Mercury News .. .grrr!!!

So I got a call from Mercury News saying I owe them money.

I have received many calls from them asking me if I am interested to continue subscription and I said no.

I did not even read those newspapers! The reason I subscribe to it is because I was approached by a teen, and Mercury News have some program where they offer scholarships to students who can get a certain number of subscriptions.

I subscribed to the newspaper twice this way. I was careful and paid in cash and did not give away my credit card information. What if those teens lied to me, right? Giving away credit card info to random people are scary. But it turned out, those two teens were genuine and I did receive those newspapers. Good luck to them and hopefully they did being offered scholarships.

The first time, I had to pay $10 and although I receive some calls from Mercury News, I did not continue the subscription. And that was it.

The second time, they hiked up the subscription price to $20, which was fine by me since the guy had an opportunity to get a scholarship. I also received numerous calls from Mercury News asking me to continue subscription but I said no. However, suddenly I owe Mercury News $25!

Let me reiterate, the reason I mentioned “scam” (maybe scam is too strong of a word) “grrr”  *mad*is because prior to this phone call, I had received numerous calls from Mercury News asking me to continue subscription and I said NO.

Sorry guys, if I am approached again for this Mercury-news-scholarship-subscription-thing, I am certainly not going to subscribe. Too much of a hassle. And, now Mercury News has my credit card information. Now thinking back, I should have paid using check.

Strawberry Picking

I went for my first and only fruit picking today! As you can already see from the title of this post, my colleagues, (YW, WX, JK) and I went for strawberry picking. We (or rather WX) drove for about an hour to East Bay just for the strawberries.

I filled up my basket quite quickly compared to the others. Maybe that explained why my hand-picked strawberries are not very sweet. WX kept eating the strawberries while picking them. I wanted to do that, but I saw ants, spiders, cobwebs and numerous other insects near those strawberry plants. All I could think of was there are millions of disgusting-harmful microbes on the strawberry surface! However, after a while, I force myself to eat one too. Maybe this will boost my immune system. I am still feeling fine now.

We had fun searching for funny-looking strawberries. I only kept one of them as I am certainly not going to eat those funny-looking ones.

My poor shoes, stained by squashed strawberries. Just washed them and let them out to dry. Hopefully my shoes are still as good as new.

Enjoying my not-so-sweet strawberries now.

Note: I really need to improve my mandarin. 95% of the time, I do not understand what were my colleagues talking about. Luckily, the patient YW explained to me in English if there was any part of the conversation which she thought was interesting or when I asked her to explain.

Best news of the day

My bro got his visa…and this means that my family will make a trip to US for about 3 weeks! So excited!  Need to start planning!

However, I only got to know about this when I ask my bro about it…and he knew about the visa on Tuesday! How can!

For Memorial Day, we are planning a trip to Santa Barbara. I got this idea from YL, as she is planning a trip there too! I heart her! 

*hmm, all my sentence end with exclamation marks.

I am feeling sleepy

I have a colleague, a nice and funny fella, who I think has a reputation of being very hardworking. I always have the impression that s/he works day and night and even on weekends. While I was talking to him/her today, s/he suddenly mentioned something like, “Why are we wasting the best time in our life doing this?” Then we joked for a bit, but his/her comment really struck me. I guess this is because, I have been spending a lot of my time on work too. That is why, during the weekends, I have to go out and spend some time with other people! Else, I will feel depressed and suffocated.

Any ideas for what do to for Memorial Day weekend?

Grown Ped Egg

Look at how large my turtle have grown into!

The pink stuffs are the shells

Gem… discovered

I believe most of us have heard about Susan Boyle, a talent who was discovered during the British Got Talent 2009 show.

She even have a fan site now! She is unemployed, but I guess with her talent and popularity now, she does not have to worry about a thing!

She was really great and when I say a person sings really well, this means that the singer is able invoke some kind of emotion within me. *Keng*

All the best to her!

I seldom listen to songs, and this is mainly because I can’t think/work while listening to songs. I wish I could, as this would make my work more interesting and enjoyable, but alas that is not the case. Maybe I should train myself my listening to the same song over and over again.

Talking about Susan Boyle, when she first appear on stage, people are not very confident about her singing skills, influenced by her simple physical appearance (I do not think she wears makeup). This makes me wonder, what is beauty? I am puzzled by the fact that more “beautiful” people have greater advantage compared to their counterparts in many aspects of life. Unfair as it may be, like my friend say “it is the way it is”. We innately prefer more “beautiful” things. Oh, well…

Growing Pet Egg

My colleague gave me THIS yesterday.  I just put it in a container of water today and it is suppose to “grow” fully in 3 days.  Can’t wait to find out what my pet is

My exasperating relationship with junk-ies

I felt something was amiss the whole of last week as there was no junk food available at home. There was just a tube of ice-cream. During grocery shopping on Sunday, I was busy looking for the perfect junk food, which was suppose to keep me company for a week. While walking down the aisle, I saw this! I immediately put it in my cart. So happy!

Hmm, this should be sufficient for the whole week. My plan was to slowly savor 2 cookies a day. These to me are rich and high quality cookies, so need to slowly enjoy them. However, I finished them in 2 days! How unhealthy was that?! Yes, I am worried about diabetes.

I consider myself quite a strong-willed person, except when it comes to dessert/junk-food. I have absolutely no will-power when it comes to that.

I slowly nibble at my first cookie, keeping in mind that I am only suppose to have two pieces. After finishing 2 cookies, I thought, hmm…why not 2 more? No harm to that….And this continued a few more times… Not to mentioned my nibbling progressed to munching and to chomping the more cookies I ate. I felt really full and do not enjoy the cookies anymore but for some unexplainable reasons, my hand kept reaching for the cookies and I kept swallowing them in. This is perplexing.! These cookies are really rich and filling.

Oh well, I need more junk food!