The Problematic of the Unproblematic

Anne: Hello Everyone! I survived jury duty and again did not get picked. Now, despite the usual voir dire (which for some reason in Texas, decided to put a very Southern accent to these French words), I met a woman who was the juror immediately in front of me that exemplified the 7 degrees of separation hypothesis. Now, I have no idea what her name is, because by the time I remembered to ask her after a bathroom break, she had already left the building. Let me set the stage...I met a woman who was probably only a few years older than me, who emigrated from Taiwan to the same little city in south Texas, whose parents also had a restaurant in the same little town, and we both ended up in Houston with consecutive juror numbers. Why is this epic? It is because in this little town... there were probably only <10 far east Asian families. I really wanted to ask her what part of Taiwan she came from because I would have been floored if we came from the same town. Oh well... a mystery I will

Anne: Hello Everyone! Happy Thursday and then some. I'd spent the last week trying to figure out why we have a invention project for a first grader. Now, I thought that this would be more of an imagination exercise rather than them expecting an actual protype. Nope...I was wrong. He has a presentation and need a semi working protype. Not only that, they had to search the US patent office to see if something similar was already patented. We only got through the first 10 patents...out of a search that yielded >10,000 patent applications. I really think that these project are more of a parent/child co-project than a student project, at least not for a six year old. However, I don't know enough about mechanics to make a personal automatic seed planter. I know just enough to know that I cannot make a functional prototype. So...I guess he will just need to settle for one that "looks" like what he intended, without any moving parts. I am making him do most of the work, in

Anne: Hello Everyone! Another two weeks have passed and I think I have finally climbed out far enough from the never ending hole of work, and I see a sliver of light. So exciting! I can now start getting through things that I've been putting off for...over a year. I'm not there just yet, but I am SO CLOSE! Here's something that is kind of funny. The 6 year old needed a hair cut. His bangs were falling "into" his eyes. He was complaining about it. I figured, get these bangs cut above his eye brows, and that'll give him a few months before the hair ends start to stab his eye balls again. Well...he was already making a face at the hair cut place when he looked in the mirror. And when he was taking his shower where I was washing his hair, he put on this very large frown and said that he didn't want to go to school with this hair cut. He wanted to stay home until it mostly grew back. Take a wild guess why he didn't like his hair cut...Because his eyebrows w

Anne: Hello Everyone! I am two weeks behind on posts. My life has been a whirlwind of craziness. The first week, I was buried in a bunch of work. Then last week, we had a marketing event for our newly built labs. Talk about planning until the last second. I didn't know what I was presenting until the Friday before, at least it was only 3 slides. And, I also watched a bunch of non-Asian shows.  A cautionary advice, if anyone is watching 1899  on Netflix...I'm still confused after the last episode. It was a good watching trip though, with the show reminding me of Event Horizon , The Cube , The Truman Show , and others that I cannot remember right now. Of course season two is next, and we need it for an ending.  And now for a quick review of shows I've watched in the last two weeks or so... A League of Nobleman I was VERY excited last Monday or Sunday when I saw this show went live on my streaming services. I'm a sucker for historical/costume, mystery/crime dramas. Now, I

Anne: This is my second attempt to write this post... I accidently erased everything when I was ALMOST done!!!! Stupid automatic saving!!! Ah!!! It's like my thesis all over again. That time, I erased an entire chapter.  So...let's see how much of my brilliance I remember... I started by saying that I spent a lot of time watching shows and while I was writing...and that I finally have time because I was done with the documents. Also...I have learned a skill I never though was necessary: how to monster-proof a 6 year old's bed from the monster living underneath his bed. Who knew that a fort of pillows was the deterrent.  Anyway... on to the shows... or rather just one show that I REALLY liked. My Uncanny Destiny So... I was saying before that I started this because I was taking a break from my other dramas. Even from the start of episode one, I raised my eyebrow at how Liu Xuan Ming's dad died and its relation to Ye Zhao Nan's birth...which forever started a life lon

