I-Ting --> Sophia

I finally became a US citizen 2 days ago after coming here for 6 years!   That also means that I'm officially Sophia now. haha I was so not used to signing this new name, so on the day before my citizenship oath ceremony, I was practicing signing it like a hundred times XD Somehow I didn't really feel anything different after the ceremony, nor anything emotional. If there is, it's only the change of my name and the fact that I can vote now. =P These days I've been busy with changing my driver's licence, registering for vote, changing my name/opening new accts in a bank, applying for passport, getting ready for work, etc. Lots of documents to be read and lots of forms to be filled out before starting to work =( That's prob why these days I got tired and passed out at like 8-9pm and woke up super early. 0_o

The 4-week Taiwan trip was sooo awesome!! Got to see so many relatives who I grew up with and meet up w/ old friends. The food there is so cheap and yummy. Everything just seems so familiar yet a bit different. Cities have become more developed. People have become more trendy. Speaking of that, the girls in taiwan are sooooo skinny and pale! -_- Most of them dress nicely and have pretty makeup. They are all like carry brand name handbags. seriously, every 3 out of 5 girls carry like Gucci, LV, or Channel handbags -_- Salesmen in department stores told us that usually it's a bit cheaper to buy them in Taiwan than in other places. That's why so many Japanese tourists come to Taiwan and buy a LOT.

Another thing I like about Taiwan...or Taipei more specifically is it's MRT (something like metro or subway in the US). It's farely new so it's a lot nicer than the ones in NY and some in Japan. On top of the door, it shows which station it's approching and the nearby 2 stations. It's also announced in 3 languages (Mandarin, Taiwanese, and English). They are building MRT in Kaohsiung now so there's construction everywhere >< Hopefully it'll be done soon.

One thing I'm still not used to is the fact that they don't give u plastic bags to carry whatever stuff u buy anymore. If you don't bring a bag yourself and can't carry everything by hand, you have to purchase plastic bags. They started this a while ago, even before I went back 2 summers ago. I guess this is more environmental since plastic bags take so long to decompose. But then we were so short on trash bags that we asked my dad to bring back lots of plastic bags hahahaha.

Some photos taken while I was in Taiwan.

 cousin's dog, diamond. haha just got shaved. bosco said diamond's ugly ><

 my dearest grandma and i outside of a club. can u believe she's already 96?!

met up w/ middle school friends twice. they're the ones i played bball with. miss them!

met up w/ harry and ken..or nick in Taipei. ate soo much that day XD too bad ariel, bob and alison couldn't come =(

 with cousins/aunt/uncle @ a steak house in Taipei. Took a boat around some ports in Kaohsiung w/ other relatives.

waterfall outside a restaurant, xin du li, in Taipei. The MRT i was talking about =P

Hong mao cheng (previously a British consulate) and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. such a tourist

Dan shui in Taipei

6th year anniversary

just realized yesterday (7/11) is actually my family's 6th year anniversary of coming to the US  and luckily, my parents received their US passports yesterday!!! waaah only me left and i haven't even become a US citizen yet. oh well, going back to taiwan and enjoy my last longER vacation first ^^

came back from Pittsburgh yesterday too. haha my plan of surprising bosco TOTALLY worked!! ^^V  i should have taken a video of his facial expression MUAHAHAHA. he looked sooo  and couldn't believe it's me until 20 min later *orz*. it's the slowest reaction whatsoever!!! had lots of fun this past week and got to see some ppl too ^^

 bosco is only one year old weeeeee

 what's behind me and yan? 0_o

 kinda blurry. there are 6 of us + keith the photographer

arrrgh toooo manyyyy email in my andrew account to delete!! >< i have been trying to forward/delete my andrew email for so many days and there are still prob 1000+ email.  and somehow andrew is really slow so it takes forever to forward the ones with attachment -_-

a little incident happened today. i was driving my mom around running errands and got kinda tired. so when she went to the supermarket, i just totally passed out in the car with the AC and radio on, but turned off the engine. not sure how long it had been but by the time she was finally done, the AC was off and i couldn't auto unlock the doors and start the engine!!   ---- the car was out of battery!!!! >_< i had to call my dad to come to pick us up and went to buy a jumper cable with him to jump-start the car. oh well, at least now our car is back  so those of you who are driving, here's the procedure of how to jump-start a car (...if you don't know it). http://www.carcare.org/Electrical/jump_start.shtml

hehe drive safely ^^

hehe found this pretty interesting on cnn.com. it's a list of 10 people who don't matter after cnn has selected 50 people who influenced the world the most. i only copied and pasted some that i found funny and that cmu students, or i should say CS majors in particular, would prob disagree with. diana, i guess u can tell us if the first one is true or not

Let's face it: The head of the world's biggest software company is a lame duck. Sure, Microsoft's board still backs Ballmer as CEO, and he still has a core of loyal executives within the company. But with longtime partner Bill Gates stepping away from his day-to-day role to focus on saving the world, and Ray Ozzie playing the role of resident visionary, the CEO job just won't be as much fun. And with employees and investors still in a froth over the company's low share price, it will be increasingly tempting for Ballmer to follow Bill's lead, and make boosting the shares someone else's problem.

