On My Mind

Every year in the spring or summer, some ants show up in my house uninvited, from nowhere. I usually spread some baking soda along the edge of the wall where ants are found. After a while they disappear. The trick works, easy and inexpensive.

Today I found some more tips on how to get rid of ants in the house naturally on the Dollar Stretcher website. I want to share the information and save the link for future reference.

Today I submitted three photos to the 2011 Woodbury photo contest.

The 13th annual “Focus on Woodbury” photo contest runs Aug 1-31. Entries are due by tomorrow, Aug. 31.

Woodbury Magazine is accepting submissions in the five contest categories: People, Nature, Pets, Events and Activities, and City Landmarks.

The contest is open to people who live, work or go to school in Woodbury. Entries are limited to three per person.

Winning photos will receive gift certificates to Woodbury restaurants and businesses, as well as the chance to be published in the Woodbury Magazine or city materials.

Residents also have a chance to view the photos online September 10–30 to vote for a favorite photo to be dubbed Readers’ Choice.

According to Woodbury Magazine, more than 330 photos were entered into the contest last year.

This week I will be busy with volunteering.

Last night I  attended the Woodbury Days’ Volunteer Meeting at Eagle Valley Golf Club House to receive my volunteer T-shirt and instructions.

Today I helped at my kids’ Lake Middle School during the Back to School event.

Tomorrow I will be at Minnesota State Fair and volunteer at the MnDOT booth.

On Saturday I will be at Woodbury Days and help at the Information Booth.

I have been volunteering at Minnesota State Fair and Woodbury Days for several years and enjoy doing it.

I like meeting new people and talking with people. Volunteering gives me the opportunity to go out and be somewhere with others. I often feel I receive more than I give when I volunteer.

On Aug. 11, I was notified that my application to the 2011-2012 State of Minnesota Emerging Leaders Institute (ELI) was approved. I am one of the 30 state employees and emerging leaders from across state government who were selected to participate in this leadership development program, designed to help participants become successful and effective in the workplace.

Today I received the confirmation and welcome letter. The first session and opening ceremony will be on September 15th at the State Capitol Rotunda.

I feel very grateful for being accepted into the program. I am so looking forward to this great learning and networking opportunity.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” — Hebrews 11:1

Pastor James Baker, senior pastor of Peace Church Ministries in Mesquite, Texas, is the guest speaker at the Family Conference at Spirit of Life Bible Church this weekend. It was a great conference.

Today morning he talked about what faith is.

Faith is —

• believing when I don’t see it
• obeying when I don’t understand it
• giving when I don’t have it
• persisting when I don’t feel like it
• thanking God before I receive it
• trusting even if I don’t get it

Dear Readers,

Lately due to a system glitch, this blog has experienced problems with correctly displaying the contents. I have notified Forum Communications – the company who owns the website Areavoices.com. Hopefully the problems will be fixed soon.

Thanks for your patience.

During the school year, the topic of bullying comes up quite often in emails from schools or school district, or in projects my kids do for class. I never paid much attention to it. Because in my mind, it’s not something I need to worry about. Whenever I ask my kids whether they are bullied by others at school, they always say no. My kids are good students. They have never caused any trouble at schools. Their teachers always comment that they are great students to have in class. So I never thought they would bully others. But on Monday I witnessed something that made me pause and think about bullying from a new perspective. On Monday my kids started a middle school camp provided by our school district. There is bus pick up and drop off at Middleton Elementary School. Because of the state government shutdown, I am out of work and am able to drive my kids to and from school for the camp every day. I also provide rides to two other friends’ kids. On the first day as we were leaving the school parking lot for home, the boys noticed that one of the campers they knew from previous class was riding home on his bike. They called his name from the van and started laughing at him. That made me uncomfortable. Suddenly I realized that it was a kind of bullying, even though they didn’t do or say any nasty things. But what they did could make the boy feel uncomfortable. “Stop it, boys!” I told the laughing boys immediately, “This is bullying. You are making him uncomfortable. Instead of laughing at him, you need to respect him more for what he is doing. He takes care of himself and is more independent and courageous than you are.” And they stopped their laughing right away. Honestly I respect the boy more for his independence and courage to take care of himself without relying on his parents providing transportation. It doesn’t matter whether he chose to bike willingly or had to bike because his parents couldn’t drive him. Learning to be independent and responsible at an earlier age help build character and develop resilience. Back at home, I reminded my son again that it was wrong to laugh at the boy. He said he didn’t start it, but it didn’t matter. Even if he didn’t start it, it was still wrong to be a willing participant or a spectator who did nothing to stop bullying. I realized through this experience that bullying among kids are more common than I thought. I should pay attention to not only whether my kids are victims of bullying but also whether they bully others. Yes, I knew my two kids fight with each other and bully each other often at home, but I didn’t realize that they could be bullies at school as well. It’s a wake up call.

