wasted?

- My estranged brother was in Lawrence. I could ask to stay with him for the night and take the morning bus the next day. It would be a rare opportunity to spend time with him. I would have to buy another ticket but so what? $77 was nothing if I took into account the toll fees, the gas money, and having to drive our car for 10 hours straight. This was clearly the best option among all.

I no longer felt sad. A cool wind blew by and I was comforted. I realized that God had started helping me for this event the day He gave me my wife who had been with me on the phone this whole time. He helped me to not be in OKC at midnight were I to not miss the bus. He provided me an opportunity to be with my little brother for an evening. He gave me the ability to go through this event not just unscathed but stronger and braver. He just did not help me by doing the particular thing I came up with using my limited mind (turning the bus around). God had started helping me long before I ever thought of going to Lawrence, and His help was abundant. My hatred toward Grey Hound was replaced with content and thankfulness.

My brother was surprised and happy to have me with him for the night. He made me breakfast and prepared me a jelly and peanut butter sandwich for lunch. I had a restful sleep and woke up at 5 AM like a champ. The morning bus arrived on time, and this time I knew exactly where to expect it.

And this was the end of the story. Here are some lessons I learned/was reminded of:

- Calmly assess the situation. It’s already not good but we don’t want to make it worse. And we have the tendency to jump to the worst decision and make it more disastrous.

- We tend to picture how God could help us and feel so disappointed He doesn’t do that exact thing. This kind of expectation would prevent us from comprehending His true help. It’s pretty much the best way to generate doubts and resentments toward God.

- Broadening the vision can help. Adjusting our perspective to a larger scale. Often in the grand scheme of things, this particular setback is puny and insignificant.

- Misfortunes can be, or can be made into, fortunes in disguise. I now have a good story to tell, don’t I?

Arwen's Vietnamese Egg Rolls

Vietnamese egg rolls are different from Chinese egg rolls in two things: the wraps and the fillings (so basically everything!). Arwen makes wonderful egg rolls so I want to show them off to the world.

The raw ingredients:

Ingredients are mixed and separated into smaller portions:

Start wrapping them into rolls:

Paper towels are prepared to put the fried egg rolls in to absorb the excess oil:

Frying time! This is pretty much the only step I can help with (I love frying food):

The fried ones are put in the paper towels:

A tray full of yummy egg rolls!

I prepare some random shrimp chips so get myself some sense of accomplishment:

The egg rolls and the chips look great together though:

And that is that. I hope you enjoy the pictures! I feel so hungry posting them!