I tend to be wish wash when it comes to green and going green… however, this video of John La Grou talking about the smart power outlets has me very intrigued. I hope this really catches on… both to save people and homes from electrical fires as well as saving loads of energy. He notes that there are over 10 billion electrical outlets in US alone!! Yikes…
Pirates of the Somalia
This is 21st century, right? Or am I still living in the old days of yore when pirates with eye patches roamed free?!! What in the blazes is going on here? This problem of Somalian pirates goin further and further out to the Indian Sea to hijack ships and crews for ransom is beyond going out of control! What the heck is everyone doing about it?! NOTHING!! NADA!!
This is ONE war that we can end quickly if anyone gave a crap! Some people better wake up before the pirates become even bigger threat!
Flight Scare with Anna
So we got on the flight to DFW (Dallas Fort Worth) and half hour into the flight, Anna comlained of sharp pain in her side. It was bad enough that she started to cry. Soojin got scared… her mom had appendicitis and the symptoms seemed to be similar…. pain coming and going.
When we landed, Soojin asked ME what we should do. Let me just say, it’s freakin’ huge responsibility to be responsible for one life, let alone three! I wasn’t sure of what to do… but with a child traveling and less than an hour to our connecting flight, I figured it’s better safe than sorry.
So I asked for the paramedics. They came and started to look at Anna. She was still complaining of pain. They didn’t think it was appendicitis and when they had asked me if we wanted Anna taken to hospital, I decided that we’d try to wait it out as our flight now was gone and had to get on a different flight.
At that point, I had missed a call from Paul Minifee. When I had called back, his father Dr. Paul Minifee, was next to him. You see, he’s a senior doctor at Children’s Hospital in Houston! So with such awesome knowledge available, I laid the concerns to him. He then asked if Anna’s appetite was gone. She said she was hungry. He then asked if Anna could touch her toes quickly without bending her knees. And she could. Dr. Minifee said that if she had appendicitis, she wouldn’t have appetite nor be able to bend and touch toes w/o pain in the side. Whew.
Got off the phone. I held Anna and started rubbing her back… felt bit of knots on her left spine so I massaged that away. Then everyone (except me) wanted pizza for lunch so we ate that. Anna felt better by this point and when we walked over to the other gate for our new connecting flight, I was worried that we wouldn’t get on… but I guess the other agent had left note on our case and reason for missing the previous flight ’cause the new one called me as Mr. Jang and asked me about how Anna was doing, and that they’d get us seats soon.
Though they had charged us $60 for luggage ($15 X 4), at least their service didn’t suck. We finally flew into La Guardia airport and we were welcomed with NYC’s finest drivers and 2 hour traffic. But we are home. Thank God.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Things that Make Me Go Mad: Driving Drunk
1 Local Cy-Fair girl dies from a drunk driver who hits the school bus and her
2 Houston judge’s daughter sues driver she ran into while driving drunk
What the hell is the world coming to?!! If there are more things that make me madder than stupid politicians and hungry rich execs, it’s the stupid drunk drivers! Link one shows about how a drunk driver sideswipes a school bus and then hits a girl and then speeds off! He had to be pursued for miles before being caught!
And then there’s Elizabeth Shelton, whose father is a juvenile judge(?!), who got into an accident last year and ran into a pickup truck in front of her which ended up KILLING her boyfriend! Now, she’s SUING the driver that was in the front?! This is some crazy and stupid things I have seen and heard but it’s just un-freakin’-believable!
If we continue to let DWI/DUI-convicts to go around so carelessly, I shall feel obligated to move elsewhere (like Japan) where such thing will pretty much ruin your life for good! If you are drunk, WALK home or take a cab!! I hope that guy gets life in prison, and that girl gets COUNTER-SUED! And what is her father, the “venerable” judge, even thinking?!! 😡
Car Accident Update
I need to vent… so here I am again.
I got the call from State Farm that our beloved ’99 Lincoln is officially considered totaled. 🙁 While I have been wanting to do that, the sudden reality hit harder than expected. After all, it’s never an equal trade when you try to find its replacement. And on top of that, the Admiral went out completing its duty to the end protecting its owner even though it meant taking itself out. Sniff…
So here’s where it gets somewhat worse… They valued it at roughly $4600 retail through NADA.com prices. When they re-add on taxes and other stuff, it was at $5100. But it still came back to $4600 because of our $500 deductible. State Farm rep told me that I can get the deductible back from the other party’s insurance so I call them (also ambulance cost was over $500!) only to find out … that it was never filed!
So I had to spend half hour talking to the other insurance company giving them all the info! Erg… Now I have to wait till next Monday before they assign an adjuster. What a pain. To make things more irritating, now that the car is considered totaled, they will cut the car rental short! 😡 I have to probably get the other party’s insurance to pay for the rental to be extended. So much hassle…
Soojin’s Accident Yesterday
So as many of you know by now, Soojin was in an accident on the way to BSF leaders’ meeting. Usually, JJ would be riding with her but since it was a holiday week for Anna, Soojin asked her co-worker to watch them in the morning. Thus we are so thankful that neither of the kids were in the car.
