ilubmoney

I think it's about time for a general updates post. Don't think I've done a public one in awhile.

Also, I'm guessing that the appeal of Twitter is that it's not as labor-intensive as blogging. I don't "tweet," but I do regular Facebook status updates.

Work
Some of you know that my school-based internship suffered from the recent round of budget cuts, and as a result, the counseling intern program in my district was cut. However, due to an unbelievable stroke of luck, I was able to secure a new internship in another school district close by. I'm still looking for other part-time work, though, especially to fill in the summer hours. It doesn't help that Kaplan recently decided to close their Score! centers, so tutoring hours have been slashed significantly. I've chosen to transfer to their new in-home tutoring program, but without the guarantee of hours, I have to keep looking for other part-time work.

Quite frankly, I'm feeling burnt-out from having to continually job-hunt almost every year. Girl's got bills to pay, though.

Personal
* Friends know about this already, but I recently started dating someone new. I'm not ready to write about Albert in a public entry just yet, but I can say that I am really happy. I've updated my LJ privately on a regular, daily basis, but since I started dating him, even those private entries have slowed down quite a bit. I laugh a lot more than I used to.
* I've been eating out quite a bit. In fact, I think I should probably Yelp more so I can track how often I'm trying new restaurants as part of my New Year's resolutions. I'm pretty sure I've exceeded 1 new restaurant every 2 weeks. Seems like it's more like (at least) 4-5 new restaurants each month for the past two months. I think I should adjust my goals to cooking new dishes once every 1-2 weeks.

Funny business
On a semi-related note, here are some links that made me laugh:
Luigi finally confronts Mario
How much do YOU love noodles?
Pete Johansson - Epileptic Girlfriend

In my work, I often see and talk to kids who struggle as victims of bullies. Most of them give the same answer when asked what to do when a bully confronts them: "Tell an adult." This is what they learn from almost all of the adults around them. But I'm not convinced that this is enough.

I would agree that when kids are really little, self-defense physically or otherwise isn't enough, and you do need an adult. But at what age do they learn how to stick up for themselves? Do kids ever really learn how to stick up for themselves? And what should they learn?

Sure, they could stick with the age-old "ignore them" when it's no longer cool to tell adults anything, but even that has limited effectiveness in many circumstances. Plus, using avoidance as a solution can carry on to adulthood, which is not bad in some circumstances but just isn't as good as assertiveness.

Then there's having to rethink assertive strategies for different types of bullying.
* Possibilities for physically bullying are simpler to navigate: you can stay near protective factors (safe adults, groups of peers, etc.), you can learn self-defense to protect yourself, or you can practice running really fast and GTFO.
* Verbal bullying is a little less simple, but the best solution seems to be being able to respond with clever comebacks or certain remarks that show the bully you're unaffected. (Side note: One such response that a second grader and I came up with was, "That's so old now." She used it on a boy who teased her often about something that happened last year, and he never bothered her about it [or much else] again. A teenage student tried this on a peer as well, and it worked in that case, too.)
* Relational bullying? That's a lot trickier, because a whole system of people is involved, and changing a system is more difficult than one or two individuals.
* Cyberbullying is a subset of relational bullying and requires a modified set of strategies as well (but it's not that difficult to protect yourself as a victim once you know all the basic security rules).

Just something that I've been thinking about lately and had been meaning to post about.

I've been meaning to read a number of books, and recently I've come across a large number of psychology texts as ebooks/PDFs. (Woot!) Mostly I'm looking forward to reading Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl, but here's a short list of other ebooks on my laptop that seem intriguing:

• Madness: A Brief History by Roy Porter


• Beginner's Guide to Quantum Psychology by Stephen H. Wolinsky (WTH is "quantum psychology?" Guess I'll find out soon!)


• The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders edited by Jerrold M. Post, MD


• 101 Healing Stories for Children and Teens Using Metaphors in Therapy by George W. Burns


• Feeling Good The New Mood Therapy by David Burns (NOTE: this is the most highly recommended book for healing from depression, so if you're interested in taking a look at this, email me, and I'll send you a copy. I'm just putting this out there because I know it's a tough time of year for a lot of people.)


