Pictures from our Christmas Party

More KOA Party-goers. My boss, Eugene Kao and his Thai wife Ohn are on the right.

Veronica and Barbara were in charge of the door prizes.

Here I am in my 10 yr-old Christmas dress, which has seen better days, accepting my doorprize from Joel Falter and Juan Gutierrez, our CFO. Whoo-Hooo! A Gift Cert to Target. There were 30 gifts, some of them quite expensive.

More Pictures of our night on the Queen Mary

The Dancers performed the Rhumba - the girl reminded me of Edyta - she was barely dressed! The dress sure moved beautifully with her, though.

For the first number, the girl wore a beautiful dress with a flowing skirt. I wasn't able to see them perform as well from where I was sitting, though, as I did the second number. They were limited by the tiny dance floor, too.

Here is the one side of our table (from left to right): Joel Falter, our COO, and his wife Karen; Emma Sorto, corporate marketing; Veronica Martinez, accounting; Veronica's brother in law, Ulises Ramirez, our IT guy, is crouching between the girls), next to him on the right is his wife Barbara, our office manager and Veronica's sister. Their father worked in the movie industry until he retired recently. His artwork graces some of our downtown LA buildings.

Here I am with the corporate Marketing Director, Desiree Hamilton on the left, and Jasper and Grace Domingo on the right. Grace has a beautiful voice and used to sing professionally. Jasper is one of our engineers.

Fun Party on the Queen Mary

My company, KOA Corporation, had their annual employee Christmas party on the Queen Mary in Long Beach this past weekend.

I'd been to the Queen Mary before. Years ago Meldee Perry's mom splurged on the three of us and gave us a lovely night's stay on the ship, with a dinner in one of the premier restaurants onboard. [That special weekend was a such real treat for me. We took the ghost tour and really enjoyed our stay. I remember that it also brought back many memories of my five trips across the Atlantic as a child. I've been on various ships of the now defunct Norwegian-American Line: The Stavanger Fjord, The Oslo Fjord, and the Bergens Fjord.]

I hadn't been back to the Queen Mary since that special weekend, and it was fun to go at night (though a little creepy as I was wandering around by myself) for a party.

Everyone was dressed in sparkly evening clothes! There were several parties going on there Saturday night (December 6, 2008). As we were going up the front elevators, one of the hotel guests, newly arrived with a big suitcase, remarked, "Oh, All of you look so beautiful - um, and Handsome!" That elicited some laughter.

I'm new to my company, KOA Corporation, so this was my first employee Christmas party. I've heard that they go all out for these events, and this was no exception.

We had the stern of the ship to ourselves, and the whole of an area called the "Veranda Grill" for a really nice dinner/dance.

It was quite a hike into the ship from the parking lot - and then another hike from the center of the reception areas down to the stern of the ship. There was absolutely nobody on the port side of the ship - everyone was on the stern side because of the spectacular view of the lights of Long Beach visible from there.

The Veranda Grill is surrounded by windows and gives a panoramic view of the Long Beach coastline.


Here is a view of the main dance floor of the Veranda Grill. the doors on the right open onto the veranda. A few steps further down is the whole stern Sun Deck of the ship.

Bits of the original Wall Murals have been carefully preserved along portions of the walls. It is fun to imagine what the place originally looked like. Of course, we were there at night - imagine the areas surrounding the dance floor full of round tables set for full dinner service, with colorful red and green linen napkins and bustling waiters wearing white jackets with the ship's insignia on them.

Dinner consisted of cocktails and hors d'ouevres, then ceasar salad followed by a filet mignon/chicken breast for each person accompanied by a potato au gratin and fresh green beans with julienne carrots. Dessert was white chocolate cheesecake with raspberry sauce. It was all pretty yummy!

We were treated to a ballroom dance show by a couple of dancers from the downtown Los Angeles dance studios that you see every week on "Dancing With The Stars". They performed two numbers and gave guests a quick lesson in the Cha-Cha-Cha - breaking the ice and getting people onto the dance floor where a DJ kept things pretty lively.

I got to meet all my various bosses' spouses, which was great (although these little tiny Asian women with their beautiful hair and flawless skin always intimidate me. They are so lovely!). I also got to see and meet many people from our other offices, some of whom I had never met. KOA has offices in downtown LA, Ontario, Orange County, San Francisco Bay area and San Diego, in addition to the Monterey Park office where I work.

There were close to 150 employees and their spouses there and they gave out 30 door prizes. I won a gift certificate to Target. Some gifts were really spectacular, such as GPS systems and other electronic gadgetry.

It was a really fun evening, marred only by having to go alone. It was a very romantic evening that would have been much better shared with someone special.

Ride on!

Okay, if you want a laugh [and heaven knows most of us need one these days] click on the following link and view the little YouTube video some cat owner thoughtfully shared with the world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ-jv8g1YVI

I'm grateful for people who will share these things on-line for our enjoyment. One little video can really make your day a little brighter.



