Patrick's Diary - 12/6/2015

It's still 5 minutes to midnight, so I start finishing my diary without over the night. 

Getting up on time to go downstairs to watch the only televised BPL match on this Sunday morning, I actually had time to eat a sweet bun and an egg, oh, adding a banana. Newcastle eventually beat Liverpool at home. It seemed a much needed win for the club.

Listening to my dad chatting with my mom about global politics, I witnessed kickoff of Seahawks away game at Vikings. Seahawks performed very fluid drives during this game from the very beginning though they were also penalized several times. 

Vikings didn't have offense from the beginning at all, they hadn't scored until second half when Seahawks had already led a huge margin. 

In first quarter, Willson made several catches but Rawls played very well and Baldwin also caught a bunch.

It's a big day for Wilson, he ran into Red Zone by himself. He even rushed a TD by himself later, unfortunately that one was called back due to holding.

Since Seahawks led so much, I didn't focus watching it in second half but listened my mom to keep talking. When she started boiling the dumplings bought at Chinese Supermarket, it's already 12:30 PM. Seahawks won big at the end. Peterson didn't play today, which might be a factor for Seahawks to leading such a big margin. Anyway, Seahawks most likely will be in playoff. 

Sleeping for a while, I went to gym to work out. While on the bike, I caught the last minute of Panthers winning over Saints in New Orleans. Cam Newton has been playing very well this season. 

The schedules of Bowl Series were released. I was wrong, Oklahoma will be in playoff and Stanford will play Iowa at Rose Bowl. Huskies will be in Dallas and Cougs will be in El Paso the same day. I was thinking about to take my son to fly to Dallas to watch Huskies' bowl game but air tickets were very expensive. Anyway, watching all college bowl games in person at least once in my life is on my list. Though I won't go this year, I did propose a plan:

Dec. 25th: Flying Dallas, driving a rental Car to check in a hotel close to the Stadium;

Dec. 26th: In the morning, taking my son to visit downtown; In the afternoon, watching Zaxby's Heart of Dallas Bowl; At night, having a nice dinner close to the hotel;

Dec. 27th: Driving to Houston Johnson Space Center to visit; Staying in a hotel in Galveston; Having seafood at night;

Dec. 28th: Visiting Houston and having a dinner in Chinatown, then Driving to Fort Worth to stay in a five stars hotel;

Dec. 29th: Taking rest at hotel in the morning; Watching Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl in the afternoon; Driving to a hotel at DFW at night;

Dec. 30th: Flying back home as early as possible. 

Darn, it is just a plan, which will be deferred to years later. 

Anyway, I will watch as many bowl games as I can two weeks later. 

Patrick's Diary - 12/5/2015

I did stop by McDonald's to have my breakfast and then worked out at the gym for an hour. Driving to Safeway to refill my mom's medication, I was told that one of hers was out of prescription, so I would have to come back to pick it up after pharmacy getting the approval from the doctor, probably two or three days later. 

Watching a BPL match, I witnessed Chelsea beaten in the last 10 minutes after they had been dominating almost the entire match. They are ranked pretty close to relegation zone now. 

It's College Football Championship Weekend, I watched almost the entire game of SEC Championship game. Alabama won over Florida relatively easily at the end.

Stanford shut USC down almost the entire first half, but I don't know the final result because I didn't watch it to the end... Checking on ESPN website now, I am seeing Stanford winning 41 to 22. Tomorrow, name list of playoff teams will be announced, I guess they will be Clemens, Alabama, Michigan States, Stanford. Is Oklahoma Big 12 Champ? They will be left out of the playoff because their conference is no longer as competitive as in the past. 

At Safeway, I bought a paperback novel written by James Patterson: Invisible. I am going to run through it by the end of this weekend. 

Patrick's Diary - 12/4/2015

It's 6:17 AM on Saturday. I just got up and am ready to stop by McDonald's, then go to gym.

Friday has gone pretty quiet. As I shared, I registered an online class at Edmonds Community College of which the expense is covered by our employer's Learning Together program. I have taken several individual courses I was interested in the last 8 years from time to time. I planned to go to its Cashier Office to submit the voucher but realized it going to be closed at 5 PM on Friday. I will have to go next week, maybe on Thursday when they close at 7:00 PM. 

Combined his dinning account and Husky Card, it looks like my son only having 300 bucks left in the balance. Let's see if he can manage to go through the end of the quarter in two weeks.

I have read contents of the first 4 chapters of my son's Precalculus textbook he used a year ago but have only done the end-of-chapter problems for the first one. I plan to do the rest through this weekend. 

Patrick's Diary - 12/3/2015

My dad just gave me a speech about his opinions on human's modern developments:

• Europeans had developed physical sciences, social sciences and humanities together, so they created modern lifestyles. Americans benefited from it and created more comfortable lifestyles based on technological progress;
• Asians, for example, Chinese had only focused on the developments of humanities and some of social sciences in the last couple of thousands years, so it was impossible Industrial Revolution could have incurred there. It's very difficult for Asians to catch up but they are making tremendous efforts to improve now;
• Africans have a lot of opportunities to start fresh.

He was a renown civil engineer, so had a lot of knowledge in physical sciences. However, he had spent a lot of time in social sciences and humanities as hobbies after retiring in the last 20 years. Recently, he found that he had to go back to physical sciences to learn new theories and applications to resolve many problems and issues in social sciences he was interested in. I noticed he had been reading a new version of Physics textbook in Chinese recently and periodically heard his comments on so many new developments in the book he didn't know when he was young. 

This is why I would like to apply more mathematics into economics. No, it is not new because many economists are mathematicians. However, there are lots of room for developing economics into a more rigorous science. 

I just started reviewing the knowledge I learned when I was young, such as differentiations, Integrals, differential equations, linear algebra and mathematical statistics. There is still a long way to go for me to building my own models. At least, I already started, so I feel great.

Patrick's Diary - 12/2/2015

Coming back home tired everyday, I had fallen into sleep until 10 minutes earlier. However, I plan to wrap up my diary before midnight, then I can go back to sleep and go to gym to work out at 5:00 am. 

Several dramatic things happened from yesterday to the end of today. MZ's wife gave a birth to a new baby girl and MZ is going to donate 99% of FB's stocks to charity over the course of his lifetime. I expect to make a million bucks on FB stocks by 59 1/2 years old. 

Two suspects shot 14 people and wounded another 17 in San Bernardino, CA and were killed by police. Obviously, it's related to terrorism but whether this triggered by this couple's own personal problems or was related to organizational scheme hasn't been ruled out. 

Ok, we have to wait for another two days for the weekend. Great, I am going to get my biweekly paycheck tomorrow and pay the balance of credit card off for last billing cycle. I managed to pay off the huge balance of my credit card driven by travel expenses for our trip in Scandinavia in summer and my son's dorm charges as well as dining plan for Autumn Quarter on time. In addition, I also managed to pay property taxes on both houses. The only thing I paid through savings reserved for my son's college expenses was his tuition for Autumn Quarter, which was in my plan. From November, I have started saving monthly rents on my rental townhouse for my son's new car to be purchased in July, 2016. If this can be executed as planned, by then, I will have 10,000 dollars extra. Of course, I won't borrow car loan for his car. So, in the next 8 months, I will be very careful with my budget. However, I won't cut expenses on daily necessitates. 

Patrick's Diary - 12/1/2015

Sleeping after dinner until several minutes ago, I am sitting in front of my computer to wrap up the diary for yesterday now. Oh, it's 1:40 in the morning on Wednesday. 

I left home earlier today, so stopped by Burger King to have a breakfast which took me almost 40 minutes because I enjoyed sipping coffee super slowly.

We had a lunch for the celebration of our manager's 15 years anniversary at Bahama Breeze in South Center where I had had group lunches with different teams 4 times in the last 5 years. I still have 7 years to go to have my 15 years anniversary celebrated. I remembered I used to have another group lunch at the same franchise in Downtown Seattle 10 years ago with a finance team at Dendreon when I was a consultant there. That one was much smaller that this one in South Center. I should bring my family here someday. It reminded Nassau, the first ever foreign city I lived in my life no matter if was I a Chinese prior to 1998 or have I been an American afterwards. The first ever foreign city I visited is London, but Nassau is the one to having my lifestyle totally converted to Western at age of 21, though it's not a typical Western city. Of course, Stockholm is the city to having me totally accepting Western value at age of 26, though it's Social Democratic instead of typical Capitalism. 

Ok, I am going to solve all the problems for Chapter 2 in my son's precalculus book in the next hour before going back to bed for another 2 hours or 3. 

Patrick's Diary - 11/30/2015

It was the last day of November and the first day of the new week after Thanksgiving long weekend. Now, it's very early morning in the first day of December.

Yes, we all blamed long weekend being too short but all have a hope that a week long break just 3 weeks ahead. 

After a relaxed four days stretches, nothing seemed worth recording. Falling into sleep after dinner, I just got up and planned to solve the problems for Chapter 2 - Imposing Coordinates in my son's textbook of Precalculus. 

Before proceeding, let me find a piece of beautiful music... Oh, I forgot to upload a clip I filmed while waiting for the traffic lights on my way home after working out at gym yesterday. Listening to all the beautiful Christmas songs on Spirit, I just realized their tradition of having those songs played right after Thanksgiving until New Year's Day came back again.