Liam is 5 months old today

Liam turned 5 months old today. After work this afternoon Ahmie, Liam and I went walking around Big Creek Park to enjoy a fleeting fall afternoon. Ahmie wanted to take some pictures of the park trails with the flaming foilage.


Father, Son and Mother Nature 

While walking around to find the paved walking path Ahmie took the picture above. He has grown so much in these five short months.

Been too lazy to blog lately.

I have been very busy with my new position as House Manager at Royalton House and have been pulling average 50 hour weeks the past three weeks. So between all that work and the kingdom of loathing, I have been a little too lazy to write enteries.

But here are some pictures of Liam from the past 4 months, enjoy.

I like trees.

I like trees. 

Here is a picture of Liam behind a tree at church two weeks ago. Ahmie did not want to take a generic picure of Liam laying on the grass so we leaned Liam against the tree here and he stood pretty well.

Daddy, name badges are yummy.

Daddy, name badges are yummy. 

This is a picture of Liam and I at Case Western Reserve University, for our reunion weekend 2 weekends ago. If you look carefully you can see that Liam is wearing a name badge with his name on it but it said class of '74 on it.

Hello Tree Again

Hello Tree. Again! 

This is a picture of Liam at church on a tree. The Sunday that this picture was taken the church was doing an animal blessing and we took our cat Artemis in for the blessing. Liam dressed up as a tiger (tigger) to show support for Artemis. Well we thought that Liam was a Monkey dressed in a Tiger costume. We thought people would get a kick out of the irony.

Hello Tree 

Fortune Cookie Analysis

I have a dirty little secret. I love eating Chinese food (duh, I'm Chinese). What I really enjoy when I go eat Chinese food is getting a fortune cookie at the end of the meal (by the way, fortune cookies are for Americans. Real Chinese restaurants don't serve fortune cookies at the end of a meal). I love the little messages enclosed, it is just fun to read and share at the end of the meal. Some people like to add the sophomoric epithet

... in bed.

However, I have always found fortune cookie messages to be good pondering points. Saturday night Ahmie, Liam and I went to a Chinese buffet restaurant to celebrate my Promotion. The buffet was cheap but not too good. Their fortune cookies were unpalatable. I actually spat the cookie out (which is rare for me, since I am usually not picky about what I eat) because it was really nasty tasting.

So my fortune cookie read:

You are interested in public service and would make an outstanding statesman.

Well I thought this really fit with my promotion since I will be working in a service which serves community needs. I am going to need to be a good statesman in order to win the confidence and respect of the people who will work under me.

Ahmie's fortune cookie read:

You will find an outlet for your creative genius and accomplish a great deal.

Well I think this is sort of obvious. Ahmie is a very creative person but her current outlet for her energy has been Liam and she is using her imagination to nourish, encourage and entertain Liam.

I hope for good fortune ahead.

Liam will be 4 months old on Sunday

It's hard to believe that Liam will be four months old tomorrow. Amazing how the time flies and is slow at the same time. As of two weeks ago Liam weighs 17 lbs and several ounces (which was a surprise to me). He is now 26 inches tall. According to the doctor she said that he is near the top of the growth curve. (I beam with joy at those words. God I must be a dad).
He now regularly turns over from his belly to his back and will scoot around on his back. His new favorite play things are linking plastic rings. Ahmie is still exclusively brestfeeding Liam and it is so cute when he falls asleep while feeding. He hugs Ahmie's breast. It's very sweet. I also enjoy watching him fall asleep when he is tired and all I have to do is talk softly to him and gently rub his head from the back of his head to his forehead. This triggers a reflex that babies have, which encourages the eyelids to shut.
Ahmie took Liam to Picture people for his 4 month pictures on Friday and she said some of them came out right and I will post those pictures as soon as I get them back. Some of you readers may say hey I thought Ahmie IS a photographer. Well we have a coupon and also they have props that we don't have so that is why.

Liam is 4 months old today, oh how time slowly flies.

Promotion

Tuesday I interviewed for a House manager for royalton house which is a small group home with 8 residents. Since starting with Northeast Care Center in the start of July I worked hard in the past two and a half months learning about how to run a group home as a Manager in training. So I was pretty much training for this position. I had only one other competitor for this position. That applicant is the current QMRP (Qualified Mental Retardation Professional) who has worked at the house for the past year of so. I thought the interview went really well although I did not feel very prepared for the interview. I dressed well, (I always do) for the interview and I think the old saying is true, as shallow as it may sound.

