Anny’s World

It’s the little things in life that should matter to a person…
What are the little things in my life that I treasure the most…

-That cup of tea, especially during the weekend
-Taking a bath
-Going swimming and then right after hopping into the jacuzzi
-Changing into sweats, right when I get home from work
-Getting into bed that night right after I wash my sheets and blanket
-Craving some food and being able to satisfy the craving
-Driving
-A good night of sleep
-Taking a nap, especially when you haven’t done it in a long time
-Those days, which are very rare, where I do absolutely nothing and enjoy every bit of it

What are those little things that make your life?

I have absolutely no shame…

So, the day after Tracy’s bachlorette party, we woke up at 2pm and decided to wear our pjs to TGIF. Of course I had my Berkeley sweatpants on…and what better way to show Cal pride than to imitate the infamous William Hung:

she bangs…she bangs…when she moves…she moves…

The remaining NY pix, my car problems, hanging out with coworkers, mochi, and at henry’s house: PIX

“Sometimes it’s not about finding what you have in common. It’s about sharing your differences and discovering something new about yourself in the process.” - Donna Kauffman in Dear Prince Charming

This quote is for my favorite roommate cindy…favorite by default only since she’s my only roommate…

Once upon a time, there was a dorky, naive, innocent little girl named Cindy…she used to wear her brown corduroy jacket, a long sleeve shirt under a t-shirt, sweatshirts, jeans, no hair style, black hair, and NO makeup to school…She used to follow me around to every event Freshman year at Cal, even every single plane ride I took back to LA.

Then one day, she became one of the trendiest girls ever…with a wardrobe of new tanks, shirts, pants, skirts, shoes, a whole variety of makeup, and trendy hairdos…not to mention tanks that show cleavage…Then I started following her to her classes, to check out her supposedly cute GSI…

Although my baby sister Cindy is not as naive and innocent as the good old days, I know she will never give up her dorkiness…come on, who would dress in a baby blue Victoria Secret’s jacket with a baby blue hat while her roomie dresses in a pink Victoria Secret’s jacket with a pink hat and walk around the financial district in SF…gosh, I know we have no shame!

Happy Birthday Cindy Hsieh…I know you hate being 26 (I mean 21 for the 5th time) but know that I will always have a bigger number than you. I will always be here for you!! The remaining two…Luv Ya Tons!!!

For more details about cindy and my adventures, go to: Cindy’s Page

In other news…this past week since we got back from NY has been quite an adventure…
Tuesday: Could not make it to work so called in sick…there was no way I could have made it…but I did go grocery shopping and my car wouldn’t start!!!! I called Tracy to rescue me cuz she was gonna come visit me anyways, so she called Triple A and they jumped my car.
Wednesday: My car still wouldn’t start. I hitched a ride with Cindy to work. Henry came by after work to help me look at my battery. We jumped it, drove it to Krispe Kreme, and it still died, so he just took my battery out.
Thursday: Henry came by and installed my battery and my car works!!! Then we went to Strada for coffee
Friday: After work, I was driving to Keely’s and I realized, I need to have some fun. So I went to feed Mochi, and then went to hang out with my coworkers at MacArthur Park, North Beach, and Gravity. (I think they were all surprised that I actually joined them for once!)
Saturday: Let me just say….it was CRAZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FUN…I have to thank Henry and Howard and all the rest of the peeps that were at Henry’s house that night for letting me partake on the trip down memory lane to reminisce about Spring 1999.

Pictures will be coming soon since I haven’t had a chance to upload yet…(of my car, hanging out with coworkers)…but I wanted to just post this following pic taken from my phone….I love my new pink pacifier

I have decided I will not have any resolutions this year (although, I did quit smoking! if I survived New York without a ciggie, I think I’m cured.). Instead, I am going to have a 2005 Plans and Goals. I am not one to have a 5-year or 10-year plan, so a 1-year plan is good enough for me. Besides, my motto is: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” So 5-10 years in the future is too hard to plan for.

