Worlds Coolest Nationality by CNN

Decide for yourself what nationality is the coolest on earth.
I did not make this up. CNN did.
Follow the link below and read about it:
http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/life/12-coolest-nationalities-earth-050844?page=0,1
1. Brazilians
2. Singaporeans
3. Jamaicans
4. Mongolians

5. Americans
6. Spanish

I guess I rank #4 in the world what about you guys?

Здравствуйте!

Здравствуйте!

(Hello in Russian) This week I was able to hear Munkhtur speak Russian. We went to a Russian market here in Murray and it was a lot of fun. It was filled with a lot of goodies that Munkhtur grew up with. We bought a few things and were given a free sample of bread. The Russian lady was really sweet and took off in Russian when Munkhtur started speaking Russian. I am officially a fan of Russian chocolate. Here is a picture of the goodies we bought.

Whitney and Kade have been staying with us for a while and it has been a blast. We inflicted all sorts of headaches on our husbands. Koob and Dexy have grown very fond of them and will be sad when they leave.

Today I booked my flight to Korea! I am super excited and just can’t wait! It will be great to get back. We still have to purchase our tickets to Mongolia. What an adventure. I am not completely sure at this point what we will do, but I am set on discovering the location of Chinggis Khan’s burial site. I also told Munkhtur’s mom that I want to see a shaman when I go and she told me I can just look at her and her yurt full of shrines. I will make sure to take lots of pictures. I am hoping to ride a camel around as well as see the reindeer people and hawk/eagle people.

Munkhtur never fails to torture the doodles as shown in this picture. My poor little guy.

Birthday Blast

Happy Birthday to my little sister, Whitney!
Yesterday we celebrated Whitney's birthday. Sam and I made dinner. We had lazy dumplings and fried rice. Most delicious! Mom provided us with a YUMMY YUMMY Yum cake. Here are a few pictures from our fun night!


Yum Yum - So good. Too bad you all weren't there! Missed out.

I had a specific request to discuss my childhood with an American mother while growing up in Asia since Munkhtur discussed his upbringing.

I guess I would have to say that my mom is somewhere in the middle between the stereotyped "Chinese Mom" and the "Western Mom". I would say she enforced a Western perspective and principle with Chinese Mom enthusiasm minus the degrading commentary. I was held to high expectations and when I fell below I was not "patted on the back" for trying my best, but rather asked, "what happened and why I fell behind."

I have always been an "A" student due to the affective learning technique that my mother and father used. They tied emotion to my success in the sense that I sought out parental praise and feared to disappoint. Clever technique when you have children that care immensely about what their parents think of them and their performance. This took me to the next step necessary to develop an emotional response in myself. Getting a "B" was an event that would send me into tears by the time I was in high school and not because my mom would be disappointed, but mostly because I was disappointed in myself. I valued doing well because my parents had taught me to value success.

One specific instance I recall was in high school. I had always played sports and one season I was out because of a groin injury, but my mom knew that I was always more productive when I was busier so regardless of my injury she had me go out for Volleyball. No, I did not play if I was in pain, but she still wanted me to attend practice and watch. Of course I didn't want to got out for volleyball because I wanted some extra time to hang out with friends, but I did it because she made me. Throughout the season I really began to enjoy it as well as recover and it helped me prepare for basketball season, which I cared about more. She knew what was best for me and enforced it. It may not have been piano lessons, which Chinese moms prefer, but it was knowing what was best for me and enforcing it rather than letting me do what I thought would be best.

She allowed flexibility to trying new things - sports, music, and JROTC, but there was no way in heck she would watch idly by if her son or daughter didn't succeed in what they had chosen to do or give up. Many a time all of us kids wanted to give up on something, but learned to dedicate ourselves through her persistence.

No, my mom was not as "crazy" as my Korean friends' moms, but she definitely could get "crazy" if we failed to meet expectations. I am only who I am now because of my mother and father. My mom, through example, has taught me how to be a strong opinionated woman, which I am continuously striving for and my dad has taught me to work and find joy in it, although I am still looking for that joy when I do the dishes.

