putting our new kitchen to use by.cristina tuesday.august.28

pete's sudden urge to try his hand at cooking seems to have stirred up my desire to give domestic engineering another try ...

the sweet green mung bean soup i made for dessert tonight
(hey, i gotta start somewhere ;-P)

learning to cook by.peter monday.august.27

With most challenges I’ve come across, I usually put in my best effort and face the challenge head on. Cooking is probably the only thing I can think of where I gave up without even trying. It was always “oh, I can’t even cook rice in a rice cooker” or “it’s not convenient if you’re cooking for just two people”.

To Cristina's surprise, I’ve had the urge to give cooking a try recently. I think being away from home has made me miss the sort of food I used to eat as a kid. That feeling was really strong the last time I went to a Microsoft Vietnamese potluck lunch gathering. Everyone else brought in authentic home cooked Vietnamese dishes and I brought in Krispy Kreme donuts :-P. Eating the food that day was like that scene in Ratatouille - each dish reminded me of dinner when we were still living in our old house in Villawood.

Once I got it into my head that I was going to learn to cook, it wasn’t long before I settled on the idea of trying out one of my favourite dishes – banh xeo. I did a little research online for the recipe and Cristina and I stopped by the local Uwajimaya grocery store to pick up the ingredients ...

I found several versions of the recipe online, each with its own set of steps and measurements. The engineer in me thought the right thing to do here was to normalize all the measurements on the primary ingredient and then average everything else out. Who knew that cooking would be so mathematical? :-P

No, your eyes are not deceiving you :-P

I had enough ingredients to produce 4 servings. I messed up the first attempt which looked like it was dropped repeatedly before being served. After that I started getting the hang of it…

... and Cristina loved it :-D

our housewarming party by.cristina thursday.august.23

when it dawned on me that i had oganized our housewarming party to occur just 5 (week)days after our moving day, i thought ok, i'd gone mad. i had basically given myself only four nights to unpack our things, arrange all our furniture, get the house looking somewhat decent, and prepare food for a party of about 40 guests. what was i thinking?!?

but it turned out superbly in the end. of course, i didnt get much sleep during those 4 nights. I'd stayed up till about 2am each day trying to get as much done as possible. our guests during our housewarming couldnt believe how much we'd done with the house in a mere 5 days. it took a lot of effort i tell ya...

some photos of our housewarming ... courtesy of our friend, chen ...

bo - always willing to lend a hand with the bbq

hanging out in our garden

can you believe we're pulling this off?!?

chilling in the family room

drinks all around...

cheers to good times!

a sneak peak by.cristina thursday.august.23

okay, here are some photos of our house interior in progress ...

i still need to add punches of color here and there ...
(yes i'm a little scared of color heh)

i'm in search of modern wall art to go above the fireplace ... i've searched many places but no luck yet. (yes, i admit it - i'm incredibly picky :-P)

i'm looking for a rug to go underneath our new dining room set ... in light blue maybe? or would that be too much? hmm ..
(the dining set was a house warming gift from my parents ... thanks mum and dad!)

our family room with our new gigantic couch, which has proven perfect for our game nights!

so there's a sneak peak for now ;-). peter and i still have so many "projects" we want to do for the house but we're taking our time, and having a lot of fun with it all. we've got some nice ideas for the garden and we may just tackle it this weekend ... can't wait!

in decorator's heaven by.cristina tuesday.august.21

the excitement of buying a house in bellevue is still very much alive in me. i haven't been able to stop smiling for weeks now! our new place is a wonderful blank canvas and my dream come true! we have so much space to fill, so many walls that need accentuating and so many ideas running around in my head!

the home and garden channel on cable tv has been playing non-stop in our house. i can't get enough of it! my friend, stacy and i have been doing so much shopping for home decor that our hubby's get exhausted by the mere mention of our outings hehe. but they're definitely thankful stacy and i have each other so they dont get dragged to the stores instead :-P.

here's the blank canvas i'm talking about...

front view

living room

living and dining room

dining room

family room

eat-in area

kitchen

master bedroom

master walk-in closet (originally the 4th bedroom)

second bedroom

third bedroom

view of yard from house

view of yard from side

good luck with mowing pete! ;-P

so much to update by.peter monday.august.20

Cristina and I have been absent for awhile and it’s because we've been extremely busy. Boy, have we got a lot to update. To put it all in one sentence … we sold our Chatswood apartment, put our condo in Sammamish up for sale, bought a house in Bellevue, I quit Microsoft and started a new job at another software company.