I believe that if you are making plans and goals, the more you tell other people, the more you are going to hold yourself accountable for doing it, so that is why I’m putting my Plans and Goals on my blog. I am holding myself accountable and am going to do the following in 2005:

-February 2005 - April 2005: Finish my 2 marketing classes and get my certificate
-April 2005 - June 2005: Take finance and accounting, maybe statistics classes
-In the meantime: Study for GMAT, research organizations (most likely one that helps orphans from China) that I would want to go volunteer at for four months, set up informational interviews with as many people as I can
-September 2005: Take the GMAT
-Late 2005: Apply for Volunteer Leave. Wells Fargo has a program where they pay your salary and you get to volunteer at any non-profit organization of your choice for up to four months.

Planned Trips 2005:
January 13 - January 17: New York
February 3 - February 4: Midland, Odessa, Big Springs, Austin, San Antonio, Texas
February 12: Tahoe with Dater and Pam
February 26: Tahoe again
March 5: Not really a trip, but Trace’s wedding in Oakland
March 12: Los Angeles for Carey’s wedding
May 11 - May 15: Hawaii for Sales and Service Conference
June 17 - June 19: Illinois for Frances’ wedding
July 8 - July 10: Hawaii for Shelby’s wedding
Possible other trips: New York again, Washington DC, Boston, Canada?

Disclaimer: What happened in NY will not remain in NY. Stories from NY will be forever talked about amongst the people who were there that weekend. However, pictures that will result in fights between engaged couples have been deliberately deleted from the camera. But oh boy, were there some incriminating pictures. And guess who the two rowdiest girls were…

New York weekend…starring:

Tracy, the bachlorette, as “Gimmy Sum”

Cindy as “Stila Vergen”

Wendy as “Anita Poo”

Jane as “Imma Ho”

Sandy as “Ivana Fwok”

Anny as “Mia Ho” and also “Captain!”

Below was our itinerary…documented by pictures you will see on the following Imagestation site:

NY Pix

Thursday, Jan 13
8:50pm - Flight left Oak for JFK

Friday, Jan 14
5:00am - Land at JFK
7:00am - Arrive at Hilton Times Square, checked in, took showers
9:00am - Breakfast at Westway Diner
10:30am - Subway to 5 Av/53 St
11:00am - Shop at H&M, Mexx, Armani Exchange
1:00pm - Took Cab back to hotel and rested
4:00pm - Got ready for Producers
6:00pm - Took taxi to Korean Town, shopped at Forever 21, Steve Madden and Zara, and ate
8:00pm - Producers (Met and took pictures with some of the cast)
11:00pm - Went back to Korean Town to eat some more

Saturday, Jan 15
11:30am - Woke up, got ready
2:00pm - Saw Samuel L. Jackson and took pictures
2:30pm - Took subway to Prince St, Soho, shopped, ate, met up with Tom and his friends
6:00pm - Went back hotel, took pictures with Tracy’s gear
7:30pm - Ate with Sandy’s cousin at Cafe Torrino
10:00pm - Get ready for Strada…
11:00pm - Limo ride to Strada…we didn’t even have to wait in line when we got to the club…courtesy of Anita Poo who even has connections in NYC
11:30pm - Drink, Drink, Drink, Party…
3:00am - Went back home and hugged the toilet

Sunday, Jan 16
5:30am - Stila Vergen somehow managed to pack and make it to airport for her flight home
2:00pm - Woke up
6:15pm - Dinner at Nobu
11:30pm - Lounge at Fusion
1:00am - Got home and played the Innocent game..didn’t sleep

Monday, Jan 17
4:30am - Got up and took taxi to airport
7:00am - Flight home (New York was fun, but we were all so glad to be back home!!!! I think we would have fun anywhere.)

Stay tune for Jane’s Bachlorette party….MLK Weekend 2006 in Las Vegas…if I’m ever getting married, I’m eloping!!!!

Oh, and here are pix from Dec/Jan (Beerhunting, Vegas, Sandy’s bday…):
Dec/Jan Pix

Today is my coach/mentor Alicia’s birthday…I have to dedicate this entry to her because she has taught me so much and I wouldn’t be the person I am if it weren’t for her.