I am immensely blessed and grateful for them and all they have done for me. Now, here is a cat picture!!!!So cute.

Parenting Style and Balance

Today I found interesting article from WallStreet Journal titled: "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" First of all before reading my post here please read the "entire" article on wallstreet and come back here and read my opinon and review on it. Follow this link and comeback to this post after http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

I would like to share my own opinion on this article and as well as my experience growing up. I believe in balance rather than being extremest (black and white) since sometimes life offers many gray areas. Like Mr Myagi from Karate kid says "Whole life has a balance" If you look at Western and Chinese(loosely used term, not just Chinese) parenting both have pros and cons. If we can find perfect balance between the two you will have success. I think Neither Chinese nor Westerners are extremest but they both have their primary ways of teaching.
Kinda like Republicans and Democrats. Anyways, let me list out some pros and cons here.

Chinese Parenting
Pros:Makes a child more disciplined and high expectations
Cons:Makes child more robot like

Western Parenting
Pros: Gives child more freedom
Cons:Everyone is special and therefore not high bar

I think the child needs both discipline and high expectations and also freedom to make their own choice and destiny.

Let me explain the above example with few little examples from my life. When I started school my Mom took my Academic standing very serious, she was very involved with everything I was doing. I am not sure whether it was because she was a college drop-out and wanted me not to be like her or wanted her son to be smarter than her friends kids or perhaps out of love for my well-being and future. Anyways, I remember very clear when my Mom found out that my handwriting was really bad. Handwriting was very important in the first and second grade of school. I think I got C or something and she cried all day and was really disappointed with me. I was so scared that she was crying and that I did something horrible. So she dropped 2 pounds of rice mixed with millet(shar budaa) on the floor and asked me to pick them up and put rice into one bowl and millet into another bowl. She said I could not do anything else until I finished that task.

She was next to me the whole time watching me pick up rice and millet pieces one by one as I was sorting. It took me so much effort and time to do it. I did not understand why she made me to do it, but I was afraid and did it to make my Mom happy or not angry at me. However, later I learned that the exercise helped me with my hand coordination and my handwriting improved significantly. Everyday she made me write page after page until my handwriting was perfect. When I say perfect I mean PERFECT, the kind that looks better than books. After much hardwork with me, I not only got A's all the time, but also I became the student with best handwriting in the entire school. I received so many diplomas, certifications, and prizes from my handwriting. I learned that when I make effort and dedication and hardwork for something I can achieve anything.

After that achievement I felt so good about myself and how I can do everything. If my mom just simply told me I had naturally bad handwriting and gave up i would never learn that lesson of working hard for your dream pays off.

Another thing she taught me was "high expectation" or should I say perfect expectation?. When I get home she always asks what grade I got that day. If I tell her B or lower she go crazy and tells me I need to get A and how lazy I am etc. So I was always so afraid of her I worked so hard and always got A and when I do get B I studied harder and got A. But soon when I got older she stopped asking me my grade. After I finished 5th grade or something when I come home after test or exam she will say:"You got A right?" How can you say no to that question. Because of this high expectation I did expect more out of myself and I always made myself believe that I was A student. and yes I did get A and say Yes to her questions. When I started my college she stopped asking me questions although I was still getting A's; By then I did not need someone to expect me to get A, I already developed my own high expectation model for myself and understood that the grades I get for those exams are for me and my future and started to be grateful for my Mom for her hard-work and not giving up on me when I had bad handwriting and not motivated.

I guess in my opinion Chinese Mom does not necessary talking about physical abuse and torture because that would be for her benefit. It is more like disciplining your child by any means(of course not to hurt them) for their good. We are product of how we are raised. Most of the fundamental lessons we learn are from our parents not from school.

Some kindergarten teacher's comment in response to Professor Chua was that parents are like government to its people until they grow up. Anyways it is up to you to decide how you want to raise your children. But if you find balance between the 2 different styles and take their pros and neglect the cons you will be a winner.

Pearl Snatcher

Hello World, (that was the first program I wrote, hehe)
I am just now recovering from a killer cold. Not fun, but part of life. I am feeling much better now and luckily I don't think I have made anyone else sick. I am starting my MBA classes and am excited. It is great to be able to get my MBA while working full-time and with discounted tuition.