Yes, I quit Microsoft! Why? Many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons was just job satisfaction, or lack of it rather. I found the work I was doing was neither challenging nor stimulating. I raised these issues with my managers and was given the opportunity to work on new projects. However, not long after starting the new projects my dev manager changed during a group re-org. A few weeks after that my dev lead left the team to join another Microsoft team based in California. I’m told re-orgs and people jumping teams are common after big releases, especially something as big as Vista. Another developer who was on the Visual Studio team for the past 8 years joined our team the same time. Just before my dev lead and dev manager left, they approved an early promotion for me which was in step with the new projects I was taking. The new projects allayed my concerns for a while but it was becoming clear that our team was going to have limited opportunities to work on projects that were challenging.

It was a strange feeling because it was the first time in my career where I lacked interest in the work I was doing. I spoke to Cristina about it and she suggested I either look for a new team within Microsoft or maybe even find another role outside of Microsoft. She pointed out that the entire time I was working in Java, I never once said that I lacked interest in my work. That was true. It wasn’t long before I found job descriptions being mailed to me from Cristina each day. It’s funny, because Cristina was also responsible for finding the CorVu job ad back in 2000. Of all the ads she mailed to me, there was one that really stood out. Sure, the money was good but more importantly, the technologies listed were the sort of technologies I wanted to work with. It so happened that the ad that appealed to me most was actually from the company she was working at! I thought to myself, wouldn’t that be funny if Cristina and I worked at the same company? Some people have issues about working at the same company as their spouse but I thought about the practicalities of the whole thing – transportation is going to be easier if we both worked at the same place. So I did the phone interview then went to the company to do a 3 hour face to face technical interview. The company was started by ex-Microsoft people so I had a fairly good idea what to expect. The interview went very well and I received a formal offer letter not long after.

Before I could start the new job, I had to switch my E3 visa to the new company so they had their lawyers file visa applications. Unfortunately, the process of switching visas requires you to apply at a US Consulate in a foreign country. The company wanted me to start as soon as possible so I was told that the fastest way for me to get the visa processed was for me to fly back to Sydney and interview with the US Consulate in Sydney. As much as I would have liked to make a quick visit to Sydney, Cristina and I were right in the middle of buying a new house so I had to be around. I suggested the US Consulate in Vancouver, which had a slightly longer waiting list but it was the only one that would work for me.

My appointment with the US Consulate was on a Monday so Cristina and I decided to make a weekend trip to Vancouver. Cristina’s friend Stacy decided to visit Vancouver that weekend too so we met up with Stacy, her husband Jack and their baby Hannah. Jack and Stacy showed us around Richmond, which was the Asian hub in Vancouver. Since Cristina had work on Monday and I might be required to stay in Vancouver for up to 3 days after the Consulate interview, she returned to Seattle with Jack and Stacy on Sunday evening. I turned up to the interview on Monday morning. Fortunately everything went smoothly and I was told to return the following day to receive my passport with the new visa. So for the rest of Monday and Tuesday morning I wandered around the harbour. The weather was great – sunny with a cool breeze. Vancouver is a really nice city…almost as nice as Sydney. I drove home on Tuesday, making it back in time to have dinner with Cristina.

With Hannah in a restaurant in Richmond, B.C.

With my new visa, I started my new job Thursday of that week.

So the other big news was that we just bought a house. To make it happen, we had to sell off our Chatswood property. The timing was really good too because we transferred the bulk of the money to the US when the Aussie dollar was almost at its recent peak. It’s really funny because the house we bought is only about 3 minutes from Microsoft campus. In fact, the previous owners were Microsofties and half the people living in our neighbourhood are Microsofties. We had a house warming the Friday before we went up to Vancouver. For many of my Microsoft friends, it was the first time they heard I was leaving Microsoft.

The long awaited day finally arrives!

When it was time to move, Cristina and I debated about whether we should use professional movers or do it ourselves. A friend of ours (who coincidentally, just left Microsoft to join Amazon) recommended a company called Starving Students. Apparently they were pretty cheap. But I decided to go one step cheaper and rent a truck from uHaul instead. About 10 of our friends from Microsoft and Intava (the new company) helped out with the move and we managed to do it all in 3 hours. We then treated everyone out to lunch to say thanks.

Our movers on the day

With the new house, I suddenly realised I actually enjoy gardening work. I’ve made numerous trips to Home Depot and armed myself with a lawn mower, edge trimmers and the like. Sometimes I come home from work and head straight to the garden to do weeding, trimming or watering. Cristina’s surprised at how much I’ve taken to gardenning. Maybe, it’s too soon to call…maybe it’s just the excitement of finally having a garden. Lets wait and see…