Though I do not know the entire details, here are what is known about the accident. Soojin was on Pineloch left lane and a landscaping truck was on the right and there was a contact that made her veer off the road into the median and hit the big lamp post. The car was totaled in my opinion. The entire front was gone along with radiator, the wheels, and both of the airbags that went off. The other vehicle and 3 people were fine. I only saw a dent on the side of the drivers door. They didn’t seem to speak English or worse, didn’t have insurance and thus didn’t say anything. I felt bad for them but at the same time mad.
Soojin was bleeding badly in the eye but turned out to be due to a small gash between the eyes. My current hero(ine) is a woman named Ginger. She is the good Samaritan who saw Soojin crash and pulled over to help her get out of the car and stayed with her until I got there. Ginger is now my current favorite name of the decade!
Soojin complained of large pain in the right abdominal side and was rushed to ER. I had asked Pastor Shawn to pray for Soojin but he ended up coming out to the hospital (after I gave him the wrong hospital name! – Southwest Memorial Hermann when it should’ve been Southeast). Her CAT scan came back negative for internal damages, so we are thankful for that as well.
And Younhe with her two kids came by to see Soojin at home. This does not include all the family and friends that prayed for Soojin and gave all the kind words. So I wanted to thank everyone who took part in caring for Soojin in this difficult times.
Please pray for the car that the insurance would file it as totaled and not try to have it fixed, and that the amount for the car would be favorable. After that, we will have to shop for a replacement car. That Lincoln Continental was named as “admiral” since it felt like a boat. It served faithfully to the end protecting the driver to its end. 🙁 Now that I have to say goodbye to it, it’s a bit saddening having developed “?” (jung that means emotional bond) for it.
I don’t know why the accident happened nor will I likely find out, but since God was with her, we are trying not to question it, and just being thankful for all that came out of it… 1) no kids were involved and 2) Soojin didn’t incur any serious damage. “God is good all the time. All the time, God is good.”
The Ike Effect: Post Hurricane Thoughts
As most of you know by now, we fared well. I had to finish to some work from home and by 8 pm Thursday night, we were ready to evacuate as we were in the mandatory evacuation zone. 😮 So we headed west to Pastor Shawn’s place not realizing that there were already some evacuees already!
At least it was a good time to meet Pastor Luke and his family, as well as Shelly, who is new to our church. We avoided driving in the daytime because of heat and too much traffic on the road. Surely enough, by the time we left in the evening, traffic was almost at normal speeds.
Staying at Pastor Shawn’s is always a joy as there’s no stress. However, power went out on Friday late afternoon and humidity began to settle in. 🙁 So it was a great excuse to cook up all the Korean BBQ stuff in his freezer!! 😀 Whoot! Then came the Ike later that night. It was rather loud as expected… lots of gusts of wind and cracking sounds… but you know me, I slept like a baby.
On Saturday morning, it was evident that this storm was rather a powerful one. We had anticipated that knowing that this hurricane’s diameter was about 300 to 400 miles wide! However, upon visual inspection, it was even more so. Trees had fallen everywhere and fell everywhere. Power went out in 90+% of the Houston area. And surge had caused most of coastal areas to be flooded. We drove to Mike’s place in order to drop off Pastor Shawn’s freezer goods and noticed that damage was even bigger than we had thought. Here’s our ride in video…
Once the humidity was killing us, we decided to head over to John & Joanne’s place for shelter as they had power as well. We had originally planned to evacuate to Chung & Celeste’s home but they also had lost power. John & Joanne are another very hospitable family. Later on, Pastor Shawn’s family, Luke’s family, and Shelly came over for dinner and hung out. With TV, we had learned that the Houston downtown had suffered quite a bit of casualty as well and that due to more rains that followed, Houston was in flash flood warning!
So Sunday’s service was canceled due to flash flooding. Then Min & Daniel’s family came over for lunch. I had left our answering machine on so that we could find out easily & quickly if we had power or not. Well, power at our place had gone out Friday but came back on Sunday!
So after buying some more food and such from Komart (gotta give it to the Koreans for being open!), we headed home. Traffic and roads were fine. But at least 80% or more of the traffic lights were out due to power and/or damage.
Then I had found out that my work was closed for Monday. Anna’s school was canceled through Wednesday. Eventually, my work place closed for the entire week, and so was Soojin’s school, and Anna’s school! So we are having our unexpected week-long break. We had checked out Target the other day and still milk and dairy, as well as fresh produce were pretty much out. Gas was still in a bit of tight squeeze but we hope the conditions will fare better.
But in overall, we are thankful that all of our friends and family in Christ are well. We wanted to take this time to thank Pastor Shawn’s family and John’s family for always leaving us an open and welcome doors, and for everyone else for checking up on how we are doing.
None of our properties or cars were damaged but if you had, be sure to head over to FEMA website to register for possible reimbursements and repair costs. Be safe everyone!