Patrick's Diary - 10/3/2015

University of Washington may be the only one starting its Autumn Quarter in the last week of September, so this weekend was the first one for my son after his sophomore year kicks off. In his freshman year, he asked me to pick him up almost every weekend because he loved his more comfortable bed at home and enjoyed watching TV and playing video games in bed. Though, in his last quarter of freshman year, he lived in the double dorm alone because his roommate got a Residence Adviser's position, moved out to another building and no one else was assigned to my son's room, he still preferred coming back home at weekends. On Thursday night, I called him to tell that I would be very late to pick him up in the evening of Friday, probably it would be around 6:30 pm. Surprisingly, he didn't plan to go home because would do homework in the library. I actually prefer him staying on campus during the weekends, this indicates that he gradually is involved into college lives.

I woke up around 7:00 am and watched a Bundesliga match in which Monchengradebach wining Wolfsburg. Later on, I caught William's amazing free kick but Chelsea would lose at the end.

I had planned to go to a Mariners' game before the season ended and there would be only two games left. Though it had been still raining in the morning, the sunshine came out while I was watching the soccer matches. It's college game day but I didn't watch any this week. After checking on Mariners' website, I decided to drive to Safeco Field. It shouldn't be sold out, I would buy the ticket at the ticket window at the field, then I would save a couple of dollars of online process fees. 

I had planned to park a little bit away from the field where the charge was less, however, I wanted to try to park in the garage at Century Link Field where I had never parked. The charge was only 15 bucks and it was only across the street to Safeco Field. I bought a ticket for the seat in Terrance Club at the price of 67 bucks without any additional fee. Last time when I was at a Mariners' game was 2007 with my son and my dad when they just moved to US to live with me. We actually left earlier because my son and dad didn't understand the game. 

After so many years not coming to the game, I already totally forgot the facilities. Asking a stupid question of where was the restroom before walking into the club, I explained to the staff that I hadn't come for 8 years. She showed me a questioning smile as if saying to me how dare I could miss the games so long. 

I had drunk two bottles of beer at home in the morning, so decided to go for a cup of soda. The boy behind the concession stand recommended me to buy a 10 bucks cup, which could be refilled as many times as I wanted. Right after sitting down on my seat, I heard a phrase: "Bed Timing", a guy who was probably 10 years senior wearing an A's jacket was trying to get through in front of me to arrive at his seat. After both of us settled down, he saw my ticket still in hand and became interested in it because he said this was his first time at Safeco Field and he got a pass from someone, which was in a plastic tag hung on his chest. He said he preferred printed ticket as mine and even asked me to give him to take a look. I joked that it could be a souvenir. 

From my seat, I could view the first base the closest and it was a wide open view of entire field with skyline of downtown Seattle at the background. It's a bit chilly but I was fine though the gentleman sitting on my right complained a little bit. 

Mariners got the problem in the first inning, and they had been behind by 3 until 4th or 5th inning. I started getting back the enjoyment of baseball game. As I shared, fans at a baseball game are very relaxed. Especially, when the flying ball comes your way, you deeply interact with the players and the game. 

We experienced a long extended game after both teams tied at the end of 9th inning. The gentleman wearing an A's jacket had left at the end of 8th inning, and people started leaving while 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th kept coming. However, there were still a couple of hundreds fans left when 14th inning arrived. A couple at their 60s or 70s sat at their seats till the end of the game in which A's eventually won but nobody really cared. The husband of that couple kept turning his head back to talk to me. He told me that he'd never been in a game in person, which got into 12th inning before and never caught a ball in his glove in a baseball game. After a ball flew over our heads, he asked me if I noticed a ball net located somewhere at Cub's home field for the purpose of receiving flying balls, I told him I never noticed and actually I never went to Wrigley Field, so didn't quite understand what he referred to. There could be two reasons he asked me that question: First of all, I wore a jacket with a small 787 logo on it and my face was not familiar to him, so he was wondering if I came or moved from Chicago; Secondly, I had showed knowledge of baseball during the game and seemed a devoted fan because I had been sitting in the chilly night with only a jacket on for so many innings while they were wearing the thick coats. Why I picked that jacket was that I didn't have any Mariners gear any more and didn't want to wear Sounders, Seahawks, Huskies' or defunct Sonics' sweatshirt to the game. That 787 jacket became the only choice. However, from the face in the clip I filmed, you may tell I was a bit tired at the end and my face looked like a monkey's face. 