I have been reading a book on leadership titled “A new breed of leader: 8 leadership qualities that matter most in the real world” by Sheila Murray Bethel. In a section about wisdon from the past, the author talks about John Alexander Tyler who wrote about democratic societies’ evolution in the mid-1800s. I found the following description on societal evolution very interesting. SOCIETAL EVOLUTION The average longevity of formerly great civilizations was about 200 years… and each of them passed through the following evolution: From bondage to spiritual faith, From spiritual faith to great courage, From courage to liberty, From liberty to abundance, From abundance to selfishness From selfishness to complacency, From complacency to apathy, From apathy to dependency, From dependency right back to the bondage where it all started. How far along this cycle have we moved? Are we somewhere in the abundance-selfishness-complacency-apathy phase? What do you think?

I just came home from a 10-day vacation to San Diego with a side road trip to Los Angles and Las Vegas. On my flight home from San Diego on the 4th of July, I had a really brief and insignificant conversation with a Delta flight attendant. But somehow it taught me a lesson and stuck in my mind. So I would like to share. On my Delta flight to San Diego 10 days ago,guests were asked and given the choice of either having a tiny pack of peanuts (weight 0.42 oz.) or a pack of Biscoff (two small cookies). But on my flight back, I noticed that the flight attendant didn’t ask anyone for his/her choice. He automatically passed out three items to everyone – peanuts, Biscoff and mini pretzels. I was impressed by this male flight attendant’s generosity, or Delta’s generosity on this 4th of July holiday. So when he came to my seat, I had to make a compliment. I said: “Thank you for being so generous today!” He was surprised by my compliment. So I explained why I said so. He told me that on their morning flight, they give out less because they have to save for the afternoon return flight. Now he had a lot left. “Heck, why shouldn’t I give out more? I hate it when someone asks to have both peanuts and cookies and a flight attendant says no.” I said “Thank you” again. Before he turned away from me to serve the next customer, he asked me:”Would you like to keep this can of tomato juice?” Nowadays whenflight attendants serve drinks, they usually pour you a small cup, but not give you a whole can. I guess my compliment of his being generous prompted him to be more generous. Isn’t thata simple example of what it means”Generosity begets generosity?” When you do something for another person who expresses appreciation in return, you will want to domore for him.

If you ever need information on Minnesota women legislators or Minnesota state laws affecting women since 1920, a new website with the Minnesota Women’s Legislative Timeline and Minnesota women Legislators Past & Present can be very handy.

The interactive online tool was created by the Legislative Reference Library of the State of Minnesota and the Office on the Economic Status of Women, funded by a grant from the Minnesota Historical and Cultural Grants Program.

The timeline features  state laws that were significant milestones for women in the state of Minnesota and shows the legislative progression of women’s rights in Minnesota since women earned the right to vote.

For more info, check out the press release or contact Robbie LaFleur, Director of the Legislative Reference Library,  at robbiel@lrl.leg.mn or 651-296-8310.

Last Saturday I got my layoff notice from the Minnesota Management & Budget dated June 10, 2011.

I am just one of about 42,000 state workers who got the letter in the mail with the bad news of the impending shutdown effective July 1, 2011.

But the effect of a possible shutdown reaches far beyond the 42,000 state workers.

I heard that just from MnDOT alone, over 6,000 certified letters were mailed out to contractors and vendors to inform them about the possible shutdown. (The number increases to over 10, 000 in the next week)

Yesterday I was talking with someone from my church about the government shutdown. She told me that her business that provides technical training has already seen the negative effect of the possible shutdown because no new students are enrolling in the program due to the uncertainty with the state aid situation.

I know managers at state agencies have been heavily involved in contingency planning in the last few weeks. State workers are worried about their jobs, insurance, payments, etc. The uncertainty has caused anxiety and low productivity.  

The cost of preparing for a possible government shutdown, both visible and invisible, is hard ot measure. For sure, it is a costly process.

It seems like a waste of money at a time when we should be more resourceful.

In preparation for the layoff, I applied for unemployment benefit today as suggested by the union. I hope I do not have to use it.

