Thank You, God, I Am Cool Enough!

最近一直心情比较郁闷，工作又忙得不可开交。我的工作忙，都忙了快三年了，还没有缓过劲来。郁闷！好在我很喜欢我的工作，热情十足。按老爸的说法, 忙，也是自作自受了。 好久没有在家里兴风作浪，折腾一下。今天早上起来，边做瑜珈，边想做点早餐松饼犒劳一下自己吧。

我呢？或者说是想要物尽其用，或者实话实说是极尽折腾之本性，一定要对我的松饼早餐花样翻新。用做小甜饼的模具来做松饼。模样是有那么点意思，但纯粹费力不讨好。不予推荐。

这个松饼嘛，超简单。连厨艺101都谈不上。不过，要是谈到摄影技巧呢，一夜成材的捷径就是买个好相机了。嘻嘻，洋洋得意。。。

Haven't been in a great mood recently. It is what it is, and I've tried my best. This morning, I woke up and could not help wondering - what if I really feel happier these days than before? Boyfriendless, but happier in a way that I can truly be myself? Gosh! This thought totally made me feel taken aback, big time.

Blair and I went to lunch one day and chatted about the recently challenges each of us had at work and at home.

Marsha:"(Sigh)...You know when I need God to work on some overtime schedule for me, he is taking on vacation on me."
Blair:"What do you mean? You just had a great year at work."
Marsha:"Yeah...Work, friendship, family, everything goes great, but relationship goes to hell. "
With a big and sincere smile on his face, Blair said encouragingly:"Marsha, Hey, you cannot get everything going for you. That's not possible. Whatever challenges God put in front us is to help build our character."
Marsha:"Hmm, makes sense. But, what if I want to tell God, thank you, I think I am really cool enough, please give me a break?!"
(Both laughing out loud)

Blair, my co-worker and friend, is a solid character. I have never seen him showing any signs of frustration and anger even under the most frustrating, stressful and intimidating situation. It has been a blessing to work and joke with him.

Got a New Toy - A "Real" Camara

刚买了新相机，自然要显摆一下。连一碗炒的剩饭都能那么好看。洋洋得意吧！

同女友去吃韩国餐。炒的剩饭。

人生一大痛苦，痛彻心肺，是发现自己一直心爱的男人不值得自己心头付出的爱。

海带介麦凉面

痛定思痛，重新开始。一个人的日子也要过得精彩。总会遇到一个真正欣赏自己的人的。在此之前，要自强，自爱，跟随主的旨意。

红烧排骨，加了冬菰，竹笋，板栗。好吃不用商量。

Banana Bread with Almond

This is one of the cozy and yet silly night one can spend with close girlfriends, catching up over dinner and then shading tears together over a movie...(Sigh) Hopelessly silly! :)

Cerina and TingTing were here tonight. So, I thought I could bake them some tasty banana bread for desert. Because of the raving reviews from the food network, I picked this recipe but made my own revisions to make it healthier. They liked it so much that I packed the extra bread and send them home with it.

It tasted light, yummy and not as dense as those available in Coffee house. And, it's very easy to make.

Ingredients for the batter
1) 1 cup granulated sugar or Splenda
2) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, or Margarine
3) 2 large eggs
4) 3 ripe bananas
5) 1/2 cup skim milk
6) 1 tsp vanilla extrat

Dry Ingredients
1) 1 tsp ground cinnamon
2) 1/2 tsp nutmeg
3) 2 cups all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour
4) 1 tsp baking powder
5) 1 tsp baking soda
6) 1 tsp salt
7) Some almond

Baking Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.

Cream the sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

In a small bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. Mix in the milk and cinnamon. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Add the banana mixture to the creamed mixture and stir until combined. Add dry ingredients, mixing just until flour disappears.

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Set aside to cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove bread from pan, invert onto rack and cool completely before slicing.

Spread slices with honey or serve with ice cream

Banana Bread Recipe healthy baking recipe

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Henry Coe SP - Vasquez Peak (Gilroy)

My friends sometimes do accidentally get "Marshaed" (aka. get into some mischief, non-serious troubles, semi-disaster, as such). Unintentional action from my side though. But those things do happen from time to time. Bing unfortunately became a victim from a strenuous 12-pus-mile-long hike with steep climbing on Saturday. We went to the Henry Coe park, and believe it or not, made to the Vasquez Peak.

This hike is no joke. Given the amount of work-out I do, I naively thought I could concur this hike no problem. But, within the first 1.5 miles, we climbed about 1500 feet, then I knew I had set up my benchmark too low, way way way too low...

Crossing the scotching grassland, surviving the freezing torrent, ...

Bing:"Holly Molly! When this climbing will stop?". Marsha:"Bing, remember how Israelis wondered in the desert for 40 years because of their complains?! he, he...".