The Suit makes the man.

It's like a little ritual for me, preparing my physical appearance helps quiet my mind and focus on the interview ahead. The interview was fairly routine, questions about strengths and weaknesses, what I will bring to the position, how will I deal with staff. I addressed all the questions but my essential message was that I would be a good and effective communicator, I tried pretty much to address the question and tied it back to my central selling point. I think I showed a fair amount of ambition during the interview.

To be honest I will follow through with everything I said in the interview and communicate with the staff and residents to see what can be done together to maximize the benefit of staff and residents of Royalton House.

So Thursday morning, we had our monthly Admin meeting, which ran pretty routinely. At the end of the meeting Jessie the Executive Director asked me to talk with him for a second. He shook my hand and congratulated me on for being chosen for this position. I was shocked and really it almost felt a little unreal in retrospect. I have got to keep this information to myself because the other applicant has not been notified about their decision (the person should have been at the meeting but was not).

I am concerned about how the working relationship between the QMRP and I will be since we both applied for the position. I hope we can work well together.

Maybe communication will bridge this awkward divide.

Detachable License

License! Yay! 

I finally got my Ohio Teaching License. After a weekend at Sabrina and Eric's for their Handfasting, I got to check my mail at about 11ish Sunday night and found my License in a very unassuming mailer with Credentials Enclosed printed on it. I was expecting something larger and more official looking but hey I got my License.

I feel complete again. Even though I have learned about the fact that I had obtained my license last Friday. I did not want to proclaim this fact to everyone until I got the paper in my hand.

I feel like the narrator in this famous King Missile song if you replace the p-word with the word license, that would adequately explain my sense of loss and frustration of the past 2 months. However I don't think "Detachable License" would carry the same panache as the original.

I saw my License lying on a blanket next to a broken toaster oven. Some guy was selling it. I had to buy it off him. He wanted 22 bucks, but I talked him down to 17. I took it home, washed it off, and put it back on. I was happy again. Complete.

I am happy again. Complete.

3 years ago today

It started out like any other Tuesday morning, woke up at 6:30 am, showered, shaved, and ate breakfast, dressed while catching the morning news out the door by 7:30 am. Dropped my wife at work at about 8 am. Got to work at 8:30 printed my work for my Earth Science class. 8:45 I was prepping for my first period class. 8:55 am the bell rang, students herded in to my class. We start lessons, I think class went on for about 5- 10 minutes and I heard from one of my students coming late into class. A plane crashed into the World Trade Center. My students suddenly roared into talk and panic. I tried to reassure the class that there was probably some pilot error and that we should get back to our lessons. A few minutes later another student came into the room and said another plane crashed, and told us that Mrs. Clark had the TV on the news in the Computer Room.

Like my students, I had a mix of dread and curiosity, while I followed some students to the Computer room and I was shocked by what I saw. The picture of the Twin towers with smoke and papers blotting the blue out of the sky. I told my students to return to the class room, a few did but I did not force the students who did not want to go back to class. I tried to focus my students back to my planned lessons but we did not progress very much. None of us knew what was going on except that 2 buildings got crashed into and they are now burning. I spent the rest of the period trying to allay my students' fears. But during the middle of the period another student came in and said the Pentagon got hit by an airplane. Pretty much after that I tried even harder to keep my students on an even keel and told them to wait and not to be afraid.

10:30 rolled around and all the students crammed into the computer room and saw the footage of the collapse of the Twin towers, and the scene of chaos at the pentagon. My heart stopped and I felt sick. The rest of the day students trickled out of class as parents called their children to come home early. Nothing much got done that day. We spent much time talking about what was happening.

After work that day I went straight to my wife's school and talked to her and asked how her day was. She told me that she was teaching a student the Pledge of Allegiance to a student in ASL during the time the plane crashed into the Pentagon and expressed the same grief difficulty in teaching anything except consoling the grief and fears of students.

I remembered that the sky was the most brilliant hue of orange that evening, with no contrails in sight.

For about a year after that dark day I lit a candle for those who died every night.

I think I feel as many Americans did that day. We were united in our loss. Like many New Yorkers still to this day, I walk around with 2 tower shaped holes in my heart.

