Modeling Gig 2: Brocade

Last year, there was a contest called "The Face of Brocade". Ten winners would win an i-phone. We were supposed to write in, 60 words or less, why we liked working at Brocade, and attache a 5 Megapixel picture. I didn't have a 5 Megapixel picture, so I submitted a grainy 2 Megapixel photo of myself and wrote a couple of lines about "Brocade is a great place to work because management knows that the success of a company begins with the ownership, commitment and pride of the employees"... It wasn't that good, and I don't wish to dig up my old email to quote myself.

Well, I didn't win, and when I saw who the winners were, it seemed to me like it was a photo contest. The winners all seemed to have submitted professional photos of themselves. However, I, and 9 others, were sent an email from a PR person saying that they were sorry we didn't win, but they liked our photo so much that we would be invited to a photo shoot. So off I went to a photo shoot. The photo ended up being on an internal brocade poster, and just this past month, ended up being the main photo featured on the external website. It was exciting to get this type of "visibility".

Well, of course, no one really notices the person on the website. Who actually visits the website? But it was fun to show off to my friends and my kids, who also told their friends about it.

Modeling Gig Number 1 - Adamson's French Dip

It's funny that within 6 months, I find a picture of myself on two different companies' websites. The first one is at Adamson's French Dip Sandwich website. It was taken while I was having lunch on a Friday with some of my friends from Zoran. There was a photographer there who mentioned that he would be taking those photos, and asked for our permission, and we said, "Sure!". I was pretty excited. I've always been a fame whore but never did anything substantial to deserve it. This time was not an exception, but was just due to a stroke of luck. It is funny to see the final picture, which actually looks quite natural... like a group of friends having a good time over a great meal. In actuality, we were friends having a good time, responding to the photographer's instructions to "look happy", but through my smile, I was saying the whole time. "This is funny! What should we talk about about? "

Sutter Spelling Bee champ!

Jacob won the school spelling bee today with the word, "exuberant". =)

We were given a 600 word list ahead of time, so it didn't seem like it would be too overwhelming to study for it. Word list A, word list B, and word list C. We went over the whole list once during Christmas break and narrowed it down to about 30 words that needed extra review. Then this past week, we reviewed those last 30 words. This past weekend was so busy, so we didn't adequately study. Even up to last night, I spent about 20 minutes with him and there were some words he mis-spelled. This morning, we spent another 20 minutes on it, and it seemed like he knew every word that I gave him. I knew that at the end, he just had to keep his cool and not get nervous because if he made a mistake, it would probably be due to nervousness.

The spelling bee was at 8:45am. Jacob told me that he didn't want me to watch because he didn't want me to be nervous. After I dropped him and Joanna off at school, I just could NOT resist. So at 9:00, I slipped into the cafeteria just to see what the spelling bee looked like. I caught Jacob spelling two words . "equal", and another word.

Finally, I decided that I didn't want to get Jacob nervous, so I gestured in the back to ask him whether I should stay or leave. He tilted his head toward the door, so I knew what that meant.

I drove in to work and had to send the principal an email asking for the result. Mr. Funcheon was kind enough to send me a reply at 10:21 telling me "JACOB WON! The winning word was exuberant".

At the moment, Jacob is resistant to the idea of going to the next level. I told him before the bee that I wouldn't *force* him to go. I was afraid he was throw the last word just to not have to go to the last word. In fact, during Christmas break, when I pulled him away from his friends for 20 minutes ONLY to study for the spelling bee, he said, "I knew I shouldn't have won the classroom spelling bee because you would do this to me."

Jacob had a good day

Jacob had a very bad first quarter at Sutter. I must have wrongly assumed that he was mature enough to do his homework every night without my checking, and that he would stop talking in the classroom , especially during silent reading or when the teacher was talking! Well, after weeks of me getting on his case, he finally had his first perfect week last week! All assignments turned in, and not once getting in trouble for talking. For some reason, I thought he had his homework nailed down by fourth grade, but his talking was getting to be more of a problem as he got more and more comfortable at Sutter.

