I really think our move to SF is a very good one. After 3 years and a half, there have been many events happened in my life and work (duh), let make it short and sum them up:
- Still working with the same people at T*ge, the company I started with after I moved up here.
- The company got acquired by a huge printer company. My salary went up double the one I had while working for G*ia.
- We interviewed a lot of good developers and QAs. They are such smart and friendly people. It was such a great time working with them. I was the team lead. My salary went up again, 3 times more than I got paid at G*ia.
- After a year, L*k closed down the SF office. They kept me and the 'original' workers from T*ge, the rest were let go. That was such a dark period in my working life. But since they are such good people and developers, after a month, most of them got a job in the industry. The people who get to stay work from home full-time.
- WFH full-time is not necessarily a bad or good thing. For me, at least as of now, it is convenient to work on my side project at night.
- I'm working on my Private Pilot License. I have around 30 hours flying on a Cessna 172. Nothing is better than the feeling of flying, take off and mostly landing an airplane.
- We are still living in the same apartment. It is hard for us to move into the city of SF since the price is even much higher than 3 years ago. We need to find a place that has a garage or at least a parking spot and allows dog. Still working on it.

Am I happy? I guess less than when I was working in an office and with others in-person, even though my salary is double than what I started with at T*ge, plus the bonus for the Golden Handcuff after the acquisition.

It will get better. Either I will have another job sometimes next year, or my side project will take off. I'm hoping for the second one :)

I'm trying to meditate nightly.

The first raise

I has been 5 months and 14 days since I started to work here at Tw**ge. Things has been good. And I know it will be good. The first months were so stressful though since I needed to learn so much things and had not earned much trust from my manager. But after 3 months, work has been getting easier and more enjoyable. Thank you QTABT to whom I pray for every day.

It was the end of a working year and I had an annual reviews with my manager. The review came out great, there were some minor issues that I need to work on, but that was expectable since I was still considered new at this company.

The raise was 5% of my salary (after only 4 months so I feel really good about this) and $2000 bonus in cash and a non-cash bonus (choice of an new iPad 2 or a 52 inch TV) - I went with the iPad 2 since the TV at home still seems to display enough pixels for us.

Overall, I am happy with where I am now. Not to mention I know that I am getting more and more successful. I am getting into the "vortex".

Thank you, all who are unconditionally and lovingly supporting me.

Day 3 at Twi*****e

I finished day 3 at this new job. Now I understand why I always compose a post on day 3 at a new job even though I wanted to post about it since day 1.

It was very stressful on day 1 because there were so many information to swallow, metting new people, learning new technologies, trying to understand new systems... I thought I couldn't do most of the things that I was supposed to do. That night was also a stressful night. I couldn't even smile after work... hehe

The second day was better. I was stressed on the way to work but I could finish a project which had a due date in at least 2 days! I finished it in a day and reported to the development team. I felt much better

The hunt for an apartment

Well, it's not really for an apartment but a cottage would be ideal. It's very limited for us to find a nice place since most of the nice places do check for my credit score. As you may guess, my credit score is not high. I didn't find out until the day I bought a car and the dealer showed me my score. There was a T-mobile bill of $88 that I didn't even remember exists. An $124 AT&T bill since 2006. All these bills came after I moved or changed to different number. I'm not rambling away from it's my fault not paying the bills. They even sent them to the collection services. Jesus.

I am working on paying them off and building up my score. With a stable job and a higher-than-average salary (in my industry and my skill level), I believe I can easily finish this task in about a year or at most two.

Anyways, I've been finishing my last weeks here at Gam**** and getting ready to move our stuff to the Bay Area while my wife was driving around the bay and looking for places for us to live. I admit it's a tough job for her since she's been struggling with communicating with people since the day she came here. She's getting much much better. Sometimes she even takes over my 'talk' duty. She loves to control but that's another long story. All in all, she did a very good job and found us a place to live! I gave her a super good massage today and when I say good, I mean it because she was moaning then she felt into a deep sleep while I was working on her back and legs. I couldn't wake her up to brush teeth...

This apartment (no, not a cottage - maybe next year or next next year) does allow pets. So we are very excited to look for a dog and a kitten.

not the new apartment - our family's house - but i wanna give
our new living room a warm atmosphere like this...

About my job, I've been reading the material for the new job but with my busy schedule these weeks, seriously I am not that committed even though I am very very excited to learn about the new computer language that I will be using.

Tomorrow is my last day at Gama***. There will be another post for that.

I'm going to try hard to wake my wife up again to brush teeth so that I can sleep..

Got a new job in San Francisco!

I have been looking for jobs for a while and got rejected by many companies until I got an offer from the 'first' company by which I was interviewed last trip to SF. Wow. I thought they wouldn't even call me back. They indeed contacted me back a week later and offered me a job with a decent starting salary and benefits plus 3 weeks paid vacation a year, plus an annual salary review!

So I will start working there starting on the 22nd this month. I talked to my current boss and asked for a flexible notice duration so I could leave the job on the 19th.

The next step is to find a place to live. I'm driving north this weekend to look for it.

Everything seems to fall into place. What else could I ask for?

Thank you, Holy spirits to whom I pray!!

Nam Mo Dai Tu Dai Bi Cuu Kho Cuu Nan Quan The Am Bo Tat.

The pursuit of happiness

I'm taking 2 days off from Ga***ia to come to SF taking 2 interviews from 2 different companies. The beauty of it is that I could combine 2 interviews into only one trip - even though one of them might ask me to come up at least another time for the follow up interview. :(

The interviews went kind of well despite a few here and there small mistakes and awkwardness. After some rejections and the last 2 months full of phone interviews, I feel more confident talking to interviewers. I also learned from the mistakes I made in the previous interviews and needless to mention how much it helped me in the following interviews. Maybe it was a good thing to fail.

I'm still waiting for the results but I don't feel like the first company is going to take me. I am not sure about the second one since there might be another following interview sometimes next week or so.

I am enjoying the best past of this trip, is to spend time with my lovely wife.

EDIT: I got the job! The first interview which I didn't think I would pass. They called me back and offered me a position there. Read here.

Zucchini "egg-soup"

I decided to cook this after coming home from work today.

my home grown tomato. looks how meaty it is. and it was really sweet too.

I saute the sliced zucchini with butter. my backyard grown corn, tomatos. onion, garlic and cheese.

I added water, let it boiled then left it simmer while adding ingredients. sugar, nuoc mam, dried herbs, cajun seasoning..

The last step is to add eggs. I added 3 eggs in the pan.

The final product. Very healthy and delicious. My asked my mama to try and she loved it too. I wish my wife was here to taste it.