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Last Saturday, John’s brother offered us two tickets to see LA Clippers v.s. Minnesota Timberwolves at the Staples Center. It came as a pleasant surprise in the afternoon because originally, we were just going to have a quiet evening.

That was my 4th time going to Staples Center for a basketball game, but it was the first time that I arrived early and unrushed. When we got there, the place was still pretty empty, and we got to see all the pre-game broadcasting, plus the players warming up and streching before they play. We had very good seats in the 100th section and were able to see all the action decently close.

Being LA locals (well, sort of), we cheered for the Clippers. They did well through most of the game, leading up to 9 points several times. However, somehow things crumbled in the last 4 minutes of the game and they lost their lead fast. Their defense wasn’t there and they didn’t get the rebounds. At the end, they lost by 3 points.

Too bad… but oh well…

This is a picture taken from where I sat. Pretty up close, right? I’ll be very un-cool to admit that… I don’t know who any of the players are, because I don’t watch basketball frequently anymore. I used to watch Lakers on TV a lot with my brother, but it stopped after… after they stopped winning the championship. So now I am quite clueless as to what’s going on in NBA.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the game. Live games are always fun to watch, and it was a very nice evening out with my dearest John.

2007 came and went way too fast. Before I am fully ready, here comes the horizon of 2008. Reflecting on the year passed, it sees as if I’ve lead two different lives — a horrible one for the first half, then a much happier one for the second half. There were too much unpleasant ups and downs in the first half of 2007. As a result, I didn’t accomplished anything major or half make the best use of myself besides going through the daily routine and hiding personal probolems from everyone else. I lacked inspiration to write because I didn’t want to think about the things I was going through for a good half of 2007. Hence, wakinghour was closed down, and all those old archives were deleted. Yes, my years of writing is gone. True, I did attend to my beauty pageant duties well and finished my term with good effort, but I got a good handle on pageant duties during the first half of my reign in 2006 already so there was no significant breakthrough in 2007. I did successfully host several big events, but then again the skill was developed in 2006 rather than in 2007. I did not read as much as I wanted to, nor did I take a professional exam that I had thought of taking, and let’s not even get into how I neglected healthy diet and exercising.

The second half of 2007 got better month by month. First of all, I met John in June. Now, I don’t want to gab endlessly about John this and John that to drive my remaining dear few readers who’s still out there after my long hiatus into insanity, but things just somehow calmed down after I met John, although he had no connection to the other problematic things at all. I went back to Taiwan to perform in a concert in my hometown in September. Although I got quite sick several days prior to the concert and gave a disappointing performance due to poor vocal condition, it still was a very good trip, hugely because of John’s companionship. I started to paint again in fall of 2007, which was also a big good news considering I haven’t painted for more than five years. And also, I made a few very pleasant trips, to San Jose, San Francisco, Solvang, San Louis Obispo, Morro Bay, Paso Robles, plus Las Vegas. On top of that, I ended the year by being on the 2008 American Red Cross calendar with my pageant friends — girls from the “now former” Miss Taiwan USA and Miss Teen Taiwan court. A nice little something to brag about, right? Read the rest of this entry »

In some ways, my family never spend Christmas the way conventional American families do. Since my family is always separated over two countries during the holiday season, and since we don’t really have relatives in this country, we never completley adopted to the mainstream Christmas tradition ever since we moved to the U.S. If it is a good year, we would have 4 out of 5 members of the family here. But if it is a quiet year, we would have 2 out of 5. This year, we had 4 out of 5, which made it a very, very good Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong, because we do love Christmas. While we may not have a glittering tress by our fireplace, we always try to do something Christmassy and still manage to have a warm Christmas nonetheless. In the years passed we’ve joined church friends in singing Christmas carols, performed in Christmas concerts, attended candle light services in churches, seen Christmas tree lighteings, drove to snowy mountains to build a snowman, gone on trips, volunteered in soup kitchen and toy drives to serve the homeless and the poor… This year, we had a faculous time watching Christmas lights together! We saw the Newport Beach boat parade, plus many festive light displays in Brea and Yorba Linda. Read the rest of this entry »