I took a minute and closed my eyes and reflect back on that day.

I guess you can't go home again.

Friday morning Ahmie, Liam and I helped transferred our title over to our friend Libby. We gave her our old ailing Saturn SL2; it still runs, but, just not like a dream. We recently bought a 96 Dodge Grand Caravan (yes a mini van. tho there is nothing mini about that car). Since we had to go to the title bureau which was located in downtown Cleveland and Ahmie also had to drive Libby to her doctor's appointment at the Free Clinic. Since we were half way to the Free Clinic already I wanted to see the Clinic since I had volunteered there during college.

I can remember the moment that I saw the poster advertising the Free Clinic's need for volunteers. It was the start of my sophomore fall semester, and Ahmie, Bryce and I were walking up the stairs of Sherman House, the dorm in which Bryce and I lived in. The poster was posted to the left of the door to our floor (2nd). I read the poster and picked up a card which was tucked into a pocket on the poster.

It was at that moment which leads to me achieving one of my life goals. I had since my turbulent teen years, always wanted to work on a crisis hotline. I guess I had always wanted to help other people. Hey you can't become an Eagle Scout if you don't want to help other people. I guess I always wanted to help in a meaningful way but stay anonymous.

During college (sophomore to senior years), I had volunteered at the Cleveland Free Clinic's Together Hotline. For 2 1/2 years I volunteered 4 hours of my Thursday night from 6 to 10 pm every week. The Together Hotline was a crisis counseling hotline we helped people from simple sex, drug questions to situations where callers were on the brink of suicide. From my fuzzy memories, I remember some chilling calls that I had helped callers through some rough moments of their lives.

The hotline room where the volunteers worked was a dim, narrow brick room in the basement of the free clinic. Tho' it may seem grim, the room was like a womb, the light was soft, and my heart was in the room when ever I was there. The yellowed white walls were covered with graffiti and sayings left behind by volunteers. There was a feeling of permanence, because during my time working there, the together hotline had been in existence for over 20 years. Part of my heart and soul was left behind when I moved to Virginia after I graduated from CWRU, I left with fuzzy memories of chilling calls where I tried to help others in need in very desperate situations, and times of change.

I was forewarned of the drastic changes that the free clinic had gone through in the past 5 years. In fact the old clinic is no longer there, it was torn down after a new clinic building was built adjacent to it. When I drove up Euclid Ave and under the RTA tracks. I saw the new building, and where the old building was, it is now a parking lot. It is a very nice looking building, Brick and concrete blocks and with large glass windows in the modern style. When I walked into the foyer/ admit area. The building was very clean and looks very much like a hospital admit area.

In the back of my mind I was comparing the old building with the new building. I remember that the old clinic was an old dingy brick building, with a very unassuming sign proclaiming that it is the free clinic, now there is a very artistic sign in front of the building stating that this is the Free Clinic. The inside of the Clinic in my mind was aging, dim and was well worn with plants everywhere. The floor was covered in old tile flooring that had a pattern of streaks of green with some other white streaks. The new admit area looks like any hospital admit area, bright, light colored walls, with light colored wood railings. I did not look at the floors.

I walked up the admin secretaries, and asked for the two people who I knew were the people in charge of the Together Hotline, Jane Loisdaughter and Deby Auberbach-Brown. The admin secretary calmly told me that they no longer worked there. In the back of my mind I knew that was possible. Then I asked the heart breaking question "Is the Together Hotline here anymore?" She answered no, again calmly. I thanked the secretaries for their time and I told my wife that I will go to work.

I don't know who the philosopher who said this. You can never cross the same river twice. That is true, the shape of the river changes, the speed of the flow changes, the water it self changes all the time and flows away. Perhaps it is silly of me to think I come back to the Free Clinic and think nothing has changed in the past 5 years, and that I would come back and walk in and see that nothing has changed. But, I was sad to find that the Together Hotline no longer exists. My heart ached, it felt like a long needle had been poked into my heart piercing my soul. I had hoped to come back and return to help other people anonymously when they need it most.

I now feel some need for some consoling but there is no one to call.

Liam's first purchase

Last night we went to Petsmart to buy a parakeet for Cindy. Cindy's old parakeet died a few weeks ago and Ahmie wanted to (let Liam) buy a new parakeet for her mom Cindy.