Whatever happens in July is out of my control. I can’t do anything about it, so I won’t lose any sleep over it.  

I am glad that I have lived my life with the principle of  saving for rainy days so I don’t live from pay check to pay check. If I have to depend on my biweekly check to survive, then I would be in panic mode now.

But I do worry about my family’s health insurance. Without my job, we will have no health insurance.

I can feel the heavy burden that a possible shutdown has on people and see the Domino effect it has on businesses.

I support Governor Dayton’s balanced, compromise plan which protects our families and communities from devastating cuts.

I hope our Democratic Gov. Dayton and the Republicans who control the state House and Senate can reach an agreement before July 1 to avoid a shutdown. Each party has to give up something and make some compromise in order to get the budget resolved.  

My way or highway is no way to go.

A friend called me Friday afternoon and asked: “Would you like to come to my house this evening and have hot pot dinner together? I just thought about this.”

That’s what we did. My family of four went over to her house after work and had hot pot dinner with her family. The kids played together while we adults sat and talked. 

Hot pot dinners are popular in China, especially in winter. It’s an easy way to get together with friends and have a meal together – no advance cooking is necessary. You only need to prepare some meat and vegetables.

My friend prepared some raw thin slices of beef, fish, shrimps, meatballs made with pork, shrimp and tofu, mushrooms, seaweeds, tofu, and bean thread noodles.

I brought some vegetables – squash, spinach, lettuce, Napa cabbage, Bok Choy and cilantro.

As the dipping sauce, we used soy sauce, sesame paste, chili oil and fermented bean curd.

My friend set two pots filled with boiling broth on the dinner table – one pot with spicy ingredients for adults and another one without for kids. 

With the hot pot, each person dips and cooks his own food in the hot pot briefly or picks whatever he wants from the pot.

Hot pot meals are easy, tasty and convenient. It’s a great way to get together with friends and enjoy a meal and conversation.

We thought it was just past 10 pm when we left my friend’s house, but her clock was running more than an hour behind. When we got home, it was almost midnight.

Time flies by so fast when you enjoy your time with friends.

We had a beautiful sunny Saturday in Twin Cities. It felt like summer. 

It was a perfect day for being outside enjoying the nice weather.

I went to the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta Parade in St. Paul with a friend and our kids. The Parade startet shortly after 10 am. It begun at Plato and Wabasha, and then went down Cesar Chavez Street, ending at Cesar Chavez and Ada.

This was my first time going to the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta Parade.

Actually I was more interested in the Living Green Expo at the State Fair ground than the Parade, and intended to go after the Parade, but the kids were hot and tired from walking. We ended up going back home after the Parade.

Here are some photos from the parade. My favorite ones are the library bookmobile and Cub Foods shopping cart.

Every year South Washington County School District offers some free summer programs through its Office of Equity and Integration.

My two kids have participated in the Valley Branch Nature Camp and Eagle Camp in the past. This year they both are old enough to participate in the GAAP Middle School Program and the Eagle Camp.

I am excited to have these summer opportunities and looking forward to sending them off to the camps, taking a trip and spending some relaxed time at home during the three month summer break.

For more info about the summer programs, visit the South Washington County School District website.

If you have time and want to do something fun and creative, you can play with Wordle.

Wordle is a visual way of displaying text. It’s a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. They are customizable by color, shape, and prominence.

The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

You can enter text or a website/blog url on the “Create” page, and Wordle will make a design with the most frequent words in the text, ignoring filler words like “and” or “the.”

Wordle is free and easy to use. 

Wordle is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license and can be shared and remixed.

For more information on Wordle, and to create your own word clouds, visit http://www.wordle.net.

I created the word cloud image shown at the top of the post using mostly the words from my blog post 100 blog posts, 100 words.

Here are a couple of examples I found on the Internet that I think are pretty cool.

Today I attended a presentation at Mn/DOT on social media by Lee Aase, Director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media. He shared how Mayo Clinic used social media as an effective and inexpensive marketing tool to promote its services, win new patients and stay connected with its customers.

Lee Aase also shared some examples of using social media to garner national attention.

A fun example was about an old couple in their 90′s playing piano at Mayo Clinic. The video posted on Youtube generated 7 million hits. The couple ended up being interviewed on Good Morning America.

Another well known case involved United Airlines breaking Canadian musician David Carroll’s guitar and didn’t take responsibility for it. After several months of going nowhere with United Airlines, David Carroll posted a song titled ”United Breaks Guitars” on Youtube which became a hit. So far it has generated 10 million hits. He had posted two more songs – United Breaks Guitars Song 2 and United Breaks Guitars Song 3. United Airlines gave in and offered to compensate him for the damage.

