So, in preparation for tomorrow’s Sheng Meng (a separate one from the two I had gone to last weekend), I decided that I’ll need my white light-weight jacket to battle of the UV-rays from the sun that I’ll have to spend a lot of time under tomorrow. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to launder it since last week’s sweaty Sheng Meng episode, so I thought I’d quickly throw it into the washer at my brother’s condo where I’ll be spending the night.

Even more unfortunately, my brother just bought some blue t-shirts and so I was being nice and did the laundry for him as well. Yah, you can probably guess what happened next… I now have a new light blue jacket, and also a new light blue towel (which used to be an uglier shade of cream.)

I spent earth hour outside having dinner with my family (MK… yum…) So, technically, we did turn off the lights at home during the time… does that count?

My brother & I continued to experiment with his juice extractor again today, and I think we found a very good recipe that we both like!

So, for about a liter of this mix, here’s the recipe:

6 carrots
4-6 apples
2-3 celeries
1-2 limes

So, I guess a lot of people have a tendency to fudge around the figures in the stories that they tell, and I find it very funny when I hear the same stories twice with different numbers in it.

For example, right after my aunt took my cousins for a trip to Australia many years ago, she came back to tell us that the kids missed Thai food so much that they had to order Thai omelet (ไข่เจียว) that cost 400 Baht after the conversion. (Well, of course, having been in the US for 6 years, I was definitely not surprised by the price tag.)

A few months later, when she retold this story to other family members (with me in the vicinity), the price of that said omelet suddenly went up to 600B. So, I just couldn’t help commenting to her that with the Thai Baht’s value increasing (against USD) on a daily basis (during that time), Australian dollars must’ve been skyrocketing to account for this difference in just a few months!!!!

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Last night, I had the TV on in the background as I was browsing around the net, and it happened to be tuned to this certain cable TV channel which was covering a certain live event with a certain someone’s speech (which, by the way, I neither endorse nor agree with, but that’s not the point of the story I’m trying to tell.) Anyway, somewhere in the rhetoric speech, a figure of 500 million baht* came up.

But of course, when my grandma recounted this story to my mom the next morning, the figure somehow became 5,000 million baht. A 10 times increase overnight!

*laughs* That must’ve been some kind of crazy hyperinflation to make the value of 500MB equal 5,000MB overnight! d:

* But of course, in light of what we know about people’s tendency to exaggerate, I don’t even think that 500MB was really all there in the first place… d :

I’m the type of person who can’t really play any game that requires any coordination between any of my body parts… (seriously, when I was growing up, I couldn’t even get through the first stage of the original Mario Brothers on the good ol’ Nintendo!!! That’s how bad I am…)

So, maybe that’s why, when it comes to my preferred form of gaming entertainment, I’d stick to something really simple and something that requires more mental than physical ability; something like sudoku.

Anyway, my addiction with sudoku had pretty much subsided when I got back home a while ago, but yesterday, my dear brother rekindled my obsession again by introducing me to this Simple Sudoku software. While I was very skeptic at first (“hey! I don’t need anything to help me solve a sudoku, and besides, I prefer the conventional method of pens and papers!”), I came to really like playing it this way.

I’m trying to not get too addicted to the game this time around… After all, I only need to play to get good enough to beat my brother, and that’d be the end of it for me. d :

I just came back from the first of a series of many “sheng meng” (aka. ancestor-worshiping at their graves) that I have to participate in this year.

The ones today was primarily for my mom’s uncle (my grandpa’s older brother) whose immediate family is now all in China. He just happened to unfortunately passed away while visiting my grandpa many many many years ago (long before I was born), and so my grandpa took up the responsibility of taking care of the whole “sheng meng” thing each year.

Of course, now that my grandpa is unable to make the annual trip to Saraburi, the responsibility got passed on to my mom.

Like last year, I accompanied mom on this trip. Unlike last year, thanks to my garmin, we were able to locate mom’s uncle’s location (and also mom’s aunt’s — who happens to be located in the same graveyard) without having to spend more than an hour getting completely lost.

To be honest though, I don’t really know much about the process of “sheng meng”. (Maybe someone ought to publish a Sheng Meng For Dummies or The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Sheng Meng or something…

But to be even more honest though, I don’t think I don’t really care much for the exact process. I just feel that it’s probably not the right idea to be too ritualistic to the point of being a hassle.

So, I’m just really glad that my mom agrees with me.

Anyway, there’s DEFINITELY a plus for going to sheng meng today though. The grave that we went to is practically next to my dad’s factory (correction: the factory my dad works at… he doesn’t own it or anything…)

So, I got to take another tour of his workplace (quite a privilege really, since access isn’t allowed even for the big shareholders who aren’t actually working there.)

The way dad operates his factory always impresses me, and it seems like every time I get to visit, there’s always something new that dad just implemented.

I probably should not get into the details of what his initiatives are, but I can definitely say that he is an important reason why his company has the highest return/dividend yields/margin/etc. among his peers in the industry. (Heck… most of his peers aren’t even making any profit right now, with all the increased raw material/energy prices and such the intense competition and all.)

Seriously… if anyone’s interested in topics about lean/kaizen/5S/anything-relating-to-cutting-cost… you really should come talk to my dad… he’s probably the best one around!!! (: