i told my students in class today they should appreciate the freedom they have nowadays. for them to enjoy their college years but to also make the best of them. i said they should study hard, be serious in class, and then you can play hard. i said that after two girls sitting towards the back were looking at a magazine during class. i told them nicely to close the book and pay attention. later when it seemed they still weren’t interested in class i started to go on about this. i spoke quite passionately as i held in my anger. [good job, ben.] it seemed to go over well. then i tied in my soapbox speech into the lesson. i said, “it’s unbelievable i just said that because i was a terrible student in high school.” yes, after teaching you know how not easy it is.

hehe.. one of my students, sean, he said i remind him of abraham lincoln. hahaha.. i need to trim my beard or shave the joint. it’s interesting, since he was 12 years old sean has wanted to be an engineer. because he worked hard in elementary school he was able to attend the best school in his county. but when he got assigned his college and arrived here he was unable to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an engineer. now, he’s an english major. not sure if because this school doesn’t have an engineering program or not many students are accepted into the program. i told him, don’t lose hope. maybe you can study engineering on your own and one day you can put it together with your english skills. he seems optimistic.

staying optimistic day to day is a hard thing to do. we should try our best. besides cherishing our time we should cherish the ones that are close to us.

Sandbridge, Virginia Beach, VA ★ November 2008

This is me and my sis at the beach last fall. We had a great time at my mom’s 60th surprise birthday party. In this picture my shoes are soaked. My sister was taking a group picture of my aunts, uncle and brother-in-law and me when this wave came upon shore. She didn’t seem to notice the wave or didn’t think to warn us. They all were wearing sandals. Everyone got a kick out of it. It was okay. My shoes dried the next day.

In this photo you can also see my lucky pants. Can’t wear them when I teach class but whenever I’m free I will. They’re the pair I wore when I travelled from Hong Kong to Beiing two summers ago. They’ve been through 8 provinces in China. I’ve been wearing them for 8 years. They’ve been stitched and patched countless times by the tailor (裁縫) not far from school. I get my clothes done custom for cheap.

“remember that it’s extremely hard to find true love in this world. if you find it, it’s worth fighting for.”

-Andy Chung

So, I’m on the phone with a technical rep from my domain name registrar…

Tech Rep: “I see your domain is expiring soon, would you like to renew your account sir?”

Me: “Well, if I can back up my past four years of blogging, I’d like to renew my domain.”

I thank the guy for giving me the details I needed to change my nameservers back to what they were (and have been for the past four years) so I can back up my website. After that I try again to login using ftp. That didn’t work. That was 8:30am this morning (8:30pm Sat in the States). Only 3 and 1/2 hours left before my site was gone for good. With no backups. That thought hurt.

Four years of blogging. I told myself. “Okay, I’m not writing anymore. Computers don’t have feelings. How can they be so cruel?” There was nothing else I could do. Couldn’t even visit my website anymore. Yes, I didn’t follow directions well when I changed nameservers before trying to back up. At that point and time I thought, “Let me sleep on it and maybe my friend Andy will save me.”

I’d been emailing Andy like crazy since yesterday and he said he would help me if I ran into friction (摩擦). Well, couldn’t ask for more at that point. Andy is the one that helped me set up my Wordpress installation. Woke up an hour and a half later. GOOGLE! I found the cached pages online. Started thinking, I could save all my pages one by one. But how far do the cached pages go back? I tried my site again. Bingo! I could get on again. But still couldn’t get in using ftp. That’s when I got news from my man Andy. He was laughing and said, “Hey, I’m in your cpanel account right now backing up your stuff. I’ll just go ahead and get it all done. Hopefully it’s all up in about 20-30 min.” I didn’t know I had a cpanel account. Thank goodness because there’s only an hour left until this sucker’s gone. Thank goodness for people that understand technology that I don’t. Thanks Andy for coming through. 摩擦不在了，终于松了一口气。

Lessons Learned: 1) Back up often because computers have no feelings 2) stay technical. stay up-to-date with technology