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By Johnny, November 13, 2007 11:33 pm

Nothing much going on these days except some weddings and Halloween at work.

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By Johnny, October 28, 2007 10:26 pm

*EDIT 11/06/2007: More pictures from Peuv’s camera.

This weekend was our 5th Annual Halloween Costume Party held at Boston restaurant in Long Beach. This year’s theme was A Child’s Tale. I was the The Man with The Yellow Hat from the popular Curious George children book. I took the Best Male Costume award while my dear San took the Best Female Costume. She was the adorable Gingerbread Man. She hand-made her costume. This year’s party included the following characters:

• Ursula from the Little Mermaid (also hand-made)
• Little Red Riding Hood (partially hand-made)
• The surviving little pig
• Count Dracula (yes he was a folklore character)
• Tinkerbell from Peter Pan
• Jack & Jill
• Dorothy & Scarecrow of The Wizard of Oz
• Rumplestiltskin
• Waldo from Where’s Waldo books
• Snow White of the Seven Dwarves
• Cruela Devil from 101 Dalmations
• Jack of All Trades (Jack be Nimble, Jack and the Bean Stock, and Jack of Jack & Jill)

Thanks to Peuv for organizing and setting up another successful outing. Next year’s theme will be Heroes & Villians.

On another note, I was also honored last week for a Volunteer Recognition Award for my company. People were congratulating me. In a way I felt guilty because I didn’t think what I did was that great compared to what others do. I mean on my off time I’m helping the non-profit Asian Pacific Women’s Center redo their website and improve anything IT related for them. I actually enjoyed doing that kind of stuff and it was more fun than work to me. But I suppose I should just accept what they gave me and not be unappreciative. Man I’m still on this weird winning streak for the year.

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By Johnny, July 13, 2007 12:08 am

The organization that I’m part of, Asian Pacific American Forum (APAF) had their 1 year anniversary party last night. I spent my night talking to various members as well as to the non-profit, Asian Pacific Women Center. I’ve devoted my time for the last two months to change their website. I was rewarded tonight for the time I spent volunteering for our organization with the first ever Engagement Award for our SoCal hub.

Yay for me!

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By Johnny, April 12, 2007 5:44 pm

I don’t want to toot my own horn but here’s a note from my boss…

I am very pleased to announce that Johnny Lam has been promoted to Project Manager, B2B Systems. Over the past year, Johnny has already been playing the role of Project Manager and this is recognition of his work and role. Johnny has been the lead for various B2B and other apps.

Johnny has been a solid performer and a true asset to my team. Please join me in congratulating him.

Hip hip hooray!

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By Johnny, March 30, 2007 10:15 pm

For those who was in LA today, you may have seen the huge fire near Universal City. We came back from lunch and thought our studio was on fire. Here’s a couple of shots from within the lower lot of Universal Studios. I’m standing right outside a balcony at work with my camera phone.

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By Johnny, July 18, 2006 12:35 am

For all the riders out there, if you don’t normally ride to work on a Wednesday, make sure you do it tomorrow. It is the 15th Annual Ride To Work Day. This will raise awareness of all the motorcycles out there and show the benefits of reduced traffic congestion as well as reminding all the drivers in cars that they share the roads with motorcyclists. So if you have a bike go out there and ride on the 19th of July.

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By Johnny, April 13, 2006 9:19 pm

What started out to be a bad day ended up to be fairly decent. Constant complaining from users and endless array of tasks I needed to get done. A blessing in disguise since time flew after the smoke settled. The day ended with me working out with Zeus. Well not actually with him, but I was “overlooking” his work out. I saw him when I went in the gym but just kept to myself. He’s not as muscular as he once was when he was in WWF (now WWE). While leaving the gym the two trainers who was still on duty had Radiohead’s OK Computer playing over the speakers of the gym. Finding Radiohead fans are similar to finding out someone rides. There’s a bit of excitement and then mutual respect. Yup. That’s the excitement for today. End of week is finally here!

Edit: (11:47PM) Just saw last week’s OC episode and guess what was the last song? No other than Radiohead’s Fog (Again). Excellent!

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By Johnny, April 5, 2006 1:57 pm

