in mediation

Tis another unhappy purchase for Kimmi. I've been dealing with a stubborn and incompetent Ebay company (TriState Cameras) for the last 2 weeks. Due to some miscommunication and accounting errors on their side, I was charged twice for a flash that I ordered. I didn't find this out till I saw my credit card statement. From there it's been non-stop emails and threats of "legal action" on my part. Being an unhappy client I filed complaints against TriState with my credit card company and with Ebay. The manager of TriState Cameras has been in contact with me for 3 days now trying to resolve the issue, before that I had to deal with their "customer relations department". I was not happy with his pushy attitude and he was equally not happy with my inability to just withdraw the paperwork and deal with this on "our own". :-) I've learned through many experiences that you get faster results when things suddenly become "official". Unfortunately Michelle and her family had to witness one of my outburst to the manager at Brandon's birthday party last night. I was getting ready to go home when he called. The manager was not happy that I didn't return his calls as there is a 3 hour time difference between us so he was calling off hours. I'm not about to call New York everyday to fight about charges that they've made to my credit card so I let them call me. So when I finally did speak to him, he was trying to give me a "resolution" to our "little" problem. I was fuming mad at his version of a resolution and was not using my "inside voice". :-) Luckily the kids were not in the room. You see - the issue here was that he wasn't going to refund me the money because the second flash has not reached their company yet. I was furious at being held financially responsible for a product that has been in "transit" for over 2 weeks now. He had tried to convince me it was my problem because should the flash get damaged or go missing during transit, who would pay for it?! I think that's B/S as it's UPS problem if a shipment is damaged or missing. Technically I never received the second flash therefore they should have refunded the money right away. It was their accounting department's mistake in the first place! Anyhow he was trying to get me to sign a document that said all was hunky-dory and we're best buds now (to counter my documents to them that said all was NOT hunky-dory and we're mortal enemies). :-) Ah...he thinks I'm new to this legal game...

Anyhow he's filed with a mediation company and I was contacted by them today. I filed counter paperwork. No biggie to me as last week I was in a vendictive mood and wanted to blast out horrible messages on the photography forums. I let my mood pass and didn't do it incase I would regret it later (in the event that my own reputation - and chances at winning this - is wrecked by emotionally charged comments on the web). :-) TriState is suppose to be a reputable company. They're classified as a Platinum Seller on Ebay - meaning they have processed over 3000 transactions and have a 100% satisfaction rate. I'm sure they mean well but just because they're reputable doesn't mean they can make mistakes, expect me to say "oh well" and sit back and wait for when it's an ideal time for them to give me my money back. Anyhow we back to playing the waiting game. The manager is also refunding my shipping fee for the first flash as a sign of good faith. I'm willing to retract everything once I see a refund on my credit card. I'm aggressive/assertive but not totally unreasonable...

planning

I've been in planning mode today. For the last couple of weeks I've been burning out at work participating in this corporate project. We're in product design mode right now so it's weeks of 8-10 hour days sitting in a meeting room and hashing out interfaces and definitions. I'm literally wiped by the end of week and feel like I can't bear anymore hours with the programmers. Being on the core project team has given me some good experiences in the world of project management but as of the end of last week I spoke to a couple of my managers and requested to be taken out of the design sessions. I feel that my time there is wasted as I'm not an SME and can't actively contribute. It's getting to the point where I feel like it's endless hours of sitting in a dark room watching the vendor go over fields on a screen and listening to people debate. Sometimes the debates are ridiculous as people get trapped with tunnel vision and circular thinking. This equates to multiple instances where I've fallen asleep or have to duck out for bio-breaks just so that I can splash some water on my face to wakeup. Programming is a VERY dry topic. Deeming this as not very good use of my time, the project manager agreed to relieve me of the next series of sessions. Getting out of the sessions, I was given the opportunity to do some mini-projects. Happily I accepted a BCIT Computing Career Fair event from the Education Department. :-) Finally...Social Club type of work in my "real" day-to-day job. :-) Excited to be doing something that I truly enjoy, I happily met with 4 managers on Friday and was given some information on what they wanted out of this event. The good thing is that I got to build my own "team" (with some guidelines) and can control content, presentation, etc. The team is now complete (thinking of people to be on the team was fun as I wanted to represent all "looks" of IT). I'm excited about getting to hang out at the BCIT to promote our company and work with an outgoing and diverse team.

