The travails of shoe shopping

I have small wide feet, and they're hard to find shoes for. So the annual shopping for a pair of "leather shoes" and a pair of "rubber shoes" went the usual way--frustrating. Shoes that I liked didn't fit, and shoes that fit were horrible. So finally decided to see if online shopping might be better. I ordered two pairs of shoes from endless.com. One pair looked really good, but were so narrow that I had to return them.

Thankfully, the other one, a pair of Teva hiking shoes actually fit. So now I feel ready to climb Mount St. Helens.

Shoe shopping online verdict: still frustrating, but possible.

In Remembrance

It was some of the saddest times of my years at Tech. But I was never prouder of the Hokie nation.

800px-2007_Virginia_Tech_massacre_candlelight_vigil_4, originally uploaded by shizhao.

Clouds over Vancouver

What would have been a perfectly nice, if cloudy weekend was marred by someone breaking into my car and stealing my GPS, ipod cables, and a sweater(!). When Anjing said we had to call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I was imagining some guy on horseback galloping into the garage... but alas we just had to give the details of the theft through the phone.

Other than having to have my window repaired, it was a fun weekend; we went to Granville Island, and then went to Richmond to take a peek at the Olympic oval. On Sunday went to Easter Mass at a church with so many Filipinos, it was like having mass at home. Vancouver definitely has a lot more Asian feel to it than Seattle. We had Dimsum--it was good, about as good as you'd get in Hong Kong, I'd say (which is pretty dang good).

I'm looking forward to visiting again, hopefully then it won't be so stressful with the car and all. This is the second time someone broke into my car in two years! I feel so violated.

Coming back to Seattle, I had to navigate the old fashioned way--with directions printed out from Google maps, and looking at the signs.

In Vancouver

"What's your status in the US?" The Canadian immigration officer said. It took me a second to realize she wasn't talking about my Facebook status. Anyway, I'm here in Vancouver to visit cousin Anjing for Easter weekend. It's a 2.5 hour drive or so from Seattle to Vancouver. It was an uneventful drive (I love my car!).

Pretty excited finally get to travel here...

Cockroach allergies cause asthma attacks?

The NYT article says so. It could be the reason why my asthma is so much better controlled here in the US.

Back

I'm back home, it was a good trip. Here's me presenting at the conference. Pooja insisted on taking the picture :P.

There is some deep thinking going on in software testing research, glad I was able to go.