In the last inning, I joked to that gentleman sitting in front of me that we might have to stay until the next morning, he seemed taking it seriously and might think it would be even possible. At the end, I said to them "It's fun, have a good night." His wife agreed: "It is fun!" They are more serious fans than I am and probably started feeling to lose something when Mariners would get into off season.

Patrick's Diary - 10/2/2015

I actually forgot to record two credit card related issues incurring at night on October 1st. 

First, Bank of America sent me the text messages, emails and called me to verify several suspicious transactions on a vending machine, which had them suspend my credit card. Though I wasn't able to tell where those transactions were made by reading the very brief descriptions online, I assumed they were made by my son because he could buy something on vending machine at UW. However, before I confirmed with the fraud department at BofA, I had to call my son. Unfortunately, he didn't pick up the cell, then I had to call Residence Advisor on the floor of his dorm. According to the policy, RA couldn't discuss with me about my son's residence though I know my son's room number. However, after I explained this might be an emergency, she seemed willing to help. Fortunately, at that moment, my son called me back. He did use our family credit card to buy something on a vending machine in a library at UW. Not as usual, that machine didn't accept his Husky Card and he didn't know how to use the credit card on it, so swiped total of 6 times. It's why Bank of America eventually suspended the card. I asked him to explain to Residence Advisor why I called to avoid any possible confusion and I explained to Bank of America to have them remove the restriction on our credit card. Through this process, you can tell that fraud detect at bank is generally pretty sufficient. 

Secondly, Hertz Sweden charged me another 140 bucks again on 9/30, so I sent Charlotte an e-mail to check what was going on. Generally, she was very responsive, but I didn't receive her response over the night while Swedes were in their business hours. So, I sent her another e-mail to follow up and offered to call her. My concern was that more charges could be coming because any ticket could be charged to the car I rented even for those not issued during the period of my possession, even worse, anyone could issue a false ticket to that car during the period of my possession. Charlotte responded to me on Oct. 1st and explained that she was on a different shift, so didn't come to work the day I sent her the inquiry. She forwarded my e-mail to their parking tickets processing team to find out. She confirmed that they shouldn't accept any false claim. She sounded a very pride Swede in Stockholm because she protected the city's reputation through her explanation. I trusted her, so would like to wait for another day before I would dispute the charge. Actually, their parking tickets department would send me all backups the following day, they seemed all legitimate but I haven't had time to sort out. The surprise possibly came from the two tickets in Oslo because the receptionist at Front Desk at Radisson Blu Scandinavia told me I could ignore them when I tried to find someone at Parking Company to explain. Now, I guess what he meant was that I needed to pay that amount of parking for two nights at that adjacent parking garage next to the hotel anyway, why bother? Yes, as I recall, the total fine on those two tickets is the total parking charge for two nights. In theory, it's not over charged. However, as I shared, going through Hertz, they charged a very high administration fee per ticket as the girl at their drop off station had warned me. I will sort this out tomorrow. 

Because I would have a late conference call, I left home at 8am and didn't take Toll Lane. I stopped by Burger King to have breakfast, a gentleman around mid 60s, maybe even older stood in front of me in the waiting line before I ordered. He glanced at my Seahawks sweatshirt a second, then asked me the result of last week's game. Though, I didn't follow NFL up this season as much close as I had done in the past 15 years, I still could recall Seahawks shutting out Bears at home last weekend. I also told him that I hadn't gone to Seahawks game in person for more than 7 years because the tickets are too expensive now. The prices may be still reasonable for Season Ticket Holders but resale prices are inflated to the unacceptable levels. He agreed. However, my gut told me he was testing me. Their are so many fake fans of Seahawks football because of its popularity now. An immigrant like me wearing a Seahawks' shirt might be questionable at his eyes. He didn't know I learned football at age of 21 when I watched Hurricanes' practice, though I didn't understand it then; I watched Illini and Bears' games several times in late 90s, though I wasn't very interested in them; I became a diehard Seahawks fan during Holmgren's era. 