So as you can see


Do you take card? 

Liam made his first purchase.


They grow up quickly don't you think?

Making Red Eggs

Eggs 

Well, Liam is 103 days today and we will be going to a family reunion for Cindy's mother's side of the family and we will also be passing out red eggs to help celebrate Liam's first 100 days.

Making the eggs was very eerie. When I placed the eggs into the pot of water the eggs started to "chirp", while letting air that was in the egg out.

Another thing that we tried to do this weekend for Liam's first 100 days celebration was to purchase a pendant for Liam that is in the shape of a gold lock. The reason for the lock in Chinese traditions is to help lock in good luck for the baby.
We spent all afternoon Friday looking for a gold lock and on Saturday we even tried to go to Asian plaza (Cleveland's version of Chinatown, it is nearly as sad as DC's Asian block). Every place to no avail. When they do have a lock shaped pendant it often in the shape of a heart with a key and I don't think that is good representation for what we what to do with the pendant, and they look cheesy.

If they make pendants in the shapes of martini glasses, high heeled shoes and cell phones why can't someone sell lock shaped pendants.

I got gmail YAY!

After months of waiting. I got my very own Gmail account. Thanks to a friend of Lissa, Tim Joy.


Gmail screen shot 

Again to Lissa and Tim thank you very much.

Well, I could not get garvin@gmail.com. So I had had to use a different configuration of my name for my email address so I used garviny as my user name and in retrospect I probably should have used ghyeung, which I think sounds more dignified.

Oh well, maybe I'll change the account names when I get some invites.

Cute/ Not Cute

Cute or not cute? 

I bought these monkey candleholders a few weeks ago from Target. They were on clearance so I thought I should get them because Ahmie has been so infatuated with monkey stuff. When I bought them home she looked at me with a mixed look. She looked at me like I brought home a beautifully arranged bouquet of dead rotting roses. She liked the gesture but was not sure if she really liked the candle holders. She said the monkeys looked kinda scary; especially when tea light candles are placed atop each candle holder then it will look like the monkey's head is on fire.

So I leave it up to you, are they cute or not cute, please comment.

Awww look at the wee bairn

Well during this past week Liam became 3 months old this Thursday. He has really grown and have changed in these (short/long) months. Choose one, both are real to me. It has been 3 short months and have seen him change so quickly. Equally valid, I can't believe that it has only been 3 months seeing him grow and change. It has felt like a short lifetime.

In 3 month's time Liam went from:

This


Liam at 1 day old 

To This


Liam at 3 months 3 days old 

As you can see he has changed very much in the 3 month's time. He has gotten much longer and heavier (at least 16 lbs probablly pushing 17).

I really cannot believe that Liam is 3 months old. Time has gone by it seems, very slowly. The past life of Ahmie and Garvin seems so far away, even the life of pregnant Ahmie and Garvin seems well a whole "lifetime" away. It seems so long ago that we had that hell first week dealing with Liam's Jaundice. The move seems so long ago even tho we have lived in the house on Tate for less then 2 months. I think time must seem slower because time slows when I am with the baby.

I think life will speed up again as Liam grows, but I think I'll take it slow while I can.

LicenSURE Fun

Well Tuesday's fortune cookie did not prove to be prophetic after all. Really it just turned out to be a note wrapped around a stale cookie. I heard from the vice principle of the school that I interviewed on Thursday. He was really good and kept in contact with me throughout the week. But I was passed on because I did not hold an Ohio teaching license. I sensed some lament in his voice probably because I was a superior candidate but I just did not have the credentials to teach at that time.

A note about licensure, many states have interstate agreements with other states to uphold a valid teacher licenses from other states. The idea of this is so that teachers may move more freely from state to state. Originally I became a teacher in 1999 out of pure luck.

After I graduated from Case Western Reserve University I had originally intended to move to Virginia because Ahmie wanted to go to Gallaudet University in Washington DC to pursue graduate studies relating to Advocacy for the Deaf community. I had originally wanted to pursue research positions at the NIH in Bethesda Maryland. However I had landed on the wrong side of the river and too far from both DC and Bethesda. Ahmie was temping at the time and I was working at a company called Mediatech. I was working in the manual labor filling cell growing fluids in sterile conditions, and other warehouse work. Ahmie heard from a coworker that the school systems around Northern Virginia were desperate for teachers. So I gave it a go. I did not get much of a chance to finish my application until early mid August of 99. However I was interview right away and was hired to teach at Douglass School a week before school started. I was given a provisional license and then I had 3 years to get the education coursework to lead up to a full license. Suffice to say I did that.

