Entries Tagged 'Career' ↓

Lately my friends and family have pitched in to help me get ready for the baby and I am very thankful for everyone.  I have pretty much everything I need for now and now I am just counting down to the big day.  According to my last ultrasound my doctor said that the baby is growing at a normal interval which means that I have been controlling my gestational diabetes well.  The due date is now anywhere from 10/31 to 11/5.  I will be starting my leave from work on 10/24 unless the baby comes earlier than that.  I am seeing the doctor every week now and for the most part I am feeling pretty normal.

The most common question I get right now is, “are you ready yet?”  Honestly, I don’t think anyone is ever ready for a real kid.  You can read all the books you want and learn all about the process of conception, delivery, and breastfeeding, but when that little nugget pops out it is just a fairly unique experience for everyone.  As to labor and delivery, I certainly have learned a lot from books and classes, but I haven’t experienced the pain so I cannot say that I am ready for that.  The hubby’s aunt simply said to be flexible and don’t set your mind on any specific birth plan, because things can change.  I totally agree with that, and I would not reject pain medication or a C Section if they are absolutely necessary.  However, I definitely would like to avoid any surgery if possible.

We don’t really know what to expect after the kid is born besides that we will have to feed him and clean him a lot.  One thing I am planning to do is to get a flexible spending account at work for dependent care and medical expenses in 2010.  The reason for this is that babies go to doctors quite a bit in the first year, and also we will be paying for child care since both of us work. This is the cheapest way for us to pay for the expenses since the money is paid into the accounts before taxes.  I will not go back to work until mid January, but the rest of the year still needs to be taken care of. Looking back, I should have probably funded my medical flexible spending account just a little this year, since I have spent around $400 on the entire pregnancy and I could have paid for that tax free and saved a little over $100.  The only problem is that I had no idea how much money I would have needed this year for medical expenses. I also had no idea how many things a flexible spending account  covers, so I intend to take full advantage of it next year.   Anyway, I will probably write a full post on flexible spending accounts when I start using it.

For the most part, we are not that concerned about the extra expenses a baby brings.  The only thing that worries me is that we might not be able to have as much time to spend with the kid as we like because we both work.  I think having time to do whatever we want to do is one of my biggest motivations in wanting to “get out of the rat race” as soon as possible, and lately the hubby has come around to the same goal.  He actually said to me, “you can never save too much! If we save more now we can retire early.”  I am very proud of him and hopefully I can teach our baby to be smart with his money so he could be financially independent at a young age.

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My husband and I are technically both software engineers.  The difference is that I release enterprise software, and he programs games.  In less than two weeks his company will be pushing out the game that they have been working on for three years, and I am very excited for him.

This will be the first game that the hubby is shipping, and right now it is in open beta.  It seems that pre-order sales are going really well so far and tens of thousands of people have tried out the beta.  His company actually did not expect the game to be so popular in beta and there were some server issues and crashes, but those seem to be mostly ironed out by now.

For months I have been more excited about the game than he was because I was able to play the game more than him.  He was busy working on creating the systems and fixing problems.  Also, when you work on the same product for so long you can easily get sick of it.  However, last night he got to see the nearly finished game in action and he thought it was actually quite fun and finally he said that he is excited about the launch of the game.  Thousands of other players were playing at the same time and that made it much more interesting  and hilarious than just testing the game alone. For example, we saw a newbie player who could not figure out how to block hits from the bad guys and just kept on standing in front of a gun and dying over and over again.  Even after my hubby told him how to block hits he could not figure it out.  I was just sitting on the side and laughing my butt off.

I am just glad to see that so many people are enjoying a product that my hubby helped create. Three years ago he quit working in enterprise software and took a huge pay cut to take this job at the game company, and now he is finally making a little more than his former salary.  I think he was pretty brave to do that because the gaming industry is actually a pretty risky business since it takes so much investment to create a game, but if the game is  a dud the entire company could just go kaput. This is especially true when the company is small.   So I guess right now I am also breathing a sigh of relief because it looks like this game is poised to be quite successful and that means job security and possible bonuses for the hubby.