After sitting down, we happened to be next each other, he asked me if I was interested in a BK Scholar Promotion at Burger King, I just noticed it. Then we talked about retirement and politicians. Though we didn't agree to each other's opinions exactly, it was still a very pleasant conversation. At the end, he said that he would like to chat with me if we happened to be there again, I told him that I eat the breakfast at this restaurant every Friday. It's not necessarily true at that moment because I had eaten breakfast there irregularly but I did plan to start eating there every Friday going forward because I have a more flexible and causal schedule on Friday. I am not sure I experienced Deja vu, the charge for my breakfast was cancelled on my credit card online statement. I just double checked, it wasn't there. Did he pay it for me? Is he the owner of that restaurant? Or is he someone living or owning business in that area, for a reason, doing it after our conversation? I could be dreaming totally. It might be just an error. 

Our CUMT US Alumni Group scheduled a discussion at 6:00pm. I was on my way home then but glanced alumni's chats from time to time while filming a scene on Freeway to share and popping a voice message. After arriving at home, I joined the discussion by punching the Chinese characters. It was a very constructive discussion. It ended up that I self recommended myself to be the liaison for Northwest Region. 

Patrick's Diary - 10/1/2015

I definitely didn't need to take toll lane at 5:00 am and parked my van in the lot next to the factory at 5:40 am. 

The CPR training was a renewed one we had taken two years ago and it was provided by the trainer of Red Cross and very useful. I remember almost every procedure this time.

Before going to the office after the training, I decided to stop by KFC by Rainier Street to have an early lunch at 10:15am because I hadn't had breakfast in early morning.

The shooting in Roseburg, Oregon was so tragic. 10 people were killed including the killer himself. I am still not quite catching the killer's motivation. There had been conflicting information being brought to the public. At the beginning, the killer was speculated as 20 years old man from Midwest within 48 hours, then started the killings and targeted the women; Later on, it was confirmed he was 26 years old Chris Harper Mercey, one victim blamed him targeting Christians. Anyway, gun violence has become routines as so many people criticize including Obama who is advocating politicizing this critical issue.

I had remembered a significant event scheduled on October 1st but forgot what it was until seeing a tweet being retweeted by Seattle Sounders: National Women Soccer League Championship Final at 6:30 pm. I was lucky to catch it at the beginning. Seattle was supposed to win this one after losing it to the same rivalry at home last year. However, Kansas City won the cup two-year-in-roll. It's so sad for Reigns.

Switching to Pac-12, I was lucky again to catch Huskies' Women Soccer player scoring the winning goal to beat UCLA, it's a sort of redemption of covering the pain of Regin's lost.

Patrick's Diary - 9/30/2015

Because a CPR training was arranged at 6:00 am on October 1st in one of the buildings in the factory. I had to change my night routine to sleep at 10:00 pm in order to get up around 4:00 am, so I didn't write my diary for 9/30. Afterwards, I haven't written anything until now.

I used the toll lane three-day-in-roll but still didn't know the charge per use. I thought it could be as high as 5 bucks because the charge depended on the numbers of the users. However, I just learned it half an hour ago in my Good-to-Go account, it was $2.25, $1.75 for Monday, Tuesday respectively. I assume for Wednesday, the charge should be around 2 bucks too. It is definitely not too bad.

No, I didn't use the toll lane when I came back home as planned. It was pretty congested from Route 522 towards Lynnwood, so I took the exit of North Park Business Park, then went through the local road passing Skyview Junior High where I used to pass pretty often 12 years ago. I didn't take 228th Street because it was heavily congested too. 

I can't remember I watched anything after dinner, I probably got to bed around 8:00 pm and did spend sometimes to read and chat in the newly formed CUMT Alumni Group on WeChat before falling into sleep. 

Patrick's Diary - 9/29/2015

It's the second morning I was about to get onto the new toll lane on I-405 southbound. While I was waiting on ramp for getting into the freeway, I wondered if the carpool lane could also be open for me to go through the ramp. Since there was no new instruction on any sign, I was afraid to violate the traffic rule. However, it makes sense to have the drivers who plan to use toll lanes after driving onto freeway allowed to use carpool lane on the ramp as well. Random video checks can ensure people would take chance not to use the toll lane after going through the carpool lane. I eventually arrived at the office at 7:30 am. Sweet!

Again, I drove on the regular lane on I-405 Northbound after I came back home in the afternoon. It's not bad because I left the office a little bit earlier before the true rush hours arrived, in addition, the use of the toll lanes may really ease the heavy congestions. 