The story was widely covered in news media. I remember reading it. It even has a Wikipedia article.

You can read Lee Aase’s 35 Social Media Theses on the SMUG website. SMUG stands for Social Media University, Global. Aase created it for the purpose of learning and sharing social media. Check it out. You can learn a lot there, without paying a tuition.

Yes, social media tools such as blog, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc. are powerful. Use them to benefit your personal and professional life.

Tonight I went to the North Heights Lutheran Church in Arden Hills with my daughter and other friends to watch the 2011 Easter show “All Things New“ about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.   

It was quite a big production for a church, featuring a cast and crew of over 300 people, live animals and a flying angel.

I was very impressed by the scale of the production, and by the talents and dedication of the people involved. They are volunteers and not professional actors, but they have done a great job.  

Everything went smoothly. There were even volunteers directing traffic in the parking lot.

The show will continue on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays till April 23.

A coworker of mine living in St. Paul often sends her son to low cost or no cost camps in St. Paul when there is no school. A friend of mine who is a teacher in St. Paul public school told me that families with school age kids have a lot more such opportunities in St. Paul than we have in Woodbury. 

Now St. Paul has a new website called Sprockets. It is a one-stop shop and a network dedicated to the after-school and summer programs for kids and teens in Saint Paul. It’s a collaboration of community organizations, the City of Saint Paul and Saint Paul Public Schools.

I wish every city would have something like this. It would make parents very happy and make their job of finding after-school, out-of-school and summer programs so much easier. 

There is one summer camp – Eagle Summer Camp- in St. Paul that even Woodbury students in grades 5-8 can attend. 

Here is more info about the Eagle Summer Camp. It’s a very popular summer camp and fills up quickly. If you are interested, register early.

The Eagles Summer Camp is being held the week of Monday, July 25th through Friday, July 29th.  Hours are from 8am to 3pm.  The camp is funded by 3M in partnership with the Roseville Area School, South Washington County Schools, and the Saint Paul Public Schools; priority in registration is given to students from these districts through April.  Transportation to and from the camp is provided to students from these three districts with funding from the state through its Equity and Integration Program funds.

[I am writing this post at midnight on April, 1. This is not a April Fool's joke ]

Today my son received his copy of “A Celebration of Poets” (Fall 2010), published by Creative Communication. He had his first poem published in that collection.

When I said to my son: “Andy, you are a published poet now.” He didn’t seem to be as excited and proud as I was. 

Last September my son and daughter each entered a poem to the poetry contest by Creative Communication. To my surprise my son’s poem was accepted for publication, but not my daughter’s poem. I thought my daughter’s poem is a great one. 

Later I found out why. The reason of rejection was she used the word suicide in her poem. There are certain words they don’t want to have in all the poems they accept, suicide being one of them. It doesn’t matter that my daughter used the word in a funny way.

I was disappointed as well as my daughter, but I could understand the reason behind. I thought the editor was very responsible and responsive.

Here are my son’s published poem and my daughter’s unpublished poem, well both are published here now   to kick off the “April is National Poetry Month!”

Green

The opposite

If you have ever walked in St. Paul, you might have seen sidewalks paved with poetry.

I saw them and walked on them. I thought it was a very cool idea.

If you are interested in writing everyday poems for city sidewalk, you can enter the 2011  Sidewalk Poetry Contest for a chance to win one of the five prizes of $150 and citywide honor! Winning poems will be permanently published in city sidewalks.

Sorry you have to be a St. Paul resident to be eligible. I wish we could have this in Woodbury too.

Even though Woodbury residents can’t enter the contest, we can still write poems.

Yes, there is a poet in each of us.

What’s your vision for the transportation system in Minnesota for the next 50 years? What’s your expectations for transportation today as well as for the next generation?

Mn/DOT (Minnesota Department of Transportation) wants to hear from you – citizens of Minnesota.

On March 24, Mn/DOT launched Minnesota GO. Through Minnesota GO, Mn/DOT is engaging Minnesotans from all walks of life in both online and in-person activities to help craft a transportation vision for today and for generations to come.

From now until August 2011, Minnesotans have the opportunity to get involved through online activities, advisory groups, public workshops, hearings and other targeted outreach.

Please check out www.minnesotago.org to participate and also for updates, discussion questions, surveys, and videotaped interviews on a range of topics. You can watch a short video about Minnesota GO.