Yesterday we had our annual Earthquake drill and yours-truly was the official Floor Warden. I was a bit nervous at first because I’ve never conducted this drill before. So when 10:30 AM rolled around, I put on my yellow vest and donned the whistle. It was suppose to be 2 person running our section of the floor, me and Mikhail. When the time came, Mikhail was no where to be found! I couldn’t wait and begin blowing my whistle and yelling “Earthquake Drill! Duck, Cover, and Hold!” Mind you I gave them early notice the day before that I was going to do this and at what time. But still I got gopher heads peaking out of their cube with puzzled looks. I yelled the same phrase again and some people finally got it and ducked underneath their desk. I walked around and made sure people where duck and covering correctly. I mean if they’re under their desk, they’re good. But I actually got some people who outright refused to do it until I just stood their and pleaded with them. Someone actually said, “You know if there was a real earthquake I wouldn’t be underneath my desk!” I was like, “That’s fine.” but thought to myself, “I don’t care if you run off. I mean if flying debris hits and injured you, you’ll be sorry!” It just didn’t make sense why they were so combatitive. I don’t make the rules and quite frankly, I just volunteered because I thought it maybe a good thing to be the person responsible for the safety of people on my floor especially I heard that during the 9/11 incidents, most of the floor wardens helped people get out of the building as efficient as possible. Some people purposely left their desk and came back later. I eventually made sure I came back and have them show me the duck and cover by themselves. I mean even though its annoying it is necessary to prevent further chaos in the event of an earthquake. I guess you can’t help those that don’t want to be helped.

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By Johnny, March 30, 2006 12:00 am

As young as 5 years old, I remembered how embarassed I was to not know a lick of English when I first started going to school. I was so embarassed that I had the great idea of following my friend who was ditching school and running back to his home on the first day of school. Boy did I get it when my dad found out! I have to say that was the last time I ran away from anything.

Growing up Chinese you were never good enough or smart enough to the liking of your parents. Its some kinda of reverse psychology in which they constantly bombard you with criticism and never tell you that you were doing good. They would rather see the proof from your teacher or from your report cards. Even straight A’s didn’t help. “What? You got an A-? What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you get an A+” Unlike many Chinese parents, my parents never boast about me or even my sister. When they used to talk to their friends about me and my sister, we were never regarded so highly. We’re always a work in progress. It was not until recently where I see a glimmer of how proud my parents really are. “They’re good kids. They do whatever they want.”

Outside of home, I tried very hard to get good grades and be a good student, son, and friend. But many times I am shunned for other weaknesses. Nothing I had control over at the time. I remember growing up in junior high and had people make fun of my shoes. I had Pro-Wings. For those of you who don’t remember, these were the shoes that had plastic soles and was sold in Payless Shoe Source. While all the cool kids wore their Air Jordans 3, I had a pair of shitty shoes. I wanted so badly to have a pair of Air Jordans that I bought a pair about 2 years ago. No it did not redeem the pain and embarassment I had endured for 3 years of my young life, but it is one of those moments where I can say that I conquered something. Maybe this explains why I am so driven to become financially comfortable to the point where owning Air Jordans didn’t really matter. I mean now I can buy as much shoes as I want, but I don’t and I choose not to. I control my destiny and don’t need anybody else telling me how to live my life.

In my first year of college, I was told I needed to take an ESL english course. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I first heard of this. I mean I was a B+ student in high school in which I thought I had a good English background. I mean I spoke to my friends in English, I’ve studied 4 years of English at a very demanding high school. Was I really that stupid that I need to be retrained in the English language? Fortunately, this setback was a blessing in disguise. A couple of weeks ago I came across some papers I had written in the early years of college and decided to read what I wrote. It was the most incoherent piece of work I’ve ever written. I’m glad I was retrained in this skill and gradually learned how to communicate better through writing. Obviously this is still a work in progress, but I’d have to say I’ve come a long way. This blog is the proof in my pudding.

Today I realized that I have another setback that I must conquer. This was realized while trying to demo my application to another group’s VP and trying to explain why we needed a request to fix a bug in our system. I had a difficult time trying to express my thoughts eloquently. At times I believe I think a couple of steps faster than I talk and as a result I have to pause to gather up my thoughts to speak. My mind is constantly racing much faster and I can’t organize my thoughts very well and would get caught in the “Ums” and “Ahs” of a point. I would feel myself flush with embarassment and throwing looks of “HELP!” to my supervisor in hopes of getting bailed out. Most of the time that works, but today I had nobody so I pretty much bullshitted my way out of it. What’s even worse is that they knew I did as well. I need to be more prepared when speaking or presenting to people. So today I want to take the first step in realizing that I have a problem and I need to be aware and most of all prepared for ALL discussions whether it being small or big. The only common thing with this new issue and previous ones is that I will need time for me to realize that I’ve moved pass this problem and finally gain the control of my speaking skills without ever feeling embarassed. I feel its a good thing to admit your weaknesses and to do something about it. Its this constant need to better yourself which should drive your motivation to constantly improve your current situation. Never be stagnant and feel sorry for yourself.

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By Johnny, December 21, 2005 4:34 pm

Finally my first day of vacation! I didn’t sleep until 6am because of fixing some issues for Drew’s website. It wasn’t his idea to make the fix but I was hell-bent on making the change. Ironically, it didn’t work so I had to rollback all my work before I went to sleep. After I was done “napping” for 6 hours, I was back at it again and finally fixed it.

I ran a couple of errands on my motorcycle and now I’m getting ready to go back to my folks with some boxes of my stuff. I’m glad I have almost 2 weeks to move completely out. This should give me plenty of time.