She is such an amazing woman and someone I completely look up to. Her ability to balance all of the aspects of her life (work, family, personal passions) amazes me beyond belief. At work, she is a senior manager (my manager’s manager). Our whole division respects her and always looks to her for solutions to our problems. I have the perfect example that is ingrained in my mind of Alicia during a particular meeting. We were having problems with our ATM vendor, specifically with our Envelope-Free ATM. Prior to Alicia coming to the meeting, everyone was telling the vendor what the problem is and waiting for them to give us answers. Then Alicia joins the meeting late…and she put the vendors in there place. She started quoting from the vendor’s ATM specifications that they provided us that the ATM should be up and functioning this percent of the time, etc., and told the vendors that if they aren’t up to par to our standards (which were based on their specs to us), then we will not put their ATMs in the field and not purchase any more from them. It was a long dragging meeting before she showed up…and there were other upper management at that meeting also but they didn’t even do anything.

Before joining our group, Alicia already accomplished a lot. She joined Wells Fargo when she was 18 (I won’t write how old she is today.) She managed a store location. Then after she went to the Store Platform group where she helped launch a system call TREE that all our store locations use today. (During that time, she even made a presentation to the CEO of Wells Fargo regarding that project.)

At home, Alicia has three kids (and a fourth one coming.) She has the CUTEST CUTEST kids in the world because they are all mixed. And her kids are smart too. She has a family mission statement: To forgive mistakes from the past, live a filling present and to be prepared for the future. (I’m just paraphrasing…their mission is actually a lot more eloquent.) She always makes time for her kids, i.e., would not miss Marco’s baseball finals, would make sure she’s home after his dentist appointment where two of his teeth were pulled. And she has date nights with her husband…(those are the times I get to watch her kids…)

Then…there is her passion for learning and teaching. (This is the part I come in.) Outside of work, Alicia has an MBA and teaches classes at the University of Phoenix on managing technology. At work, although she’s very busy, she still strives to teach and learn. That is why she started teaching 7 habits to our whole division. I have learned from her that:

No matter what, everyone is capable of getting their work done. However, it is not the work that people will remember. It is the process and how you get there (the journey) that people will remember, i.e., if you were stressed out the whole time, waited till the last minute to do things….but most importantly, it is how you treated people during the process that people will remember….and thus relationship building with people is so important.

Lastly, I want to mention that although she is my coach, she is not very easy on me. She pushes me to do things that I would normally not do. She challenges me to be more proactive, thus, that is why I emailed those two execs for informational interviews and why I gave my parents my whole financial rundown and my plan for the future…She’s also paving way for diverse woman in Wells Fargo to become managers in the future…

For everything she’s done for me, I would gladly do anything for her!!!!

Happy birthday Alicia!!!!!!

I can’t believe at this time tomorrow…I will be on a plane ride to NYC with my five bestest friends in the world!!!!!!!!!!!!! shieet…and I haven’t even started packing yet…(it’s okay, all I need are my pink boots!!!)

So, I went to work this morning by 8am…my manager sat at my desk with me from 8am to 1pm cleaning up all the projects in our queue…after we finished, it felt good, but that meant that I only had 4 hours to finish up some things I needed to get done before I took off. I was stressed but got everything done. Plus, Alicia was teaching her 7 habits Focus class and I actually made an appearance to show everyone how I sync my PDA with Outlook to plan for my tasks, appointments, contacts.

Then at 4 oclock, I actually did something I was very proud of. I sent emails to two pretty high up execs at Wells and asked if I can meet with them to do informational interviews. I told them that I was evaluating my own future and would like to meet with them to discuss how they got to where they are, what they do for the bank, and what advice they can offer to me on how I can potentially get there one of these days. They both agreed to meet with me!!!!

Yes, I am blogging right now because I’m trying to procrastinate from packing…I hate packing!!!

Oh, but the big boss of our division asked me to go hunt down a Chase eATM in NY and take videos of it…I joked around with him that if I get the videos, that means a free meal for me and my friends!! But I need to hunt down someone with a Chase ATM card too…yeah…we’re sneaky like that (but the reason he asked me to do this is…because last year when I was in Boston, I took videos of the Fleet ATMs and circulated them around my whole division…puha ha…okay I know, I’m such a dork…)

Did I mention that I HATE PACKING?!?!? ha ha ha…

AIM used to be blocked at work, but recently, it was approved to be used!!!