• Criminal Psychology by Hans Gross

There are more that aren't listed, but like 101 Healing Stories for Children and Teens, it's mostly out of professional interest than personal interest.

I've left my LJ in a state of nearly complete privacy. So I'll start with some general updates for you interested parties.

Work

• For those that don't know--most of you, probably--I'm currently working 3 jobs. One is for the money, one is for the love of the job, and one is a combination of both. The less I like it, the more I get paid. :P


• If you're wondering how the counseling gig is going, things are going better. And by better, I mean that I'm getting more cases and more experience. I recently bought the book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. It's a good resource for parents and for those working with parents. I'm considering buying a few cheap, used copies online to give away to parents whom I think would read them and would benefit from them.


• Also, because of the counseling job, I am both pleased and slightly surprised that my graduate education is put to good use. I'm finding myself pulling out textbooks and old notes as resources.

Holidays

• Had a great Thanksgiving weekend. It was low-key and involved a memorable dinner party with a Jon Troast performance. It also involved a new haircut (not a great photo, but a better one to come) and a pretty, red trenchcoat I decided to buy at the encouragement of my more fashionable sister.


• My family put up our Christmas tree. I don't remember if I mentioned this in a previous entry, but our special family tradition is that each of us gets a new ornament each year. This being said, I'll have my 25th ornament this year, and Jenny will have her 6th ornament this year. She was very sad that she had the fewest ornaments out of all of us, and we have way too many ornaments anyway, so my parents made a new rule that we'd only hang up 5 ornaments each on the tree this year. Aside from our ornaments, the only other things we have up are the lights and the angel at the top. I like it. I'm pretty sure it could qualify as a Hallmark commercial seeing as how all the ornaments are strictly Hallmark.


• I'm looking forward to a lot of holiday things coming up. There's the ski trip in Tahoe in a couple of weekends, which I almost couldn't go to because I thought I couldn't afford it. There's also the holiday events around the South Bay that I want to check out. Downtown SJ has what looks like a Christmas festival, so I want to check that out this weekend if I can.


• Due to the slimming of expenses, I'm only buying gifts for family this year. I might do cards, though.


• For those of you sending Christmas cards and who happen to ahve my new address, please don't send me anything. I'm having trouble receiving my snail mail and am working to get that fixed, but please don't send anything til then. Or send it to my Torrance address (email me for it).

Personal

• Things with MF and I have been fine, as usual. I can't wait til he comes home later this month so I can show him a bunch of new, local discoveries.


• One place I wanted to check out with him is uWink, a "social entertainment restaurant." It's a restaurant that has various computer games at the table; you can even play group games with/against other tables. Sounds like fun if you ask me. Plus I'm told it's a good first date place. For those in the LA area, there's one in Hollywood, and up here, it's in Mountain View.


• Some of you may or may not know that I'm going to my own personal counseling. It's just general good practice for therapists/counselors to have their own counseling, and not to promote the profession so much as it's to take care of ourselves and help us keep ourselves in check for work. For me, I have some concrete goals that I'm working on in therapy, all of which will be part of my 2009 resolutions. One is making friends with girls. I'd just like more female friends.


• I love playing pool, and I like going to Shirley's pool mixers for this reason, but I really, really dislike being flirted with by various guys there. I've considered buying myself a silver band to wear on my left ring finger to signal to them that I'm not available. MF thinks this is an unusual thing to do (I think he explicitly said "crazy"). I don't think this is that odd, but I do think it's kind of lame that I'd buy myself a ring to do it instead of MF getting me one. Think it matters? I'll probably just keep an eye out for a silver ring. I think I wear size 5 or 5.5 (can someone drop hints to MF for me? he doesn't read my LJ :P).

I think that's all for now. Is there anything else I'm missing?

Things have been good lately in various areas of my life, seems like. Maybe it's because USF is on spring break this week. No, I haven't gone anywhere or done anything out of the ordinary this week because I still have work and traineeship, but it feels so good to have space to relax.

Work
Getting the raise about a month ago really helped ease things quite a bit. I left Tutor.com as a result--I had a lot of good moments helping students online, but it was getting to be too much on top of what I'm already taking on this year. The current pay rate is also going to help me get through internship as much as possible, which brings me to...