I just finished reading "Three Cups of Tea" and thoroughly enjoyed it. Read it, if you are looking for an inspirational humanitarian. My book club, which was originally my Foreign Service Officer Test study group, is now becoming a book/cultural food club. We have decided we will go out to eat at places that relate to the book we are reading. Sounds exciting. :) I really love my FSO/Book and Food Club girls. We should be starting another book soon, but in the mean time I am reading "Ten Day MBA" for school.

We are doing well with our jobs and enjoying living so close to work. It is still way too cold here in SLC. I can't wait till the weather warms up.

I want to share a video of Dexy that I quickly put together. It is cute, so enjoy...


He actually steals my pearls. I am looking for them currently because he has hid them from me. That silly doodle.

Well, I will leave you with this great picture of 2 of my boys.

Mind Over Body

Last week was very fun except Ash got sick. we enjoyed golds Gym Sauna and jacuzzi.
I had interesting experience at wal-mart. I saw this E3000 router for $79 but i saw that
router anywhere else for 140 or more priced. So I was confused why WallMart listed it like that
so i went there and when i bought it, the price was 149 and telling me that it was misplaced
and ended up talking to one of their worker and manager and after a long discussion they gave me the router for the listed price. I guess according to their policy customers have right to buy the item for advertised price excluding people misplacing their products. I struggled to install new flavor of Linux several times on my old college dell 9300 laptop. It was my ambition to use fedora and have java development sat up on there. We decided to give Prince of Persia a try since we started it out and left it there and never picked up. I picked it up and it is not one of the great Prince of Persia, but i will wait and find out. Cannot wait for the tax season since I am hoping to pay for my airfare to Mongolia with that. Also last year i skipped Gym for
3 months due to my Net+ certification. In my previous post I mentioned about how fast our bodies adapt. So if you have not gone to Gym for that long your body becomes efficient and stop producing more nitric oxide and creatine and other stuff. So pretty much you become weak. I wont blame our body for doing that. It is actually kinda smart system. If it was famine time or something if your body was keep spending its resources like no-famine time, you will die very soon. But since our body is efficient and adjusts according to what we take into our body and what we do to it, we can survive famine a lot longer. But since here in US we do not have famine, our body also adjusts to it little different way. I drive more now than i walk since I got a car.
So what does our body do to adjust to that? Well the energy has to go somewhere, so it stores it in our body as excess fat for famine time. But famine is never coming to U.S which means i better hitting gym asap. Just 3 months of absence from GYM can make your body weak.
But luckily I passed my certification test and have more time now to hit GYM. It is interesting to note here that last winter my bench max was 315lb but now it perhaps my max is 225lb. It takes only 3 months from 315 to 225 or less. That is proof right there without any scientific experiment. On the other hand our body also adjusts really quick. If i start hitting gym again i can catch upto 315lbs. But this time it will take longer than 3 months. I think it doubles, somewhere around there. It will be interesting study to do for any EXS majors out there to study the correlation between break time vs recovery time. But anyways, all I am saying here is our bodies are efficient and smart so knowing that make the most out of your body.
Our bodies are capable of doing great things, we just need to be smarter than our bodies like Arnold used to say "mind over body"

A Little Blast From the Past...

Season’s Greetings,

After much labor we have deleted our 5 different inactive blogs and consolidated them to this one. As Munkhtur previously mentioned, blogging is one of our goals this year. I am excited to start, mainly because facebook is becoming lame.

I figured we needed some pictures, because every good blog has some. Here are some from Koob’s adventure to Petco.

Here is our handsome Koob checking out the merchandise.

He has such great taste in scratching posts.

He had a great time. Loved watching the parakeets, hated the mice. He started growling at them. He also growled at the cats that were for sale.

Overall, he did very well even though there were dogs around. What can I say, he is a man that loves to shop and you don't find many of those these days!

While Grandma Grandy was at our place before heading to the Philippines, she made a very good friend, Dex! She continuously reminded him what a "Good sleeping partner" he was and called him "beautiful blue eyes". It was quite adorable.