Feeling like it was going to be a productive morning. I took a break from the BCIT stuff and did some Social Club stuff. I finished confirming with the Burnaby School Board for booking the dodgeball tournament for April 6th. I find the process for booking gyms at an elementary school or highschool to be cumbersome. The system is inefficient. The next couple of months will be busy as I'll be hosting a couple of events for the Social Club. :-) Lol - I've always wanted to be a bunny...now my mascot dreams will be realized! Hahaa...just kidding...it's my turn put on a hot/furry animal outfit for the Children's Easter Egg Hunt in March. In the midst of setting up these events and talking to vendors, I'm also focused on rebranding the Club so that it aligns to the new corporate marketing strategy. Lol - I've got ideas but not enough hours in the day to look into them, so some of the Social Club board of executives have a been delegated tasks. I think I'm just going to run for the President position in the Club this year as I already manage 80% of operations/events.

As the most visible Director for the Club, I'm sent/forwarded A LOT of vendor pamphlets/packages...aka junk. Most of the time I look at the stuff once and hand it over to Karen who is good with keeping track of our vendor information. I was staring at the stack of lower mainland golf course packages I got this month when I thought about my own wedding planning. I picked up one of the folders (for Redwoods Golf Course in Langley) because it had a bride on the cover so it sparked my interest. I looked at the maps, menus, pricing, etc and pondered about where I'd want to have my wedding. Getting distracted from "real" work, I went to my MS Outlook program and exported my contact list to an Excel format so that I can later on import it into Excel to populate the guest list. As you can see I'm easily distracted if I don't focus myself. After that it was back to doing "real" work and not playing around with planning.

Tonight I started my first "planning" type activity for the wedding. I went downstairs and dragged up a box of wedding magazines from the basement (my house had become a reservoir for wedding magazines, etc from all the weddings Kim Anh and I have been a part of over the years). I flipped through a couple of magazines, surfed on the web to see when the next wedding show would be, pondered about booking tickets but couldn't make the commitment so set the information in my daily planner for later. I also created my budget spreadsheet. I think I got more enjoyment from creating the pivot tables and formulas then thinking about what the spreadsheet will be used for. Lol - I'm such a geek! There are a couple of planners in the box but I prefer electronic versions of things (much easier to transport the info on my USB stick). I'm debating if I want to go to a wedding exhibit as they're all the same and we haven't really decided if we're getting married in 2008 or 2009. Oh well - doesn't hurt to have things planned/prepared early.

more birthday parties

Today Chicky and I celebrated Logan's 1st birthday. How time flies!! Andy and Michelle did a superb job of hosting the party. I love how Martha-Stewart-like they are. :-) The home was decorated with balloons, streamers and an impressive gallery of pictures taken throughout the year of Logan. Being a photo-enthusiast, I was especially interested in this wall display. Michelle created a Nemo birthday cake made of cupcakes. I would post a picture but didn't bring my camera to the party as Andy would be taking all the pictures with his pro-camera. :-) The cake was impressive and delicious. Kudos to Michelle's baking and imagination. At the end of the night everyone got to go through the gallery of pictures and select 2 pics to take home. Chicky and I had put dibs on a couple really cute images but they were snatched up by the elders. The ones we ended up picking were still adorable. I did notice that a lot of people aimed for the 6-12 month old version of Logan. I guess when you're a newborn - it's hard to portray your personality. :-) Most of his 1-6 month pics are of him sleeping.

On Tuesday night we'll be celebrating Brandon's second birthday with the family. He's growing up to be a very independent boy. :-) It's good to see that Mary's boys have their own very different personalities. It makes life more interesting when you've got a mix.

red egg & ginger

Lily's one-month party was on Saturday. We went to Pelican Restaurant on Hastings Street for the celebration. This is the same restaurant that they used for Angelina's one-month party 8 years ago. I haven't been to it in awhile so I was very pleased with the renovations and new menu. It's gone from a run-down-dim-sum location to a swanky all-about-presentation location. There was some mix up with the restaurant location and times but in the end everything worked out and we had a spectacular meal. Yummy - I was so full. After dinner we invited Minh's family to come over to our house to hang out. We ended up playing poker with the lot of them till 5am. There's been very little sleep as the main family had partied till 4am the night before and everyone was running on very little sleep. :-) Typical behaviour for our 'late night" family...

new beginnings

"The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination."

