SF pick-up day

It was so busy in traffic between Oakland to San Jose. I went to a coffee shop called Kaffeehaus in San Mateo. It was actually a good cafe. But I didn't enough time, so I just left soon.

I picked up my friends at SFO in the afternoon. We went to a Chinese restaurant in San Mateo for the late lunch (actually it was about 3 pm...). I took them to the downtown of San Francisco and left there.

I found a shopping mall, TANFORAN, which I've never been. In the shopping mall, there is a Japanese shop, "Ichiban-kan," and I bought some junk but useful items.

At night, I stopped by Nijiya market and many Japanese food. I spend too much money for Japanese food again...

Bad customer service

I faced with a bad customer service at the Verizon store. When I went to the Verizon store to try to buy a new smartphone, I waited for 20 minutes to take its service just to meet a staff member. The assigned staff member was a female, and I felt she looked so moody at that time.

*word in each conversation below is not precise but something like that.

When she asked me my phone #, I said my number. She asked me to show my ID, and then, "You're not under this account.," so I said, "What?" I thought my account was hacked and taken over by someone. So I asked, "My name is not there?" and she said, "This account is owned by someone else." We continued weird conversation for a while. I confirmed, "My number xxx-...-xx70 is not my account?,"and then finally she said, "Oh, I thought xx00  Yes, that's right." She didn't even say, "I'm sorry. I heard wrong."

What she was doing was just almost yelling at me as if I was like a criminal and trying to take someone's account. My voice might be small. She didn't even confirm like "Sir, your number is xxx-...-xx00, right?" or "Can I make sure your number again?" when she saw another users name on the display. I think even elementary school students can think hearing wrong if something is different from expected. She should have just thought to make sure one thing, confirmation. She didn't even think that she was doing anything wrong as a employee who is in charge of a valuable customer.

Moreover, after she make sure the device, color (black), and the plan I tried to update and said, "I'll grab a bundle (device, screen protector, and case. Just wait a minutes.," she left to the back office. I waited for a couple of minutes again. When she came back to me, she said, "There is no stock here and other stores near here.," and then, despite I didn't even ask, she kept saying, "I'm gonna check if there is a white." I said, "No. It's okay.," and left. I can't forget she was chewing a gum in her mouth during talking with me. It would be common here, but it's unbelievably bad manner if it happened as a customer service in Japan. I think I should report this fact to Vriozon without any emotional sentence.

HR Law in the U.S.

There are so many interesting law about the human resource and employment. Today's HR class, the professor showed a lot of cases about lawsuits of HR law.

For example, when you get an agreement of a contract in order to work for a company, you might see, "If you work hard, you would be able to have a long career in this company.," but this contract implies, "If you don't work as hard as the company expects, you would have a short career in this company." It means you would be fired if your performance is very low in the work place. This is called the implied contract.

Even if your boss said, "You had better break the competitors building. Otherwise, you would be fired.," you are not fired. This is called Public Policy Exception. According to USLegal, "Public policy exception is a rule of exception to the employment-at-will rule. Under this exception, an employer can not fire or discharge an employee if it would violate the doctrine of public policy of a state or a state statute or federal statute.
An employer cannot react against an employee for performing an action in accordance with public policy. An employee is protected from losing his/her job if s/he disobeys an employer by not doing an illegal or immoral act."

If an employee sues his/her employer and requires some money but the employee lied on his/her resume, which is a sort of fraud, employer doesn't need to pay much. This is called After-Acquired-Evidence Doctrine. Again, according to USLegal, "if an employer terminates an employee on the ground of unlawful or invalid reason and subsequently discovers misconduct which is adequate or sufficient to justify a lawful termination, then the employee cannot win reinstatement."

There are lots of acts and cases in the U.S. Those acts and cases would be unbelievable among other countries. To know the differences among the law of countries is also important.

Anyway, the professor of this HR class transparently likes to share interesting cases with students. However, he keeps talking for two hours without break, so some students looked sleepy in class.

Integrated Business Strategy

Just a week has passed since this semester began. The last class of new class is the Integrated Business Strategy, which is the most important and hard subject among MBA courses. Fortunately or unfortunately, the number of students was quite few. We introduced each other and get along with soon.

Because I have a couple of stocks, I know how to read the stock chart. When the professor asked us what the chart stands for, I could luckily answered it. Even though the professor cares about me as a non-native English speaker, this class looks really hard for me.

CIS of MBA

CIS (Comuter Information System) is one of the MBA core program in my school because nowadays many companies utilize information system to expand their business by analyzing customers, competitors, and economy, and it's very important. The professor of the CIS class I take asked all students in the crass room about how high or low level their knowledge of the information system is. Regardless of bias, many female students answered, "I'm nervous." while many male students answered, "I'm intermediate." Only a couple of students, including me, apparently has a background or knowledge about the information system. Anyway, I would like to do my best on this class.