I've been asked to speak in the church at the end of November. My topic? The peace that comes from Self Reliance. I may not be the poster child for that concept, but it occurs to me that being a little prepared for disasters of all kinds certainly can't hurt. If you want to truly be frightened these days, it doesn't take much! If you live in Southern California, for example, just visit http://www.shakeout.org/... or turn on the TV news.



I decided that I was obsessessing on the bad stuff and my solution was to try to get a little more prepared. First, I bought a whistle to carry with me at all times - the Acme Thunderer (see photo) that I have previously mentioned in this blog:

It's still the Official Whistle of the Italian Police Department, by the way.

It's amazing to me how that one little purchase calmed me down. My second "preparedness" purchase was a solar-power/hand crank flashlight/radio/cell phone charger. This device will go in my car. My next plan is to get the apartment handyman to help me "earthquake proof" the apartment. I want to have all the large furniture anchored to the wall and the knick-knacks secured with non-slip tape or museum putty. This is a one step at a time adventure, but I've noticed how these simple things go a long way towards helping me feel more secure.

Food storage is another one of those things where a little preparedness can help us through calamity. I think about the times in my life I've been very glad to have an extra can of soup, or an extra bottle of shampoo on hand! We have an obligation to ourselves and our families to prepare emergency supplies and have a game plan for how to contact each other or where to meet if we are separated in the event of an emergency. Here in the Los Angeles area it's possibly the threat of earthquake, or fire. In other places it could be something else. For any of us it could also be terrorist attack, pandemic, or sudden loss of job or other income due to forces beyond our control.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the ShakeOut's message of "Drop, cover and hold on!" is applicable to us all no matter where we live or what our circumstances in life.

Drop to your knees and ask for the Lord's help in taking caring of yourself and your family.

Cover your necessities by storing food, toiletries, money, medicines and other items that might help you fend for yourself in the event of an emergency.

Hold On to your faith, your loved ones and your peace by preparing for the future. You will be glad you did.

Mother Earth is, when all is said and done, just a giant Roomba after all.

Ride On, little kitty!

Global Warming- Man Made Hoax

Go to the following link for an eye-opening view of the man-made global warming hoax that is being perpetrated on the people of the world. It's a 9-minute film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLxicwiBQ7Q

You can also follow my Climate Skeptic link and watch the video there.

My Squirrel

This looks very much like the little squirrel who recently took up residence in UpTown near my house. I was so impressed by his orange floooooooofy tail! I think he's hidden stores in my flower pots, because he comes to check them on a regular basis.

Inferno!

I borrowed these images from the Times, just to show how scary it looked on TV! I'm so lucky to have been far away from these fires, but even so, we've been ringed with them and subjected to smoke and ash - and continual TV coverage - since they began last week. I woke up on Saturday, November 15th, with the whole house smelling like smoke. I had to close windows and run the fans inside throughout the weekend, because I was having trouble breathing.

When I ran around doing errands on Saturday, I could see this giant cloud to the south-east of Whittier. It just hung there in the sky looking ominous and scary. We've had a lot of wind recently and you could smell the burned wood in the air.


When I awoke on Sunday the smell and air quality was even worse. When I got to church I felt like I couldn't breathe. One of the little girls I teach volunteered that she had a friend in Brea whose school had been burned down (I couldn't confirm if that was true). By the time I left church, it looked like snow had been falling in the parking lot - the cars were covered in a fine grey ash and speckles of black soot. This was only after a few hours being parked outside!

I spoke to my friend Roxie, who lives in Walnut/Diamond Bar area, close to the fire. She said it was the closest they'd ever been to flames in all the years they'd lived there. They had packed the car ready to evacuate, if need be, but thankfully that never happened. However, she added that the air quality was worse in Whittier on Friday night, as that's where the wind was blowing all the ash and particulates in the air. Of course! I just love living in 'shake 'n bake' country. (said with sarcasm) If I could figure out somewhere to live without winter snow/ice, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, extreme summer heat, or floods, I'd move in a flash.

So, I'll have you know I made a big emergency preparedness purchase this past week: a whistle! It's a nickel plated Acme thunderer, the whistle preferred by Italian traffic police (I'm not making this up!). Now there'll be no problem in locating my broken body when the BIG ONE hits and whatever building I'm in collapses on me. They say we're overdue for a BIG quake, that 7.8 on the San Andreas fault. I've seen the simulations on ShakeOut.org and it ain't pretty, folks. I'd rather not be here to see/feel/experience it! Yikes.

On a happier note, we have a new squirrel with a huge, fluffy tail in the neighborhood. I used to see them on my way to work down on Broadway all the time, running on the telephone lines across the road from tree to tree. They were so beautiful. Now, it appears they've moved into UpTown where I live!

My cat is on the lookout for this little guy. She isn't happy with him. I've always liked squirrels, since my initial introduction to them as a child. I met a fabulous one in the King's Park in Oslo when I was about four. That one would play 'hide and seek' with me around the tree where it lived and was very tame. I've tried to explain the concept of peaceful squirrel co-existence to Emily, but so far she's not buying into that argument. She prefers to pursue a more agressive house protection policy which includes lots of howling and growling if said squirrel or neighborhood cats come snooping around.