Red Doors

I just saw a screening of the movie Red Doors by Georgia Lee at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as part of the Aspire AAWIL Asian American Women in Leadership Conference. This movie is fantastic and everyone must go see and promote this movie. There was a Q&A session afterwards with the producers Georgia Lee, Jane Chen and Mia Riverton. They told the amazing story of scraping together enough money to make this film from friends, family and credit cards for a total of $200k. This small budget is by no means apparent in this professional, beautifully shot, moving independent film. The story is excellent, the acting superb, the music top notch, and Mia Riverton was simply stunning. I would not have guess that she is half Chinese. It makes me wonder what Dova will look like as an adult, as she barely looks Chinese now!

This movie will be opening in theatres in NY and CA, but if enough interest is shown, it will come to the rest of the country including the Boston area. It has won well-deserved awards left and right. It will be a must-buy item on DVD as well.

The conference itself was also excellent, and I told these guys to charge more money ($35? People won't take you seriously)! I can be pretty unmotivated at work sometimes, especially having to manage a "difficult" person (to put it mildly), but this did inject some more thoughts about leadership into my thick skull. I especially enjoyed talking with Dr. Xiaochun Luo, VP for New Technology and New Product Innovation at Avon at during lunch, especially some stories about Andrea Jung, the only Asian American CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Knit Sushi Feast

These are so awesome, I just want to eat them!! Kudos to katbaro for her great rendition and presentation of Amy Polcyn's sushi pattern on www.magknits.com.

Happy Easter (belated)

I love The Brick Testament, so this holiday is a good excuse to give it a plug.

On the personal side, we had a great trip to NY, the kids were really into the egg hunt. Click on the picture to see the slideshow in Flickr:

Fromthetop.org: Conrad Tao and Peng-Peng Gong

I listened to this Classicool kids podcast from one of my favorite radio programs which I have a hard time catching live, From the Top. This episode featured a piece written by Conrad Tao, a 10 year old composer. I figured it would probably sound a bit Mozart-ish, but boy was I wrong. It was fantastic and blew me away. Well worth checking out, this kid is going places! The interview aftewards with these youngsters was pretty funny as well. Here is the podcast.

NPR : Sunday Puzzle Good 'PR'

I was so psyched that the winner of this week's Sunday Puzzle Susan Fischer from Kitakyushu, Japan listens to the puzzle by downloading the podcast!! Obviously she can't get NPR on the radio in Japan. She was a long time player that started from the days of the postcard entries. It just goes to show the inroads that podcasting is making. In the RSS feed blurb, it says "She listens to Weekend Edition on the Web" which is not quite the same, but I guess more understandable to the general reader. If I ever enter the contest (I've only figured out one puzzle so far but was too chicken to enter), I will say that I've only been playing the puzzle since it's been a podcast. Just like the internet has changed information distribution forever, podcasting will change audio distribution as well. It will hopefully be the end to endlessly bad radio as we know it!

Biking on the Rail Trail

Speaking of biking, the weekend after we last went skiing, it was super warm and we took a bike ride as a family on the Nashua River Rail Trail. Adam has been riding a bike without training wheels since he was 4 and it was great that he could ride by himself. The only thing with those small bike wheels (these are 14") is that he has to pedal about 5 times for each of our strokes. Now, he needs a bigger bike (is there no end to this spending?)! So really, we went pretty slow, but managed to go about 2 miles. There were still snow patches on the trail but it was still beautiful along the river (this is not my picture, but it really did look like this!).

Adam the skier with Mom the old fogey ;-P

Better late than never for this skiing post...

I took Adam skiing for the first time this season, and he of course is a complete natural at it. I would drop him off for his lesson and then go skiing by myself while he would slide down the bunny slope with his class. The Polar Kids program is pretty good, but really, it is just glorified babysitting. I didn't realize this until the last time I took him, but if I took him myself, it would only cost $5 for him (5 and under only!! can't do it next year, but I will with Dova), plus $17 rentals, and $24 for me to use the lower lifts for a 1/2 day ($46 total). Instead, I forked over $59 for a 1/2 day lesson (in all this is only 2.5 hours), plus $20 rentals, plus $43 for my 1/2 day ticket ($122 total). So the luxury of skiing by myself to the top of the mountain without the hassle of teaching a 5 year old on the bunny slope was $76 (well worth it by the way). By the last time he went, he was just about ready to take a real chair lift and I was all ready to spend a thrifty half day with him, but unfortunately the opportunity didn't come in March, and skiing in April is just too slushy. But then I realized that with these new shaped skis, I would probably be teaching him all wrong!!