The Fall semester has begun.

Finally, the fall semester has begun. I bought a new parking sticker for this semester. It cost $180!! The price has gradually increased for a couple of years. I also had a quick meeting for a paper work of filling up a form in order to maintain our international club. My neighbor came back from her home town and met.

I had a class at night. It was an Operation Management class. The professor of this class was the same as another Operation Management class I took last semester. He asked us to make a group for the team assignment. I fortunately could find good members.

After the class, I went to the gym and run half an hour. I wish I would lose 20 lb in this semester...

Taiwanese lunch

I went to Taiwan Food Express for lunch with old classmates. One of them was Korean who graduated from the business school last Friday, so this was the last chance we meet each other in the U.S. Anyway, food of this restaurant was good. I ordered a boba tea as usual.

I left Arizona at night. It was nice visiting.

Air museum

I drove to Tucson from the morning. I went to Old Peking for lunch. I hadn't gone there for a long time. It was a bit oily but still good.

I went to the Air & Space Museum in the afternoon. There are so many aircraft. I met some new Taiwanese people who are going to be pilots of an airline company.

We went to Swasaddee Thai again because it was so good. However, I unfortunately had headache I couldn't feel good taste...

Friends' commencement summer '13

Some of my old friends graduated from a business school in this summer. I attended the commencement. It was smaller than the Spring or the Winter ceremony but was exciting.

After taking many pictures together, I went to lunch to Sawaddee Thai. It was amazing!!

At evening, I saw many students were playing at a sport events. It looked so exciting. And then I joined the regional night, which is an event to show a culture of a specific area (basically a continent). A professional native Americans showed their special dance and performance. It was great.

I was hungry at night, I went to Wing Stop and ate 10 piece of chicken wings. I knew it would cause gaining weight...

The fall semester has begun

Finally, the fall semester 2013 has begun. Even though I have only evening classes, I would be busy because each class looks so hard.

Anyway, the first class of the first day finished much earlier than I thought. It was just an introduction class that the professor explain what we will need to do on this semester. Actually, the professor was so funny. I like his talking style. I think he quite like to talk. Although I took his class this summer,  I couldn't even noticed it because it was only an online course. After the end of the class, I asked the professor whether I can get an extra credit if I go to HR event held in Las Vegas in October. He said, "Yeah, big credit!" I think I should go there.

After my class was done, I left for SFO, San Francisco airport. I ate a beef curry at Sankaku Sushi & Noodle. I was waiting at a laptop booth by the gate until boarding time, and then flew to Arizona. I arrived after midnight.

Drive back home

I left from Las Vegas at 7 am. I drove about seven hours to go back to my home. I stopped by a Japanese restaurant for lunch. Kikku is a Japanese fast food restaurant in Fresno. I ate a chicken katsu lunch box. It was okay.

When I got home, I expected that my camera, which I left at Sony shop to repair a couple of weeks ago, would be delivered at my home, but it wasn't. I checked the tracking record at FedEx website. According to the record, my apartment number is missing, so the driver couldn't reach my apartment. I called FedEx and decided to pick it up at FedEx office in Stockton. Thus, I needed to drive another one hour... I'm tired.

Las Vegas -day 2-

From the morning, I started to play the roulette with my friends. Unfortunately, we all started losing money Lol so we decided to move to another casino place. Before going to casino hotels, we stopped by a ramen restaurant called Monta. It was actually more than expected. Ramen and Kara-age were great!

First place we went was Aria but the minimum bet of each table was quite high. We played there for an hour and left.

Where we stopped by was CRYSTAL shopping place. There were so many luxury brand shops in that building.

After that, we went to planet hollywood.

However, we couldn't fine anything interesting in that casino, so we moved to Paris. The casino of Paris relatively looked old. My Korean friend and I had a horrible result on a roulette there.

We moved to The Cosmopolitan again in order to recover our loss. However, it ended up losing some money... Yes, it is Las Vegas.

We moved to Bellagio.

I didn't play because our purpose was to go to the buffet restaurant. There were too many people to get in the restaurant, so we gave up and change our plan for dinner.

We went to a Thai noodle restaurant called Noodle House. I order combination flat noodle. It was very good. My Thai friend was eating sukiyaki flavor noodle soup.

Thai friends left for our hotel while Korean friend and I went to back to Aria. I watched one of Cirque du Soleil show, Zarkana, at the hotel. Actually, I had been disappointing because of losing money at casino, but this show made my day. The first half was a typical circus show but the last half was very creative and visually amusing. I was impressed. 

