Day to day ramblings of Tammy Wang
Little things brought to home.
No more space, I know, I know…
got rid of the folk-art table cloth from Xian (It was practically destroyed after a wash trying to take the wine stains off it)
Keep it simple.
Useless but its so pretty…
Especially when light relfects on it…
No more space now. I mean it.
Yakult lady comes every week to try to sell her products.
After saying no 3 times I decided to buy from her this week.
As she passed me the change she said:”I think you are so graceful.”,which caught me by surprise.
To think I was about to kick the barking dog’s butt and say:”F**k off, Xiao Tan!”
Instead I took the change and smiled back:”Xiexie…”
Phew~~That was close…
For days I have been intoxicated by the voice of the lead singer in Keane. (Tom Chaplin).
There IS something different to this band that other bands don’t have.
There is more feelings to it.
Some of the songs I found soul-connecting.
Beautiful lyrics.
But then I googled and saw this chubby boy, hmm….
Voice and look in many cases don’t really match…
Let it really SINK in…
Some time ago I read this. It rarely happened but the message touched me. I forwarded to some friends including Mark, my ex teacher in design school.
Let it really SINK in…
John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, ‘If I were any better, I would be twins!’
He was a natural motivator.
If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, ‘I don’t get it!’
‘You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?’
He replied, ‘Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or…you can choose to be in a bad mood
I choose to be in a good mood.’
Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or…I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.
Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or…I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.
‘Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,’ I protested.
‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood.
You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live your life.’
I reflected on what he said. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.
Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.
After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.
I saw him about six months after the accident.
When I asked him how he was, he replied, ‘If I were any better, I’d be twins…Wanna see my scars?’
I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.
‘The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,’ he replied. ‘Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or…I could choose to die. I chose to live.’
‘Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?’ I asked.
He continued, ‘…the paramedics were great.
They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man’. I knew I needed to take action.’
‘What did you do?’ I asked.
‘Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,’ said John. ‘She asked if I was allergic to anything ‘Yes, I replied.’ The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Gravity”
Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.’
He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude…I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.
Attitude, after all, is everything.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’
Here is Mark’s email:
my dearest Tammy
i know you sent his email a long time ago
I just read it and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sending this to me.
I am having a terrible time working in the Singapore school.
I have been having so much troubled with some kids in the singapore school complaining my lack of teaching skills - i am on the verge of quitting this school and being a teacher altogether.
Reading your email have given me the choice -The choice to become a victim or to learn from it,
I have decided what ever complaint i am receiving -fair or unfair I will choose to WANT to learn from this crisis instead of just being a victim!
thanks you so much
And so I think I could pass it on a bit further.
Maybe someone will, in the middle of nonchalance and indifference, take a minute to reflect on oneself and even find the answer to their problems 
Last night a friend left me a message asking me if I’d already watched the movie “He’s just not that into you” because he was trying to figure out one song from the movie.
I checked out the movie again and was so glad he mentioned it. This is a detail I’ve neglected.
At about 1.47 hour there is one great song called “Somewhere only we know”.
A beautiful song, with beautiful lyrics.
I haven’t been so touched by a song like this in a while.
Great things are to be shared…
Thursday afternoon Jenny (Clifford)came and we baked a cake together.
(mm…I know 3 Jennys. “Jenny dance”who I met in my bellydance class last year; Jenny(”just Jenny”) my college school-mate who married a Parkistani and is doing serious business; and “Jenny Clifford”, a fun Indonesian girl who also lives in Clifford)
Neither of us had baked any cake in our entire life and it was pulled out (by me) a bit ahead of its time.
I have to admit, that I’ll never make a good cook…no, forget about the “good” part. I have zero patience.
As a result the cake is a bit moist in the middle.
“Its not uncooked,”It says here that it’s a super-moist,” I looked in the box and said.
We ate anyway, and made tea.
Watched American Idol finale although we already knew the result in the morning.
I think Chris is just another Enrique Iglesias.(without father influence though)
We all like Adam, but he is alternative. Someone you either hate or love.
It’s pretty normal that the voters go mainstream, but I definitely will only wait for Adam’s CD.
Too much tea in the afternoon and it kept me awake in the night.
Tossed and turned and looked at the clock, it was a bit pass 1. The second time I turned and glanced at it, it was over 5am.
No more tea after 3pm!
Then next day I developed this ear-ache. Suddenly I realized it’d been a while since I last checked in to the hospital. It is not right. Why would God give me this satisfaction?
Ear-ache, what a weird excuse…
But it was getting intolerable.