An alumnus from the college I first ever enrolled at age of 18 set up a group chat on Webchat and sent me a scan code through e-mail 3 days ago in order to have me joining it. So far, it has grown to 70 members. We were requested to put our name, major, freshmen year and current location as alias in this group. So mine is: Patrick He-Civil Engineering 84-Seattle, of course, in Chinese: "何峰 工民建八四二班 美国西雅图“. Students like us moving to other countries generally have studied at several other universities to advance our careers, however, our first college is always our alma mater. By the way, it was named China Institute of Mining and Technology when I enrolled. 

After watching this 15 minutes beautiful clip, I recall that I had been impressed by our campus as soon as I arrived there in the last week of August in 1984. At that time, the institute was relocated from Szuchuan to Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province not very long ago. The initial investment for the new campus was RMB 400M. We had modern buildings, beautiful man-made lakes and upscale sports facilities. Because my English score of China Universal College Entrance Exam in 1984 was great, I was selected into Honor English Class the first evening, yes, it's an evening class, when our freshmen years began. In addition to our primary English teacher who was a 20 years old Chinese girl just graduating from college herself, yes, she went to college at age of 16, we were lucky to have an American lady coaching us practicing oral English. I remember I was her most favorite student in that class. She was a professional educator and came from Albion, Michigan with her husband and a 15 years old son. In one of the evenings, she told us a story of how she learned German when she studied abroad in Germany: one night after she had intensively learned German for quite a while, she suddenly dreamed in German. After a couple of years when I lived in English environment in Bahamas, I started dreaming in English occasionally, then I could sense what she taught us. Our primary English teacher was a very lovely Chinese girl, I could have dated her. I just checked a pretty recognizable Chinese University Ranking List, it's a shame that our alma mater drops to 75th, I remember that it was ranked one of the top 30 several years ago when I checked. I guess Coal Mining is becoming a sunset industry, so the popularity and importance of our alma mater have been going down gradually. However, with the helps of alumni like us, I think we can get its ranking back. 

Oh, after posting my original diary, I checked out another authentic Chinese University Ranking List: The Best 2015 Professional Ranking List of Chinese Universities

Our Alma Mater ranks 36th, this makes more sense. 

Patrick's Diary - 9/28/2015

I-405 Toll Lanes was open on Sunday, I got onto it on Monday morning. It led my van go through heavily congested section from Bothell to Bellevue. I arrived at office within one hour. In the afternoon, I didn't mind to spend more time on regular lane to listen to the songs played by Spirit. I decided to use toll lane in the morning but not in the afternoon going forward. It probably will cost me 50 bucks a month. Yes, I opened an account at Good to go right before I drove out on road in the morning. 

I didn't say anything about Boehner's resignation, it's probably not fair for him. It sounded a surprise when he announced his sudden decision. He might wake up from his political dream after listening to Pope's words. 

Putin might also not be able to keep silence. He showed himself a heavy factor in the world this week too. Meeting Obama, was he fulfilled?

Monday Night Football might be great but I didn't watch it. Anyway, I learned the result somewhere, maybe on Twitter. Green Bay won over KC big. 

Patrick's Diary - 9/27/2015

As I shared on twitter, I just had two weird dreams right before waking up. The first was that I walked on a very crowded street in Europe with one of my ex-wives to head to an entertaining place, might be an opera house or a movie theater. It might be triggered by the late night talk show on HBO in which several topics about Europe were discussed by the host I watched right before falling into sleep last night. Though the topics included current situations of migrants, the atmosphere in my dream was very harmonious. The second was that I was playing tennis with a person whose face wasn't visible to me because we were on a track for 100 meters dash by the side of a soccer field. It was a super long court for playing tennis. I hadn't gone out to watch lunar eclipse last night but just went out to watch the full moon in the sky, which was very bright but blood had faded. 

On Sunday morning, I drove my van out of the garage at 7:30 and headed to gym to work out. It's sunny but a little bit chilly. Driving by the Christian Church by the intersection of North Road and Filbert Road, I could foresee many Christians would come to pray at 10:00 am. 