While I was jetting down the mountain in the Singles Line, I noticed that my long 193cm straight skis was a total anachronism. Everyone had the new short shaped skis, and maybe about 10% of the people had straight skis like me (the pair I have is only 11 years old). When did I become an OLD FOGEY? So I afterwards, I looked online to see what the big deal with these new shaped skis were. I found this interesting article among many on shaped skis. Now I NEED SOME NEW SKIS (I picked Blizzard for this picture because that is what I have now, and these graphics are really cool)!!! This sport is way too money consuming, but it is just so much fun. Adam has finally stopped asking to go skiing as the final snow mounds have disappeared (I say these mounds are made out of styrofoam because they seem to defy physics stick around so long). So on to biking and summer sports!

Rainbow of NPR podcasts

I just love the colors of the NPR bricks, so I decided to make a rainbow (hopefully you have high enough resolution to view it in one line). It is great that they are embracing podcasting, I just don't have the time to listen to them all!

Market Basket vs. Hannaford

When I lived in Groton, MA, I used to travel 20 minutes to shop at Market Basket in Westford instead of 7 minutes to the local Donelans. I remember the prices being lower, but when I moved to my current house in Pepperell 10 years ago, it was just too far away to justify. Besides, the local supermarket, then a Victory owned by DeGeronimo Brothers, was not as expensive as Donelan's and it was only 1/4 mile away (all of a 3 minute drive). A couple years ago, Victory was bought out by . At first the prices were lower, but then I noticed that they started creeping up until they were definitely higher than before. I try to be a frugal shopper, but I make enough money not to have to worry about prices in the supermarket, especially one that is so convenient. Of course I tally our grocery bill in my expense spreadsheet and last year it finally topped $500/month (this includes consumables like diapers, shampoo, vitamins, batteries, light bulbs, etc., most of which I get a BJ's).

By chance last month, I was in Nashua during lunch and decided to pick up a few things at the Market Basket there.

(This picture, found on Flickr is of the one further down on Amherst St, as opposed to the one next to the A.C. Moore, where I was. This brings up another point, they don't even have a website to steal a graphic logo from!!).

When I walked into this one, it was like stepping back in time 30 years. The store had probably never been updated since opening, the floors were worn, it had stained drop ceiling tiles and the fluorescent bulbs were just mounted bare. But then I noticed that the prices were like they were 10 years ago as well. All varieties of apples were $0.99/pound as opposed to $1.49/pound at Hannaford's. And my favorite deli meat, Thin 'n Trim Golden Turkey Breast was $4.59/pound as opposed to $7.99/pound!! I was shocked at the price differences. So is it worth changing my shopping schedule from Sundays to some weekday so I can go from work (11 minutes from work, and then 25 minutes home)? I tried it today after work. Of course, I won't be able to see the difference in the grocery bill until I go there exclusively for a few months. But in my first trip, I did find lots of good finds. I used to get a bag of Adam's favorite Tyson Crispy Chicken Strips for $8.99 at Hannaford's (total rip-off, but they are his favorite), and they had a Market Basket brand of the same thing (no such equivalent at Hannaford's) for $5.49, and as every parent of young children knows, you must have the an endless supply of of the correct kind of chicken nuggets (we'll see if he will accept the store brand imitation). The big jug of Cedar's Hommus was $2.99 as opposed to $4.99. OK, this is just as cheap as Trader Joe's, but going there is another special trip (25 min each way, or 13 min from work and 25 min back.. you've got to add all the extra gas and car maintenance as well) which I only take about every 3 weeks.

Also, simple things like a bag of lentils which are cheap at $0.99 at Hannaford's was only $0.69 at Market Basket. The meat was cheaper too. And yes, there were a few things that were similar in price, not everything was cheaper (good thing I have steel trap memory so all these prices are seared into my brain). But the store also had a horrible ammonia smell that made me gag. What lengths will I go to save a few dollars? We'll see. If anything, the convenience factor will probably trump saving money, but I will give it a try. At least it didn't make me feel like I want to go incognito like at Walmart!

4/5/06 Update - I went to the Market Basket in Hudson, NH, and this store is definitely more to my liking. Newer, bigger, cleaner and same great prices. I had asked for 1/2 lb. of turkey at the deli counter, and he accidently sliced 0.83 lb. So he took off a few slices, printed out the 1/2 lb slip and put the extra slices back into my bag! Awesome!! This will be my new supermarket if I can swing it (13 min from work, but 30 min from home). Oh yeah, and it's pretty close to Walmart too...

Edited to add 08/14/08 - Since this post is over two years old, I thought I would update my thoughts on Market Basket. I now religiously go to Market Basket and my food bill has been consistently lower the last two years, even with the recent rise in food prices. I usually pick through the produce as opposed to buying the packaged stuff, and have not had many issues. When I go to Hannaford in an emergency, I'm always shocked at the prices. Market Basket is always crowded, especially on weekends, but it is well worth the trip.

Happy April Fool's Day

I've been duped by Fr. Roderick!! The Daily Breakfast is alive and well, it was just an April Fool's joke. Who'd've thought he could pull off such a prank??