On Wednesday Chicky and I got engaged! It was a total surprise and very sweet. He wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day early so we met up at his place after work and he cooked dinner. After dinner I gave him his V-day gift (the Planet Earth DVD set) and he went upstairs to get me mine. He came down with a big bouquet of flowers. I was so happy as it's been like a decade since he's boughten me flowers. :-) They were so fragrant as "our" flower is the Star Gazer lily, also mixed in the bouquet was roses and baby's breath. He also handed me a midsize box. I opened it up and was confused by the car parts. I didn't know what to say as Chicky has given me car parts as a present in the past and I wasn't sure if this was my real gift or if there was another gift hidden inside (which he also likes to do). So I gingerly ask what it is and keep poking around for the possibly of a hidden gift. He said it was some kind of coolant thing for your car. I came across an envelope under some of the wires and a wave of relief washed over me. Whew! It wasn't a car part after all - maybe a gift certificate. I had been hinting that I've been overworked and in desperate need of a massage package. I opened the envelope and see a picture of a ring inside. I didn't clue in and looked over to ask Chicky what it was. He was down on one knee and held out a ring box. I was in shock and didn't say anything at first. Lol - it was awkward, romantic and amusing all at once.

We wanted to tell our family right away but his were out of the country and mine weren't home. It wasn't till last night that my family finally found out. I didn't really want to tell anyone till our family knew but I was bubbling with excitement so I told some coworkers the next day. Now it's time to let the rest of the gang know.

Thank you for all the well wishes! I haven't had a chance to talk to most of you in person and feel bad about that. I'm sure we can touch bases soon.

making the news

On Saturday I took my car into the dealership for it's regular oil change. On the advice of the savy technician - I opted for a coolant flush as well. This turned out to be a BAD idea. My family and I were on our way to attend Nyah's 1st birthday party in Vancouver when our car troubles mounted. The 5 of us were on the highway (big Mike was driving my car) when it started jerking. I was a bit startled - as we were going quite fast and the roads were slick with rain. After a few more jerks the hood started to smoke up. By this time there was another car honking beside us and pointing to our hood. Everyone in the car was surprised. Mike tried to maneuver the car over to the side of the road. This was a bit scary as there was heavy traffic and the car was continuing to jerk and smoke. The rain and smoke made visibility horrible. We finally got to the shoulder unharmed. The other car had pulled up in front of us and was trying to help out. Chicky hopped out of the car and went to the hood while Mike tried to turn on the hazards and pop the hood. We were making quite the scene on the highway. Not knowing what was going on with the car - I felt anxious. Should all of us had gotten out of the car incase it catches fire?! We took our chances with a potential fire because no one had an umbrella and didn't want to stand in the rain.

A few minutes passed by and a cop car raced past us with it's lights blaring and sirens on. It was in the far left lane and we were on the right hand side. All of a sudden it stops and backs up. Great - just what we needed...more attention drawn to our car. The cop car cut across 2 lanes of traffic and stopped everyone on the highway. It didn't stop there. As Chicky was leaning over to talk to the officer - 2 fire engines come blazing up. I think someone called 911 - not us of course. Confused and excited by all the commotion and hoopla, I thought to myself - this would be fun to take a picture of. Lol - I was riding in the back seat so only saw Chicky talking to the cops. When the firemen jumped off the fire truck and ran over to my car - I was sure sure that they'd make us get out of the car and thus face the onlookers. :-) Luckily Mike talked to the firemen. Apparently there was an accident infront of us that they were responding to and thought that we were the ones that were in trouble. Oh no...I taking up precious emergency vehicle response time! So they rushed off after confirming that my car wouldn't blow up on the road. :-) So we made it to News 1130 as the car that was smoking and causing a delay on Highway 1 eastbound. :-) Hope you guys weren't on the highway then!