Stopping by McDonald's to have breakfast, I saw a group of motorists riding their bikes towards the parking lot when I parked my car. Sitting at a small table by the window, I even heard their conversations. One of them was named Patrick as well, he probably was at his fifties or sixties and kept introducing his son to others. I didn't particularly pay attention to his son, so don't know his age by telling his appearance. It's a nice day, those guys must enjoy the rides. After it, I worked out my weekend routine: 1 hours on treadmill; 200 times weightlift; 10 minutes on bike. I felt very fulfilled at the end, especially I ate too many pieces of cakes last night for my son's birthday, sugar in my blood was needed to be shaken off. I saw a gal on a bike whom I played indoor soccer once or twice two years ago but didn't greet to her because she was talking to another gal then. 

This Sunday was Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. As a matter of fact, my middle school advisor and classmates had greeted each other on Wechat since mid week last week. However, I hadn't know which day the holiday would be then. To film a clip for our family's celebration at the lunch table, I posted it on Wechat: my mom was still cooking then. 

Since I was't in that clip, I selfied one to greet to my classmates. After posting it, I realized that I didn't wash my face after coming back from gym. It didn't really matter because those men and women grew up with me since 6 or 7 years old, some of them were our neighbors, so even had known me prior to elementary school. 

Why we had Festival celebration at lunch instead of dinner was that my son would go back to his dorm. On the way I drove him there, I advised him to focus on three things in the new quarter: Study and workout effectively, both are equally important and have to be balanced very well. Then socializing if he has enough time and energy. His current plan is to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Economics, which most likely will lead him to apply a PhD program eventually. After successfully completing Math 125 and Econ 300, he would be able to finish Math 126 and Econ 301 next quarter; In Spring, he can wrap up the last required course - STAT 311 to be ready to apply the major before the 2nd Friday in Autumn Quarter in his Junior year. Meanwhile he can select a higher level writing class in Spring to enhance his writing skills for Writing Assessment, which is also required to take before the application. Since he enrolled UW, I found his writing abilities had been improved significantly after successfully earning the good grades in English and social science courses including both Econ, Philosophy and Psychology. Graduates of College of Arts and Sciences are required to earn credits in foreign languages. Since he had confirmed his interest in going to Sweden for Study Abroad, I recommended him to take Swedish 101 through 103 in his Junior Year. He can go to Uppsala in his Senior Year for an entire year then come back to UW to get the degree by enrolling one more quarter. Though most of classes are taught in English but those for Economics are in Swedish at Uppsala. Stockholm University is always an option but he prefers a smaller neat town atmosphere. Of course, if he decides not to study abroad, he can always earn credits in Chinese, which had been his first spoken language for 12 years or French, which he earned 2 years high school credits. He sounded agreeing to all these recommendations. He actually would buy the textbook for Econ 300 later. He actually doesn't need to buy the access code of Webassign for Math 125 because the one for Math 124 he already paid for in last quarter is carried over. It looks like the only cost is for that Econ book in this quarter. 

Dropping him off, I sped up on I-5 to head home to catch Seahawks' home opener on TV. I seemed having plenty of time because the game wouldn't kick off until 1:15 pm. 

Lynch was not energized to start today. Was he mad because I supported Huskies to beat Golden Bears so passionately yesterday? CAL was a better team yesterday and Lynch is still a Beast anyway. I heard later the official reason for his lack of enthusiasm was driven by hamstring injury. However, my focus in this afternoon was Sounders taking SKC in Kansas City because it's a more critical match for MLS playoff berth. Pineda set a 45 degree overhead pass to Martins to score and Dempsey missed two one on one scoring opportunities, one was crossed by Valdez, another was passed by Martins. At the end, we were lucky to get a draw away from home. 

Chicago Bears are being restructured under new coaching staff, it's not a surprise for Seahawks to shut them down at Century Link Field. 

After a brief dinner, my dad asked me to watch a Chinese program for Mid-Autumn Festival celebration on TV in their master bedroom. Though I had planned to do it, I changed my mind after noticing that Exodus was being played on one of HBO channels. I missed watching it in theater last year. The movie seemed based on the story of The Books of Moses, I pulled the book from the shelf, then read the related parts while watching the movie on screen. 

The movie triggered me to recall that the first time I learned "Exodus" was through a piece of music on radio in 1977 when I was 11, of course, I learned the title of the music in Chinese translation: 出埃及记。

Back then, I felt this piece of artworks was so amazing. At this moment after I listened to this version, I am still impressed.