Anne: Hello Everyone! Have we all survived New Year's? Today is the last day of my "vacation", and I seriously had a very hard time getting out of bed this morning, at 10am 😁. Before I was married, I used to be able to sleep until 2pm, and the only reason I got up was because I needed to eat. We've reached the end of the year and the beginning of a new one a lot faster than I would have thought. And my plan to do a year end recap of the 2022 dramas ended up unfulfilled. Let's combine the overview for 2022 and the current dramas of last week into one post! 2022: The year where, apparently, female power made a combat What was the most memorable dramas of this year for me? Of course it has to be some of the more surprising "girl power" type stories. Granted, due to my preference, I am referring to the costume dramas.  The most notable, probably because it was the last one to finish before the year ended, was New Life Begins , where there wasn't one iot

Anne: Welcome to an additional RAWR focusing on the short-short dramas that I have enjoyed this past year. With the way my work schedule has been, these dramas became one of my favorite things to watch. They are usually only 3 to 12 minutes long, usually only about 24 episodes, and quite a few have interesting twists to the usual genre of the longer dramas. Now, into this categories, I'm also adding in the BL dramas, but I'm limiting it to the Taiwanese, Korean, and Chinese ones, which can be anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes. The Thai based ones are usually much longer, sometimes up to 45 or 60 minutes, and I normally don't watch too many of those (and most of the times I'm watching for the skin-ship more than the plot 😉). So here are some of the more noteworthy short dramas this year.  BL shorts For our first category, I've selected two, one from Taiwan and one from Korea. I've written about both of these in earlier posts. So if anyone has missed the earlier

Anne: Hello everyone! It is Tuesday again and I am officially on my vacation. Well...sort of. I swear my vacations have become days when I'm allowed to miss most meetings, but still have to do work stuff. At least I get to sleep late. And in the meantime, the entire state of Texas is seriously hoping that we don't lose power again like LAST year in the next week due to the "cold front" that will drop us down to snow-capable temperatures. Do we really expect anyone to have actually winterize the power grid?  Since it is the last two weeks of the year, and since I have a bit of time these days, I'm thinking of continuing the tradition of doing a year end review. Now...this year's pickings are pretty slim...and my horrible memory might make this an interesting exercise. But, I will see what I can come up with for the last two weeks of the year. For this week, I've been jumping around a lot from show to show. I just cannot seem to focus or something. I'm i

Anne: It is nearly the end of the year!! I am looking forward to the two weeks, somewhat, vacation that is at the end of December. The funny thing is I'm actually off 3 days before the 6 year old. Am I just a little bit of a bad mommy to be looking forward to 3 days of ALONE time with no work....he he he... My heart is giggling in delight.  I am also looking forward to taking him to school in the morning since I don't have to catch the 8am meetings.  While I did spent the last two weeks watching a lot of shows, most of them were crime reports on Netflix. Let's take a look at what shows I've watched and whether anything caught anyone else's fancy. New Life Begins This continues to delight me every episode. Here in episode 22, Yin An, who came to the realization of how annoying and condescending he treated his women, was finally able to "hear" their inner conversations that their facial expressions were conveying. In this realization, he was also able to &qu

Anne: Happy Thanksgiving week to those who are in the US. I am officially off work this week! (Mostly because I have like 100 hours of vacation that I'll lose at the end of the year. They are over the limit that gets rolled over.) I'm not going anywhere really, just a quick trip to take the 6 year old to visit his aunt and uncle. (He informs me that I'm his "second" favorite person when his Auntie is around, but I'm his favorite person at home.) In terms of every day life...not a whole lot is happening, except for work and work and then even more work. And me trying to figure out what in the world am I going to give people for gifts this year? Don't you find that as you get older, there really isn't a whole lot that you want as presents? The things I really need, I can't ask other people to get me. And what they can give me...I feel like it'll just add to the piles of other stuff that I will just end up throwing away. But if you ask the 6 year