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| Good morning all!
Update on the inteview. I got a second interview, so basically I passed the first screen! But unfortunately, they filled the position they were interviewing me for so I'm back at square 1 with that company but they've indicated they're still interested in me. There'll be plenty of other opportunities there so while the position being closed was a bit of a bummer, it wasn't a total loss. I'm browsing the job list at the list so I'll be talking to the recruiters about other jobs that interest me.
And that's just one place, I've been working on other places too, blah, so much details to keep track of.
The weekend was too short, I wanted more time to actually unwind and chill.
Well that's currently the pinnacle of my life. 
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| I just had an initial phone interview with a manager at a large company for a software position. It was hard, my head was spinning at the interview's end. The guy was just throwing questions left and right, some of them a bit arcane. Talk about taking my confidence down a few notches, I can't figure out if it was just an interviewing tactic or I totally bombed it. 
But it was a good interview at least.
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| Well well, look who's come back from the blogs' graveyard. I expect that most of the people subscribed to my blog has long since dropped my name from their list due to my lack of blogging activity over the past half year. The reason I stopped blogging was because I didn't feel there was anything interesting which warranted my blogging about it so I gradually lost interest. Though that didn't stop me from commenting on several of my friends' blogs! Several recent events has conspired to reawake my blogging motivation. So here arrives my summary of the previous week.
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Last Thursday, July 20th through Sunday, the 23th was the NCSA(National Cued Speech Association) convention in Towson, in Baltimore metro area. I went up a few days earlier on Sunday, July 16th to DC area first for fun and to visit friends in the area. I stayed at Hilary's place at that time. We went shopping and shopping for the perfect convention gala outfit, went out eating, hung out with DCians, et cetera, et cetera. Wednesday, I got to go on a tour of the Pentagon, courtesy of my dear childhood friend, Erin who works there! She invited Hilary and I to come visit her at the Pentagon so that was an opportunity I wasn't going to pass up. Wow, the place is HUGE, I already obviously knew that Pentagon was a big place but it was an entirely another thing to actually be walking around inside Pentagon's giant bowels. That was some fun times. Erin was kind enough to show us all of the major parts(except for the restricted areas of course) We got to see the gym with its near Olympic-sized swimming poor, indoors track, several basketball, tennis, and racquetball courts, a full sized weight-training room and an aerobics equipment room. In another words they had everything you needed to be fit. And they also had everything else, grocery stores, a CVS, a flower store, several food courts located all over Pentagon, and all the usual life's amenities. All Pentagon needs is a hotel or an apartment building installed on the roof, then nobody would ever have to leave the place.
Then Thursday, the opening night of the convention. We drove to BWI to pick up Amy (Wild 4Surfing) and Julie (Aurielle8), two lovely Texan ladies who flew in for the convention. I hit it off with them right away and I met another Texan cuer too later at the opening ceremony, a cute guy this time, Jeff Majors.  We'd spoken briefly online earlier so it was great meeting him in person. I also had the opportunity to meet another friend whom I'd gotten to know online for several years, Jarom (CuedBoy). So that was a day of meeting people in person for the very first time!
The next few days were a whirlwind of busyness and goodness; I barely even had time to pause for a breather. I had such a great time meeting new people who could cue AND sign, not to mention reconnecting with old and lost friends. I'd been out of touch in the cueing community for so long it was wonderful to see people after years and years. Friday night, there was a outing at a bar, Cues on Tap, for all the adult cuers. We hung out, mingled, got drunk, and took over the bar well into the wee hours. The next morning was the hungover time for many of the people who attended. I, being a good boy, only had one draught of beer(I must be getting old). Saturday also was the gala night so after recovering from Friday night, we dressed up all nice and dapperly. The gala went well but the food wasn't that impressive, they served overcooked pasta with some sort of chicken concoction on the top, then for dessert, we had a very strange tasting cheesecake/flan hybrid. In spite of the food shortcomings, the guest speaker and the awarding ceremony were excellent. Afterwards, I went out clubbing to a place called Grand Central in downtown Baltimore with Jeff, Amy, and Julie. Jarom and his friend Bradley were already there at the club so we joined up with them. It was a decidedly interesting night and we did had a good time dancing it up among the goths and the punks. We didn't get back to our respective dorms and hotels till very late.
Come Sunday morning, we were all feeling very much sleep deprived but still pressing on to enjoy ourselves and the end of the convention. It was a sad series of goodbyes to everybody, including the Texan Trio(that's what I call Jeff, Amy, and Julie now!) I miss them already but we had such a great time hanging out and making new friendships. Although exhausted and burned out from so much interaction, I carried away from the weekend a sense of excitement and eagerness to be more involved in the cued speech community. Up till before attending the convention, I really didn't realize just how much advances had been made with Cued Speech in deaf education, languages, and literacy. I was so impressed and I had the fortune of meeting several cuers from Finland, Spain, Switzerland, and other countries. Watching them cue among themselves in their own languages, such as the Finnish family. The father and the mother would regularly cue to their children in Finnish and though I could read their cues, I absolutely had no idea what they were saying. It was so cool seeing different languages being rendered in cued speech with their own cues which differ from American English cues. That's the beauty and the power of Cued Speech and how it's done so many wonderous things for the deafies. I was proud to be a Cuer and now I feel so motivated to be more active and to advocate for Cued Speech.
Although I'm fluent in ASL, CS's done far more for me than ASL did. I love using both and *if* I had to pick between them, I'd choose Cued Speech. Literacy's far more important to me but I also love to sign to other signers regardless. When conversing with the people who both cue and sign, we would switch back and forth between the two modes. It was the most natural thing in the world for us. We didn't even notice it unless somebody who were watching happened to comment on that. If it's easier to cue something, we'll cue it, if it's easier to sign instead, we'll sign it. That's the advantage of being bimodal, we adapt ourselves to whatever situations demand of us.
I can't wait to go to more Cued Speech and Cued Language functions in the future. I want to meet more cuers from here in the US and from other countries. It would be great if there are fully cued foreign language courses and or cued native speakers gatherings. That would make learning new languages so much easier for me instead of having to rely on third parties services such as transliterators.
Hmmmmm, I'll have to ask around and see what I can find out! I'm also looking forward to taking a more active role in the CS community.
Peace over. 
I'll try to keep on the top of my blogging since having made new Xangian friends...that ought to make it easier for me to continue blogging!
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| Although I don't care much for blonde jokes, this one is AWESOME!
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