I spent the next 15 minutes trying to get a hold of Nissan road side assistance so that I could get the car towed. It turned out that a hose had detached which caused fluid to spill out of the car and smoke up the way it did. Stupid dealership - this is the second incident in which their service department has caused me grief. With 3 of us on cell phones we managed to get Little Mike and Carol to come rescue us from the highway. I left my car for the tow company to pick up and went straight to the dinner party.

Nyah's birthday party was really sweet. Betty & Hanif hosted it at a chinese restaurant. There were 7 tables, our family taking up nearly 2 tables, and TONS of food. :-) Betty made some yummy cupcakes for everyone to take home and of course gift bags for all the kids. After dinner we went over to Betty's house to hang out. Chicky and I had to take a detour first to see if my car was towed to the right location. We couldn't find it at the dealership. I had to call them later that night to find out where it was. It's very difficult getting in touch with a call center after midnight. :-) So at 4am Chicky and I gave up looking for the car in Coquitlam and I suggested swinging by the Nissan Burnaby location. I had told the call center earlier that night that I wanted it towed to Nissan Coquitlam but since it wasn't there - I thought that maybe the tow truck guy got lazy and towed it to the nearest Nissan - which would have been the Burnaby location. Low and behold - it was in the Burnaby lot.

I have all day workshops so left Chicky to deal with the car situation today. Luckily after a long day of meetings, Chicky left me an email message saying that my car was fixed by the Burnaby location, brought back to Coquitlam and is ready for pick up. They're also refunding my money for the "servicing" they did on Saturday. So dumb. Anyhow it's all over now - I have my car back. I'll have to see how it runs tomorrow. I'm so happy that Chicky is there to take care of things like this. I was fighting with an Ebay company last week and was unmotivated to take on another annoyance. :-) Last week was a long week, with work draining me and dealing with an incompetent Ebay seller. But that's another story. Seems like my series of "unfortunate" events has not stopped. :-) Oh well - makes for good blogging....

rock on!

Spontaneous purchases sometimes work out! Chicky - having spent 6 hours playing Rock Band at Nick's house on Friday night - bought his own copy on Saturday. I was a bit weary at another game that he can play and I spend watching for hours. Turned out this was a pretty fun game as it's MULTI-PLAYER! It's one of the few video games that we can both enjoy. He loves hitting the drums and I get to live out my kareoke dreams. We played it for a couple hours into the wee-hours of the morning. We even made up a band and went "touring". Lol - it was fun creating alter egos and trying to improve our "talents".

We'll have to have the whole gang play this sometime. I can totally see Chris being into this game - he's such a natural performer.

so you think you can dance?

Instead of watching the Super Bowl on Sunday - I found myself surfing over to So You Think You can Dance. I LOVE dance shows - much more than singing competitions. In the spirit of making a fool of yourself in the privacy of your home - here are some moves that will sure win you some brownie points on the dance floor at the next wedding!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLGLum5SyKQ&feature=related

oh baby!

Today Chicky and I went over to see Josie and Gregory. He's such a cute baby. :-) The whole family is doing well. Katarina looks like she loves her new brother very much as she wants to kiss and hug him (though she's unaware of her own strength and has to be restrained by Josie).

Katarina is in that 'repeat-after-me' stage and it's adorable hearing her name things. She even showed us how much of a good helper she is by diligently wiping the coffee table. Lol - forgot to take a picture of that. So cute!

Josie is as chipper as ever and always the multitasker - happily breastfeeding Gregory and entertaining us at the same time. I think Josie will post more pictures of her boy once she gets settled into her routine. :-)

Lily time

On Friday night KA, Mike and I went up to see Carol and Lily. Lily is 3 weeks old now and getting more interactive. She's a healthy weight and is pretty strong for her age. She's able to roll over and lift her head up if on her tummy. I suspect she'll be walking by 7/8 months (like her sister Angelina).

Carol has been stuck at home for a month now and is looking forward to freedom. :-) She's following her mother-in-law's strict chinese traditions. It's so fun playing with Lily. She's curious and is beginning to mimic emotions. I hope she learns to smile as that's always an endearing trait. Joshua learned that from an early age and it's what makes him adorable.