Counseling
I had a quarter-life crisis moment back in January that I shared with very few individuals. I seriously considered switching careers because of the level of overwhelm I was experiencing in my Master's program. Actually, to be honest, I even seriously considered and applied for SJSU's library science program... yes, that sexy librarian talk was alluding to that. But mostly, the application was motivated by fear more than desire. By the time I got my acceptance letter in the mail, I had resolved some of my hangups about counseling and decided to continue down this career path. There's such a huge diversity and richness to the counseling career, and I would be making a mistake not to explore that further. At the very least, this career's guaranteed to be interesting (hopefully in a good way!).

Anyway, cross your fingers for me. I had an interview last week with a school district. It's in the city I want to move to, it's paid (not high-paying, but most MFT internships are unpaid), it's more of what I'm doing now, and the supervisor seems awesome.

Family
My family's doing well. I mentioned in a previous post that one of my cousins is getting married in April and is having a Catholic-Buddhist wedding, so that should be interesting. Mom's promised to take notes for me since I can't be there.

Baby Jenny is no longer a baby. It's kind of hard to see her growing into the elementary school ageset. She's outgrown her cuteness, but I'm always so amazed at how smart she is. It won't be long before she grows into the "awkward age"... Cathy is in that right now, going into middle school soon.

My family's visiting in May to see me walk. My brothers and I don't care much for graduation ceremonies, but my parents wanted to see at least one of us walk, and it being (presumably) my last degree, they asked that I sign up. So I did. It's a great excuse to have a fun, family day in SF.

Friends
Due to my busy schedule, I've felt disconnected from a number of my friends. This week has been my chance to reconnect with a few, and what timing! None of them know each other, and yet it seems like everyone is trying something (or someone!) new. Unfortunately, some of those resulted in heartache. I hope everyone gets a chance to heal and transition to better times in their lives.

Love
MF and I started this thing a few months ago in which I would let him know when my PMS week was, particularly when I'd have a hypersensitive moment. He's been so receptive and sensitive to this, and I've also been much better at letting him know what I need from him.

Recently, I thought about the time when we were just friends and how he had seemed the sort of person I would never date but become good friends with. How things change! The commitment really started to settle fully when I began visiting his sister's family in January; the positive relationship with his family members really helped to deepen my love for him in ways I hadn't experienced before.

Glasses/Contacts
I had my eye exam. Dr. Lem was very nice and didn't try to talk me into buying anything. Actually, he confirmed that contacts have no benefit of vision preservation and said contacts were really for convenience and cosmetic reasons. He also added that since I have a slight astigmatism, he'd have to special order contacts for that which are more expensive. So I decided to stick with glasses.

I didn't get any from his store since they didn't have frames I felt strongly about. I'm going to try ordering them online, but measuring the pupillary distance (PD) is going to be awkward. Eric recommended Optical4Less. Anyone have recommendations or tips on ordering glasses online?

Misc
Oh, for fun recently, I've been apartment-hunting in the south bay for an affordable studio. It's just helps with the whole "positive thoughts/energy towards the future" thing.

Also, I've been doing some research for cheap summer vacations. MF and I may be taking a trip with some other friends, but from the sounds of their summer plans, it might end up being just the two of us (and we're both very okay with that!). Caveat is that it's gotta be $300 or less per person. Someone suggested camping, but here's how that conversation with MF went down:

MF: "Yeah, that sounds like fun. Let's rent a cabin! Last time I went with my family, we got this cabin that had cable TV..."
Me: "MF! Seriously! I'm not against indoor plumbing and showering, but cable TV?! That's not real camping!"
MF: "Okay, Phuong, YOUR kind of camping--the kind with dirt--is the kind I don't like."

Um... no.

I liked the idea of going to Mexico or Hawaii, but it's beyond our budget. Taking a California cruise would be fun, too, but also beyond our budget. Oh, beach camping could be--bleh, nevermind. >:( Someone else also suggested a B&B, which could be pretty awesome. Maybe we'll finally do that drive down the 1. If you guys have ideas or recommendations for cheap vacations, that would be great, too.


Hope you're are doing well!