The hubby’s company is launching another game next year, and I am hoping that one is even more amazing.  In my career I have released dozens of products already, but in all honesty none of them really excited me that much.  I know that the products I released have impacted many people around the world, too, but a game is just much more fun, tangible, and comprehensible to most people. I mean, even my parents do not know or care that I helped make software that optimized call center performance, or software that help people write more secure code, but they know that the hubby makes games.

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My life is for the most part pretty boring, but sometimes whacky things happen.  Yesterday was one of those days.

I left work last night and realized that I left my purse at my cube.  So I drove back to retrieve it.  I usually don’t park in the underground garage because it is always full, but at that time many people already left work so I figured I would park there since it is the closest parking lot to my building. It has one of those arm gates that raises up after you swipe a keycard.  Then after the arm gate there is another metal sliding gate.

I have always had a problem with these gates because my arms are very short and oftentimes I have to stretch out pretty far to activate the keycard.  Yesterday this happened again and stretched out just a bit too far and my foot went off the brake for a second.  Unfortunately, the lane to the gate is on a downward incline so gravity took my car straight into the gate arm and made contact with the metal gate and then stopped.  The distance from the keycard station to the gate is less than ten feet so it wasn’t a huge impact, but the car still managed to break off the wooden gate arm and made a dent in the metal gate.

Amazingly enough the car just had a few scratches in the front bumper and was not damaged at all, but the metal gate to the garage stopped opening.  So I called building security and a pretty nice old security guard came out and took my information.  Today the property management called me and said that they have repair people out there and if the damages are not extensive I don’t have to file a claim.  They were actually quite nice about it and thanked me for informing security quickly and giving my information.  They also said they will keep me updated on the repair costs and possible claim.

In case you work in the former Siebel buildings in San Mateo and you were inconvenienced by the south garage gate closing today, I’m really sorry!  I felt pretty dumb after the incident so I went home and Googled garage arm gate accidents, and what do you know, other people have the short arm problem too.  Here is an example.

After watching these videos I actually felt a bit better.  Then I started sorting a bag of mail I got from my parents’ house this weekend, and I found a check for $200.13 from a class action settlement.  Apparently a law student named Kashmiri sued the Regents of California for increasing student fees in the 2002-2003 school year and after five years of legal battles the students won and the Regents paid out a $33.8 million settlement.  It is kind of sad because I completely understand why the Universities of California had to raise fees at that time.  The economy was in the ruts, and the fees were really quite cheap.  I entered Berkeley in 2001 and I think I paid less than $2000 for tuition for each semester, and then the next year they increased the fees dramatically for international students, but the resident tuition did not change all that much.  Here are the webpages from 2001 to 2002 and 2002 to 2003.   The real fee hikes actually started from the 2003 to 2004 school year where the fees went from $2100 to $2900.  Now it costs over $4400 for resident tuition. I actually feel bad for receiving this money because I don’t feel cheated by my Berkeley education. I’ve already earned my all four years of my tuition money back in less than a year after college.  I also found out that the University of California barely raised its fees from the late 80’s until 2002 after I met an alumni that graduated in 1988.  He told me that he paid around $1500 a semester in 1988.  Basically, it is a public school system that tried to keep its fees down for many years but just couldn’t do it any longer and it is understandable.  I am  just going to donate this $200 back to UC Berkeley’s engineering program and I encourage other UC grads who are comfortably employed to do the same because our alma maters probably need the money more than we do now.  I really want the UC system to remain the best public universities in the world for generations to come.

So that’s the entire story of my stupid accident, and the $200 of found money.  Hopefully my car insurance will not be adjusted and the owners of the building will fix the gate.  In the future, I will always park my car in front of those keycard swipers first so there is no chance of sliding down into a gate.

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He is currently working on chapter 9. Enjoy!

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After I attended Kapiolani Community College for a year, I started thinking about getting a job that is related to my major of accounting.   As I have mentioned before, American employers always want to employ someone with experience, so it is especially tough to find that first job related to your field.  This is the reason why many people want to go to the most famous colleges because students from these schools have an easier time finding the first job.  However, after you have worked at a job and collected experience, employers would look at what you have done and what you can do for them instead of where you graduated.  So now when friends in China ask me which American school their kids should attend, I would tell them that if they have the money and skills they should go to the most prestigious schools.  However, if they can’t get into the best, they shouldn’t be discouraged, because college lasts for only four years, and the road of life is very very long, and a college degree will not determine their entire destiny in life.