Now I have AIM at work: abhongwf2200
But maybe I shouldn’t use it that often cuz everytime I start a new chat with someone, this message shows up:
NOTICE: All instant messages sent to and from this Wells Fargo Team
Member will be logged and are subject to archival, monitoring, review
and/or disclosure.

Puha ha…

And….T minus 2 days till NY!!!! I went and bought a pair of Pink Boots and Pink Gloves for myself today…plus all the bachlorette gear we’re gonna make tracy wear (I hope tracy doesn’t read this blog entry until after NY)…I CAN’T WAIT!!!!!!!

I have to say…this week has been fun…(I’m sure next week in NY will top this week, but that’ll be next week’s entry.)

Thursday night:
Henry, Mike, Cindy and I hung out. Mike Pak, for once, was not a flaker…we had been planning on going to Top Dog and Strada for probably the past year…but everytime for lunch or dinner/coffee, he would flake!! But not this Thursday…so it all started when I told Henry to come pick me up in the city cuz I had a huge box and a huge carebear I needed to carry home. We were supposed to meet up with Pak at 7:30 but by 6:15, I was still in the city and discovered that Cindy was still in the city. If Cindy had barted home, she would not make it home by 7:30 so we decided to cram into Henry’s 2-seater Z. Let me just say…we probably would not do that again…when Frances and I sat there before, I thought it was okay but this time was just unbearable and I was cracking up the whole entire time which probably made it worse. So we went back to Ebay and met up with Pak. We all drove in one car to Berkeley. Since there was a game, we spent half an hour circling around looking for parking. Then we walked to Top Dog. We each had two Hot Dogs each and they were GOOOOOOOD. Then we went to Strada and sat there and talked for probably two hours. It was a pretty funny chat where we gave Pak the third degree, found out how many girls he’s dating at the current moment and what his ‘magic’ number is…puha ha…and no matter what, all conversation seemed to end up back at the sex topic.

Friday night:
Cindy, Pam, Tracy, Tracy, Wendy and I celebrated Roomie’s 21st bday at Mecca. First off, the hostess guy was pretty damn HOT!!! ha ha…It was such a fun night where we ate and also chatted for a very long time…from 7:00 to 11:00. Pam and I shared our horrible stories on dating…(I give you mad props girl!! and I will blog about it one of these days)…It was such a fun girls night out…Pictures of this night coming soon, when niece updates!!!

Saturday night:
This was probably the most stupid, but fun night for Henry, Cindy and me…It all started when Henry was craving Sushihouse. So we went to Sushihouse, ate a huge dinner, then went back to Cindy and my place. At our place, we were checking our lotto numbers, that Cindy, Mike, Henry, and I invested in two nights before. Then we decided we were bored so decided to dish out $33 each to go play Scratchers. So we went to 76 gas station, bought $99 in scratchers, went back to our place, and scratched all the tickets. We won $29. We decided to go to the 7-eleven on Solano to cash out (Six years ago, Henry and I bought $100 of scratchers from there.) We went there and got the money but didn’t get any tickets because they didn’t have any we wanted. So we went to Safeway and used one of their machines. Then we decided to go to a Pub on Solano to drink and scratch out our 29 scratchers. We saw Henry’s coworkers there. We all had a beer and scratched out our tickets. We won $10. We were going to go to the 7 eleven on University to cash out, but I drove past it so we decided to go back to the 76 where we begin the night. We won $1 and then $1 and then we didn’t win anything. YES, we were bored, but it was so much fun that we decided to instate a Scratcher night every month!! People have poker nights, we have Scratcher nights…ha ahaha…

1. In my room, checking our lotto tickets

2. In the car on way to 76

3. At 76, the first time

4. At Safeway, getting second set of tickets

5. Still at Safeway…

6. At the Pub on Solano

7. At 76 the second time

8. Our losing tickets

9. Our losses for the night