A 29-member steering committee representing public agencies and community organizations will help review public comments, advisory group discussions, and quality of life research. The group will then draft and recommend a vision statement and set of objectives for Mn/DOT senior leadership to adopt.

At the end of the process, your vision will be incorporated into the updated statewide multimodal transportation plan and other investments and plans for roads, rails, transit, airports, ports and trails. Your input will help Mn/DOT prioritize among the multiple goals, objectives and expectations and help create a transportation system that will sustain and connect a vital economy, healthy environment and strong communities.

You can help shape Minnesota’s transportation system.

Let your voice be heard through Minnesota GO. You can also connect via Facebook.

Maybe we should add another season – pothole season.  

Right now we are in the pothole season. The potholes can be quite annoying.   

Last week after I stopped at the Sam’s Club gas station, I took the road between Sam’s Club and Staples on the right side and Caribou Coffee and M&I Bank on the left side toward Commerce Drive. That road through the parking lot is very short, but full of big potholes, with gravel spreading everywhere.   

I didn’t dare to drive through. I had to zigzag to parking lot on the right and left to avoid the potholes. Otherwise I was afraid my tires would be damaged.   

As I was driving, I was thinking: “They better fix these potholes quickly.”   

But who are they?  Is the city of Woodbury responsible or are the businesses (or the property owner) in the area responsible? Honestly, I was not 100% sure.    

Later I found out from the City that Woodbury is responsible for all publicly owned city streets. But for the privately owned properties including the commercial properties such the Sam’s Club, Tamarack or Woodbury Lake shopping malls, the property owners are responsible. If you find potholes in their parking lots, the property owners need to be contacted.

You can find the contact information from the City. They will also contact the property owners on your behalf directly.  

For your reference, I listed below the contact information for reporting potholes in Minnesota.  

For city streets in Woodbury -

Call the Woodbury Public Works Department at (651) 714-3720 or send an e-mail to publicworks@ci.woodbury.mn.us. For more information, visit the website.

For privately owned properties in Woodbury -

You can use the general contact information for the City of Woodbury as listed above. Or you can also contact Matt Novak, Code Enforcement Officer in the City’s Inspections Division, at (651) 714-3543 or mnovak@ci.woodbury.mn.us.  

For Washington County State Aid Highways / Washington County Roads –  

Call the Washington County Public Works Department at (651)-430-4300.     

These roads have signs that look like this: 

For Interstate and State highways -  

Contact Mn/DOT (Minnesota Department of Transportation) using this Pothole Reporting Form. This website also contains links to the county and city websites.  

Interstate and state trunk highways such as I-94 and MN-36 have signs that look like this: 

An unimaginable tragedy happened to a friend of mine 5 years ago that I just found out today. 

For about two years (1999-2001), my family lived in a Burlington apartment on Energy Park Drive in St. Paul, Minnesota.

One of our neighbors in the apartment building is a Chinese from Shanghai. Qinuo was married to a jewish doctor named Edward Van Dyk. Their boy Carl was the same age as my son. So they played together. When Qinuo’s mother came to visit from Shanghai, she became friends with my parents who were visiting as well. 

After the Van Dyks moved to Dartmouth College around 2000, we lost contact.

Today I talked to Qinuo’s mother in Shanghai on the phone and heard the horrible tragedy that happened to her daughter. She was surprised that I didn’t know about it, because the news not only appeared in the US, but also in Shanghai.  

Thanks to Internet, a quick Google search brought up the sad story that happened on Sat., May 27, 2006. Apparently, it was a big news and reported by the news media including AP, CBS, Fox, etc.

Even if I heard about it at the time, I probably won’t have made the personal connection. 

Edward Van Dyk killed his two young sons, Spencer, 4, and Carl, 8, by throwing them off the 15th floor of a luxury South Miami Beach hotel before leaping to his death, while the couple was on vacation to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary.

The full story can be found here:

Man who killed his sons, self left no note (USA Today)

The Miami Herald

This is an unimaginable tragedy no matter whom it happened to. But when it happens to someone you personally know, it becomes even more tragic and unimaginable.

I can’t imagine what my friend has gone through in the last 5 years. I am praying for her. May God bring her peace, comfort and strength as she faces every day and rebuilds her life.

I also pray for her mother. She said she still cries and can’t sleep whenever she thinks about it. She worries about her daughter. A tragedy like this will break every mother’s heart.

God bless the mother and daughter.