After I learned some accounting basics in America, I was determined to find a job related to accounting.  Since I didn’t have any experience, I emphasized that I had a 4.0 GPA, but this first off campus job was still very difficult to find.  After trying for a while, I found a job as a cashier at a store in the famous Ala Moana Shopping Center.  The store was owned by a Japanese American woman and I worked there for about four months.  However, I have to honestly say that these four months were the darkest and most unfair days I have ever experienced in America.  These days made me truly experience the ugly side of capitalism that was taught in China’s Marxism classes.  This capitalist that hired me forced me to work very heavy labor, overtime, and refused to pay.

“Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.”  I think this Japanese American woman underestimated international students from China.  She thought that we were uneducated, and that she could easily control immigrants from China, Vietnam, and other “third world nations” because none of us spoke English well.   She didn’t think that Chinese students my age were educated with the message of revolution since we experienced the Cultural Revolution.  She didn’t know that we were taught the message of, “there is endless fun in fighting with the sky, there is endless fun in fighting with the ground, and there is endless fun in fighting with class enemies”.  The most important thing is that in China I have had some education in law, and I knew that what she did was not only unfair and cruel but also broke the law.  Even though my English was horrible at that time and I couldn’t express myself well, I managed to team up with another student she hired and fought with her in court.  Even though this happened more than a decade ago, I still get angry when I think about it.  Recently I went back to China and heard on the news that a foreign capitalist was beating Chinese workers, and that also made me very angry.  I thought that this type of abuse rarely happens in a capitalist country like America, but now how could a socialist nation like China let it happen?  This chapter will detail my story of fighting against oppression.

To be continued!

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Some of my friends have asked me things along the lines of, “aren’t Christian women supposed to be stay at home moms?” I have never really been taught this idea in the churches I have gone to, but I know some Christian groups do  support the idea that Christian women should not work for a living and the man of the house should be the one bring home the bacon. So is it wrong for Christian women to earn money outside of the home? Well, ultimately I think the Bible should answer everyone’s questions on this issue.

The book of Proverbs ends with an acrostic poem describing a virtuous wife. This is actually a very long section focused on one single topic, and that’s pretty different from the rest of the book where various short phrases of wisdom are written in sequence. It begins with, “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels(rubies).” Prov 31:10. Then it goes on to describe the various things a good wife does, and interestingly enough a lot of things she does are related to business and finance. Here is what I read:

She invests in real estate - “She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard” Prov 31:16

She sells the goods she produces – First she produces: “She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands.” Prov 31:13 Also later in the passage she sells the goods: “She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp does not go out at night.” Prov 31:18 “She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant.” Prov 31:24

She is generous in giving – “She opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hands to the needy.” Prov 31:20

She is prepared – “She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.” Prov 31:21 “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” Prov 31:25 I think both of these verses show that she is prepared for the things to come, and I think that being prepared for snow implies that the good wife is financially prepared for a non-fruitful season.

She is watchful – “She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. ” Prov 31:27 I think this verse conveys the message that a good wife is not lazy, and she is very aware of what’s going on in her family. Finances is a big part of family affairs, and a wife that knows what’s going on with a household’s money would be much better prepared for disasters.

She diligently provides for her family - “She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls.” Prov 31:14-15

She fears the lord – This is the final point of the passage. “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” Prov 31:30

So from this book, I think it is fairly clear that a Christian woman is never required to be a stay at home mom and in a way the Bible actually encourages a wife to earn income and provide for her family. In my church there are all types of families. There are dual income families, and there are stay at home moms, and there is a pretty cool stay at home dad, too. Everyone knows that the guy is a stay at home dad and he was given a rose for Mother’s day. I think all of these family structures are totally acceptable as long as both people in the marriage agree with it and they trust each other and God enough to make it work.

I hope this post clarified the position of the Bible on women and working for income. I think that all women should be independently enough so that their husbands would not have have to worry about them very much. Finally, I believe that Christianity is a religion that gives women a lot of freedom compared to many other religions. We can choose to be a stay at home wife, or work outside the home. We do not have to hide ourselves and we can honor God in our own way. That is liberating.

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