I went to hospital and the doctor couldn’t really tell what was wrong. He had my ear-drops sucked out and asked me not to put any without doctor’s advice again.
I took some medicine and went home dizzy.
Strangely the pain went away pretty quick, but I got tired.
In the evening I struggled to go to a dinner of a “dance buddy”,(Xiao Ying) since I was still feeling dizzy and tired.
I thought it was a “get-together”dinner where she introduced her finacé, but it turned out to be a casual wedding dinner.
I had a hard time looking for a red envelop.
Made an excuse to the toilet and luckily grabbed a waitress who happened to have a red envelop. Phew~~
Great day for staying indoors Saturday.
The more miserable the weather is, the more enjoyable to stay in.
Some old designs
Would like to make them for myself but too much work…
Model: ZY
Model: ZY
May 15th marked in calendar as “interview day” is an important day for Gordo and I.
This day in 2002 we met for the first time as the interviewer(the boss, which is Gordo), and the college graduate(obviously me) looking for her first job.(Although, today the “boss” role took a 180% turn…)
I didn’t think I left a good impression to the HR manager at the time, probably due to my cheap make-up melting away just after a 2 hour bus-trip to that “God-forsaken place”, or my yellow blouse with deep red flowers screaming on it, but luckily I spoke some “decent” English. After a 15 minutes chat, HR still decided that I meet “the boss”.
“Boss” was a nice person, but the only thing I remember is leaving my long email address on a piece of paper, and he asked me what that name means.
I explained and he said:”Good. I asked a lot of Chinese what those mean, and they normally told me”nothing, it’s just a name…”
In the middle of the interview someone came in and told him he can look at his new car now, and he wrapped up the conversation quickly and left.
Later when remembering that day I always tell Gordo:”You saw your new car and met your wife, what else can one expect out of a day?…”
The misconception about me being a crazy night club frequent, or someone “unstable” gave way to the fact that I seemed to be quite qualified for the post. After all, personal life and job don’t mix. However, I can only blame it on my lack of experience in interview dressing codes.
We’ve been through a lot in 7 years. Some I don’t remember.
But I remember this date when everything started to change.
Beautiful but pity it bloomed and died in 24 hours.
This one is home-cultivated. What a nice surprise. My plants normally never bloom.
In 2002 Gordo took me to a flower market, he asked me what I thought after I made a quick walk around the place.
Trying very hard to not yawn too much, I quickly pointed at the nearest plants and said:”I think you can take this, this, and that.”
It was after that he knows not to take me to a botanic garden. It was not my type of entertainment.
It was pretty obvious when he told me “All my plants died” after I moved in for a month. I said:”Plants? What plants?…”
Of course I am capable of realizing the existence of plants around me NOW, but it is a fun thing to look back and realize the evolvement.
Every time I leave for Shenzhen I feel bad for leaving Gordo alone, but every time I leave from Shenzhen I feel bad for not staying longer with my parents.
If I stay long enough in Guangzhou, I’d forget about Shenzhen.
If I go to Shenzhen, I love it and don’t wanna come back.
Ai, my super adaptability…
However,I am pretty sure SZ is more fun a place for me, but I am stuck here.
There are good things about GZ too. I love the food, and things are cheaper in general.
SZ brings out the material desires and vanity you don’t even know you have.
Saw my parents new cat Mimi. A very dangerous creature at this stage due to his unawareness of how sharp his paws are and his fondness of scratching everything he’s curious about.It’s confirmed now, that I don’t like cats.
The other day when KK called from the market asking me stuff I was feeling very lucky and happy
–Finally what I deem the worst part of the job is being taken cared of,by somebody else.
I looked out of the window and shivered at the idea of taking A-line bus–getting to station–being scorched for a good 15 minutes before the bus arrives–making my way in the crowd–buying stuff necessary while trying to not get lost too often–and same way back…
One man’s poison is another’s meat. Some people don’t mind doing it, and they may even enjoy doing it. I am so glad there are all kinds of people in this world.
But…end of the day he called and said:”xxxx “no-have”, xxx also “no have’”…
The next worst part of the job is when you have the sketch ready and you are told that the specific ornament/fabric is sold out/no stock. And if it happens, it always happens to your favorite one.
As a result I had to go there myself and look for a replacement.
Nothing is as good anymore, and I didn’t plan to stay long.
I grabbed some lace samples and buckles, took a quick walk to the 2nd floor and came back.
The girl next to me on the bus was reading all the way.
How could she do that and don’t get dizzy?
Came home before AI show. In the last couple of years I don’t really have any favorite. Just have someone I don’t like.