Anyway...

Two weeks earlier I had received a letter from the state saying that I could not qualify for a teaching license because I did not have Student Teaching experience. I talked to the teaching licensure rep about the fact that I had 5 years of successful teaching experience. She said sorry, but you need teaching experience and that they don't waive that requirement.

That knocked me out of loop for a week. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO GET STUDENT TEACHING EXPERIENCE WHEN I WAS A REAL TEACHER FOR 5 YEARS AT THE SAME SCHOOL AND I GOT TENURE TOO. I resigned to myself that I would not be able to teach this year as a full time teacher. Because I was sure that I could be licensed somehow, and that this rejection for student teaching was a mistake. Then the following week I had the Interview. So on last Friday I took a day off work to call the state and heard in more detail that I was still not qualified to get a full teaching license because I did not have student teaching experience. I was however able to convince them to give me the name of a supervisor. So this mooring I called.

All weekend long I was dreading making this phone call.

So this morning I called the Center of Certification/Licensure
And spoke with a supervisor and she reassured me that I could possibly get a teaching license as long as my education course work was sufficient. That since I have taught under a full license the student teaching requirement should be waived. She told me to resend the licensee application attention to her, and she said that she would evaluate the application.

I was somewhat relived because it would have been impossible to be a student teacher and work with Northeast Care Center in my current capacity. Because student teaching was basically 5 months of unpaid teaching. All that time I would be at school for most of the work day and cannot work. If I need to take a few education classes to shore up my knowledge to align to Ohio's standards then that would be possible because I can take a few classes and still work full time. But of course the ideal circumstance is that I get my full license.

Let's hope for the best.

Chinese Lunch

I found out that a can sprayed out lubricant was what was the cause of the strange odor in my car. Unfortunately my lunch Cup o noodles were also in the trunk. I took one of the cup of noodles out of the car today and tried to eat it. The odor of the lubricant seeped into the Cup o noodles. So without anything else to eat I went and got lunch. Not wanting fast food take out, naturally I got some Chinese food. The lunch was mediocre at best.

The highlight of my lunch was a stale fortune cookie.

With integrity and consistency your credits are piling up.

Pondering upon that, I remembered the interview for Mid Park High School yesterday.

They asked this question:

What do you think is the most important traits you look for in a teacher?

I answered enthusiasm and consistency. Naturally I elaborated more during the interview.


I hope that this is a portent of good things to come.

Where do I live again?

We went around the east side of town this afternoon; we went to Microcenter, then to Half Price Books. Surprisingly we spent under 10$ there. Then we drove down towards Cleveland to Little Italy to visit Valentino's. This was a restaurant where I worked in the kitchen for a year and a half during college. I made a very good friend in Bill Lee who also worked there as the Pizza maker. He still works there and it was nice to see him again. It was the first time he saw Liam (he is one of the many people named William for whom he is named after).

It had been a busy night for him. With the athletes of the International Children's Games housed at the dorms at CWRU down the street. He was bogged down with orders for 25 pizzas and other kitchen orders when the restaurant opened for the night. It was nice to be back at Valentino's the familiar smell of dough sauce and the finished pizza. Anyway Bill treated us to dinner. We (as always) ordered a White Artichoke pizza, and their signature Hot Valentino sub. We tried to enjoy our dinner on the patio they have but the weather conspired against us.

It's weird while I was out and about today I keep getting a feeling that I'm seeing these stores but Think I am in Virginia. I'm like hey there is a Marc's (local discount store chain) I did not know they have ones in Virginia.
It is weird. I haven't moved back a whole month and it seems I am integrating and settling in Cleveland. But I guess we step back and regress in time abit.

I think this is something interesting about the human mind. In a universe that flows in one direction our minds can travel back to anytime in our memories. Like the smell of a familiar sent can bring back fond memories. We can immerse ourselves in or memories and catch up with the past in an instant. Sometimes the boundaries between now and yesterday blur and that is a strange feeling.

Blurring between the present and the past is weird enough I don't think I can comprehend blurring with the future.