In light of all this, I was very happy yesterday to hear that Jacob won the classroom spelling bee. The last time he had won was in 2nd grade. In 1st grade, he didn't even get to the spelling bee because he was spacing out during the pretest and wrote "know" instead of "no", because he was eager to show off his spelling. In 3rd and 4th grade, he was nervous and made a mistake. This year, he finally took my advice to pretend to write the word on his hand before he speaks it. I told him he's very visual and a very good speller, so that technique works for him.

Also, he told me that at recess, he made two lay-ups. I'm so glad that he's been getting into basketball now that he's been watching the Warriors on TV . He's finally working on his basketball skills at school instead of playing handball!

Need to check Joanna's homework still....

Last week, Joanna's homework was to write a special note to a secret friend as a Christmas present. The "secret friend" was drawn out of the hat. As usual, I am supposed to look over her writing, but again, I forgot to double check her writing. After all, she did a very nice job coloring her paper and making an acrostic out of the secret friend's name.

Well, yesterday, I received a note from her teacher:
"Hi Elaine, I wanted to let you know that I am going to send Joanna’s letter home today and have her redo the assignment. This assignment was intended to give the students practice writing a friendly letter. This letter will be a gift for someone. Joanna is a strong writer and a kind person, but her letter does not really show her strengths. Her assignment was to write a letter to her person telling them what is great about that person, and why it is great to have them in class. Please reread her letter and have her redo it. Thank you,Christe Farnum"

Well, as soon as I went home I read her letter and was shocked and embarrassed. Here is what she wrote.

Dear Aryanna,

Your a good friend (well sort of a friend). When you're happy, I'm sort of happy. When you're sad, I'm sort of sad. When you laugh, I sort of laugh. When you leave early, I want to leave early. When I sed "when you laugh, I sort of laugh?" Well, it's not my fault! Whenever anyone laughs , I laugh.

Sincerely, Joanna


Well, I was really embarassed, that I let Joanna turn that in. Miss Farnum must think I am a monster! What a terrible mom, that I am.

When I complained to Joanna that she didn't do a good job on her letter. She said, "I know, I didn't spell "said" correctly."

Chocolate Milk Battle

On Sunday, there was a party at my house, and one of my friends who attended was a pediatrician at Kaiser Santa Clara, which is the closest major doctor's office near Sutter. I thought this was a great opportunity for Jacob to ask my friend for his support toward his chocolate milk campaign. I was terribly shocked to hear that my pediatrician friend who against bringing chocolate milk back to school. His only reason was because of the childhood obesity epidemic. I still believe that reasoning is ridiculous. Here are my reasons.

1. chocolate milk has been around long before the childhood obesity epidemic
2. kids are not drinking milk at all now that they don't have achoice, so they're losing out on calcium and vitamin D ( 1 in 5 kids have rickets)
3. my friend mentioned that kids can get their calcium from othersources, like cheese and vegetables, but I said that the school is not providing enough of that
4. my friend mentioned that concerned parents like me could give my kids chocoloate milk after school, but I was saying that when I was on free lunch growing up, my mom didn't buy milk for us at home. Also, I want my kids to drink milk at lunch time.
5. It's the cheetos, soda, and lack of exercise making kids obese, not chocolate milk.
6. the school is still serving juice which is RIDICULOUS

Teaching Delayed Gratification

Jacob won and is now Student Council President!

Today, James and I fulfilled our promise to Jacob by taking him to the Apple Store to buy an i-pod nano. While we were there,we noticed that the i-pod nano was really very boring compared to the i-touch. The nano only played music. The i-touch was a video camera and gamer,book reader, AND music player on top of that. Of course,there was quite a price difference. The nanon would have cost about $140 while the i-touch cost $220. James and I were thinking that the i-touch was a much better piece of technology for the price. Jacob and Joanna were also having fun with the i-touch samples. We decided that we would give Jacob an incentive to upgrade. The condition was that he had to first fulfill his campaign promises in order to get the i-touch. It was about delaying gratification because, regardless of whether he chose getting the i-pod or not, I would make him fulfill campaign promises. But I thought this would be a nice incentive.

It was really hard for Jacob because he was not used to delaying gratification, but with the help of a really cool young, male Apple salesperson who was talking to him, telling him that the i-touch was worth the wait, Jacob chose to wait for the i-touch. I really hope Jacob will appreciate the value of delayed gratification because of this!