Three years ago, he likely would have been near the top of our "50 Who Matter" list. And even now, we still feel a little twinkle of joy each time a Netflix DVD arrives in our mailboxes. Yet despite our deep affection for the company, its raison d'etre itself - the DVD - seems destined for the endangered species list. It's simply not clear that anything Hastings has built will give him much of a leg up as the industry shifts toward video-on-demand and other forms of digital distribution. Hastings has created an amazing system for shuffling around 120mm plastic discs, but online rivals such as iTunes and MovieLink seem to have the momentum as we head into the future.

Sun's newly appointed CEO is full of ideas - some of which he airs on his blog - and he's making much-needed cuts in the company's bubble-bloated workforce. But none of that will be enough to change the underlying dynamic: Sun's server business has become a commodity, and the company is not making enough money from software like Java to supplement its shrinking hardware profit margins. Schwartz's latest push - more energy-efficient servers - is rapidly being copied by other computer makers. Sun has always dared to be different, but soon it will have to join the rest of the industry and start making some money too.

It's a testament to the success of Torvalds's open-source ideas that he's on this list at all. His Linux operating system is fast, cheap, and out of control - and that's entirely by design. While Torvalds still oversees any changes made to the innermost core of Linux, most of the innovation is now done by others, and commercial businesses like Red Hat and Novell increasingly steer its future. Although he can claim credit for popularizing one of the most powerful ideas ever to sweep through the software industry, Torvalds's project has matured to such an extent that it's largely outgrown its illustrious creator.

In entrepreneurship, timing is everything. So we'll give Zuckerberg credit for launching his online social directory for college students just as the social-networking craze was getting underway. He also built it right, quickly making Facebook one of the most popular social-networking sites on the Net. But there's also something to be said for knowing when to take the money and run. Last spring, Facebook reportedly turned down a $750 million buyout offer, holding out instead for as much as $2 billion. Bad move. After selling itself to Rupert Murdoch's Fox for $580 million last year, MySpace is now the Web's second most popular website. Facebook is growing too - but given that MySpace has quickly grown into the industry's 80-million-user gorilla, it's hard to imagine who would pay billions for an also-ran.

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gonna go to NYC from 6/30 to 7/2 with family and hopefully meet up with a bunch of people ^^ let us know if u're gonna be around so we'll include u in our mailing list haha. alan will spam u while he's at work

Thanks to Sally, now i feel i'm really weird XD oh well, haven't done much lately except cleaning my room and organizing my laptop. dude, just deleted 600+ email in mulberry and there are still so many in the folders =P ohh, on a side note, my permanent email address will be itings@alumni.cmu.edu or itingshih@gmail.com so shoot me an email. now that i'm used to sorting different email in differnet folders, i'm kinda bugged by the fact that gmail can only create labels but not folders. feel a bit overwhelmed when i open gmail haha. talked to a couple ppl on gmail talk since we were bored. hahaha it's pretty gheto

while i was cleaning my room, i discovered that i got so much free but kinda useless stuff from all those career fairs in the past couple years. now i have about 5 staplers, countless keychains, countless pens, and lots of other random stuff XD but hey, i'm so jealous at HC. why couldn't they give us more useful stuff like...an iPod? XD ohhh and Diana, i still lost my IBM pencil and don't have any now!!! ><

so finally i've decided that i'll go back to taiwan for sure from july til mid-august. i only got to went back for 3 days before going to japan and 4 days after japan and it was raining most of the time! hopefully i'll get to meet up with more taiwan friends and cmu friends this time. sigh don't have much vacationa after i start work ><

hehe apparently lots of ppl, including me, have been pretty bored. (i'm even updating my xanga and checking my subscriptions now!!! 0_o) and my entry has no important point whatsoever  oh well, time to watch more NBA finals =P maybe you should find something to do too instead of being bored and reading my xanga hahaha. byeeee~~