Crossing the creeks in style. I told Bing about all the strenuous facts about this hike, except one little detail which I myself did not notice from the hike description - there are 7 little creeks to cross along the way. Oh, well, it's a different type of hike we have never done before.

15 miles, 3500-feet-elevation (no typos here), 7-creeks, 3-hill later, we all advanced to the level of being super fabulous hikers. For some of them, this is an easy/recovery hike, But for us, we might as well stay in the hot tub for whole day the next day. :) Great fun!

Henry Coe SP, Vasquez Peak Hike at Bay Are
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Jokes about Psychologists

In my mind, some Psychologists are a bunch of people who let you talk on your own and figure out your own problems but still charge you by minutes. What a great job that is!

Here is another good one -

Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.
If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are depressed, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.
If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and about to bite off your ear.

Walk with God Funny Psychologist Stories
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"Award Winning" Girls Lunch

Rebeca and I thought that it might be a good idea to have a girls-lunch outside of the Church, for some good food, lovely girls-time-out and fellowship. This is a rather fun and dynamic groups of girls. It turned out that almost everybody has some fun, nail-biting, interesting trivia's to wow the rest of us.

The Gold medal has to be granted to Bing, the two-time survivor from life-threatening events, once from a car-turning-accident and the other one from a scuba-diving in Phillipans. She told us from her true experiences, those slow-motion flash-back while her car was tossing and turning on the highway is not something made up in the Hollywood movie. God bless her courage and positive attitude! Oh, before I forget, she drove Mitsubishi that day.

The Silver medal goes to Rebeca, the fearless leader of the gang, who by far has had the coolest job among anybody I know - test driving concept cars! She had it as a 6-month internship for material engineering, and did wrack a few nice cars during her internship. Her job definitely beats the ones for those of us who have to test drive a mind-bogging software that transacts purchase orders and invoices. Damn! This is not a fair world!

The Browns medal goes to Iris, who has the cutest fear of the world. She is afraid of walking on the grass, especially during the night. Quote-and-quote from her- "Who would know whether there is something dirty in the grass to mass up my shoes!" No other comments beats this one in terms of qualifying her as a true woman. Oh, she is getting married in May and also forbidden to make or eat any desert till then. Congratulations! And hang in there. Those walnut chocolate brownies are not good for you. :)

The special award of unprecedented ability to combine style and sense of practice goes to Sara. According to her - "I don't like the taste of tea much, but like the style of drinking tea. I guess since I have to drink some water-like stuff, might as well enjoy the fashion and style coming with it." Totally makes sense!

This is a group of advanced-Christians, except me, someone at her best can get a C- if I somehow manage to squeeze out some time during the week to do my homework. So, it's often nerve-wracking to answer those tricky open-end questions during the group discussions. Especially, I grew up in the communist culture where Chairman Mao's words were treated like the word of truth, and the communist party pretty much defined the answers to the ultimate question of the universe.

Just for the record, it's not the non-sense 42 from the hilarious book - Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy. If you haven't read it, I would highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy goofy and whimsical humors.

When it's my turn to answer those questions, I use a simple rule-of-thumb - if Holy Rebeca does not give me the "look-of-what-are-you-talking-about", I am doing just fine.

Dear God, thanks for blessing us with this great opportunity to get to know each other a bit more and a fun time together. Pray in Jesus name, Amen!

Is God Really Talking To Me?

Finally, I was done crying, or for better or worse, my inventory of tears needed some replenishment. So, I decided to make to the bible study in spite of being late and having a meeting with the India team within an hour and a half. I needed a break. Some fresh air, or preaching from God might help clear out my nose an hopefully my head.

As soon as I sit down besides the Holy Rebeca, as the discussion leader, she asked us:” What are the ways that people are unclean and rebellious?”
Clara read from her carefully prepared notes:” bitterness, complains, un-forgiveness,inability to forget…”
I was so surprised by the question and answer that I almost fell off from the chair. “I mean, seriously, My God, I asked you to talk to me and bless me with directions, but I did not expect you to be so blunt!" I kept my mouth shut, and could not help thinking “Is God poking fun at me or what?”

The Holy Rebeca continued: “So, explain how one’s sins defile one’s surroundings. “
“So this is the sin against God’s words. Should I confess?”
Thank God, when it was my turn to answer this question, the Holy Rebeca said: “You can pass, if you don’t want to share.”
Feeling temporarily relieved, I said “Pass.”

The Holy Rebeca continued: “Describe the symbolic ceremony for the complete removal of sin…”
At this point, I was just beyond baffled by those questions, as if God was questioning me himself for my sin. This time I answered: “Confession.” Unless one can accept responsibilities of wrong behaviors that hurt the loved ones, one can not get well.

So, My God, I confess my sins to you, and cry for your mercy. I am in pain and distress. May your salvation! God, please protect me. (Psalm 69:29)
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