Dex has a way with people.

Well, I think I will leave you with the newest member of the U.S. Embassy of Manila and a great shot of Dex.

Enjoy...

New Year 2011

Ashley and I decided to write in our blog once a week consistently this new year since you know world will end very soon in 2012, we do not have much time but to write our history J. I am not a big fan of New Year resolutions, since i believe in creating new goals every month and week rather than a whole year.

But this year I created new 2011 year goal anyway. My new year goals are specific yet something you can work on each day for the

rest of the year rather than you accomplish it and done with it. There are many areas I want to work on and explore. What distinguishes me from other people is that I have like a computer "BIOS" in my brain that is easy to upgrade and update and change, a mechanism that is alive and constantly adapting to my surrounding(well Bios does not really do that) environment. I know it sounds confusing already. Let me try to explain it a little bit more clear. I like to experience the world from new perspective each time. Still confusing? I get bored when I do same things each day and stay in comfort zone all the time, when this happens I feel like I am not growing and not challenging myself and everything becomes “background” There are multiple ways to avoid this from happening I think.

1. One way is to move your physical location. When our physical environment changes we see the world around us with fresh new perspective which then leads us to discover new possibilities and discoveries you would not see otherwise. Example would be when I moved to US in 2001, my perspective and views of the world changed dramatically. Of course this method only works if you are open minded person. (meaning ready to try out new things always) Even changing your house or apartment to a new one also causes this effect at certain degree. Or even redecorating or rearranging your room can cause this. For example we got new world map, large white board and centered our study desk in our home office created better new environment to study. Humans are wired to be efficient so therefore when we see same thing over and over again we get used to it and adapt to it really fast. It could be a good thing for certain things, but also a bad thing most of the time. Good analogy would be our body. When we exercise often our body get use to that routine and when we do not our body becomes weak and used to that condition to be “efficient”. So ALWAYS be aware that what in your life is becoming “background” and what can you do about it to change that.

2. Another way to create growth and no damn (trapped water) from occurring is trying out new things often. Exploring new hobby or activity will not only make us learn new skills but also will expand our way of thinking. One example of this could be Ashley and I decided to pick one country a month to learn about it from speaking to that country people, eating at restaurant that serves that country food, and watch travel videos and look on the map and history of that country etc since we cannot travel right now. There can be numerous different things you can try and do or always wanted to do but never took time to try. Now is that time do not say “oh someday I will read all those books” or someday I will travel to those places, or someday I will go to Gym or someday I will try this diet. Stop that someday and start doing it right now. One approach to do this is experiment. Experiment with that new thing you are trying to do for a month and see what happens. If you like it stick to it if not just change it or do not do it. But I guarantee that after a month of trying you are most likely going to stick to it than quitting, because by now your body is already adapted to that change.

3. Let us call the above methods of growth and changing period as “Exploration” or “Discover” period. Exploration period will help us discover new perspective and growth opportunities. But we cannot always be in exploration mode. Since too much distraction can deviate us from our destination and goal. So the best model would be 35% Exploration and 65% “Sticking to your objective” this way you have perfect balance of not only discovering new things and making changes(or correcting our course), but also you accomplish or attain your goal by investing 65% of your time to it.

So let us make time on our schedule and daily activities by perfectly balancing the Exploration time and Working time. I will update weekly on how my journey of working on this my “new theory” I made up is going from time to time. Some of the good places to start my discovery can be TED videos, blogs of others, reading books(scriptures), meeting new people and traveling etc. Maybe help me to think of a name for my new theory. Maybe I will call it Liahona theory for now, since you have to look for inspiration and make adjustment to your journey constantly and follow the path and make readjustment and the cycle goes on. I guess what I wrote is really nothing new other than that we people sometimes forget to make changes and get comfortable in one place and do not grow. It is my invite to all people that please make course correction each day if not we can be on wrong path for too long that going back to that right path will be a long distance and we will never be able to make that transition. So act now quick and make necessary adjustment and corrections each day by being in discovery mode.