After we got back to the hotel, we almost go to an Izakaya, a Japanese style drinking restaurant, but I suddenly got sleepy, we canceled, and then we just went to bed.

Bobby-Q / Las Vegas -day 1-

I went to Bobby-Q again. It was good again.

I left for Las Vegas from 2 pm with Korean and Thai friends. I drove about 4.5 hours, and then I arrived at the hotel, South Point, at night. Even though the hotel fee per night was not high, it looked luxury.

First, we went to a Korean BBQ restaurant, KIMCHI.

I like a green stuff.

 We ate a lot, seriously a lot.

Because we drank beer mixed with soju a lot, I drank a ukon drink, which is made of turmeric and prevents from hangover.

This night, I earned more money than I expected.

BBQ and business talk

I went to Siam Thai for lunch. This is my favorite Thai restaurant. I ordered mix fried rice which is supposed to include chicken, beef, and pork, but it was just a chicken fried rice... Anyway, other food were very good.

My old friend who I met in Tucson invited me a BBQ party that was be at his uncles's home in Good Year. I drove to there for an hour. There is a big pool in the back yard in the house. Many kids who are my friend's cousins were playing there. Also, there was a birthday cake for one-year kid. Last time I came here, she was supposed to be not even born.

I talked with one of my friend's uncle, who I met before. We talked about economy and electronics industry, especially Japan. He thinks Sony is dying. I agree with his idea. However, because I saw an article about "lens camera" -even though it's still rumor-, I guess Sony will be back soon. I believe that creativity is the power of innovation. We discussed a lot of topics including thy system of Japan's work place, my future plan, and differences of business among many countries. It was a very nice and exciting time. I wish I could have more opportunity to talk with American people about business and economy of the world.

Toyama / Jobs

I went to Toyama, a Japanese restaurant, in Scottsdale. I think this is the best Japanese restaurant even in this area. Chopped wasabi was amazing. Saikyo-yaki was also darn good!!

After dinner, I went to watch Jobs, the movie of Steve Jobs. I expected too much, so it was less exciting than I thought. At least, I was able to know how Jobs were enthusiastic about his vision of the future.


I played a board soccer and pool with friends at the pub. After that, a Japanese guy talked to me about his future business plan. He was so excited because he knew we have entrepreneur mind. I was also excited. I hope we will share some information about starting our business in the future.

New sunglasses / Korean home-made dinner / Ironman3 / casino

I updated this blog at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf with Blood Orange Tea of 36 oz.

I went shopping at a mall and bought a new Oakley sunglasses because an old one I've used got scratched on the surface of the glasses.

My Korean friend invited me to have dinner together. We watched  the movie of Iron man 3 together during dinner. It was so fun.
After that, I went to Vee Quiva again, but I completely lost this time...

Chinese fast food day

I went to Pei Wei and Panda Express. It was a very Chinese fast food day.

MRI / BBQ burger / Casino

I went to a clinic to take MRI in the morning. It was probably the first time for me to examine my body by MRI. What I was surprised was that I could listen to radio by a headphone during the MRI examination. The clinical nurse who was taking care of me asked me which radio station I wanted to listen before it. It was very interesting.

I went to eat a BBQ burger with my friends at Thee Pits Again for lunch. The interior of the restaurant looked old but food was good.

For dinner, I went to Cafe China and ate Lo Mien, which is one of my favoirt. Coincidentally, I met other my friends there. Right after I left the restaurant, I head to Wild Horse Pass, a casino in Chandler, again for getting back some money that I spend for urgent care a week days ago. I fortunately won $60! Yay!!

Cafes / Home made saghetti

I went to two coffee shops that I've never been before.

One is Cartel Coffee Lab located in the center of Scottsdale downtown. Its iced coffee was pretty good. And then, I went to another place called Echo Coffee. It was a big cafe, there are many people there.

I went to Casino Arizona and played roulette for a while. First one hour had half, I had won but I lost in a last 15 minutes. I should have stopped earlier...

I ate dinner of spaghetti with Thai friends. They cooked at the student kitchen on campus, I was just waiting. It was so good. I washed dished instead.

Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen

I went to Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen with my friends.

I ate scallop. Even though the price was not cheep, it tasted very good.

Coffee shops

First, I tried to spend a time at Lux, a coffee shop in Phoenix, but there were too many people and seats were occupied, so I drove to another coffee shop called Urban Beans. It was a bit artistic and good atmosphere.

Talking Stick Casino

I went to a casino again. The place I went was Talking Stick, which is where I went for the all-you-can-eat buffet last time. I could win this time, too.

Japanese food/ shopping/ Mexican food

I went to Kabuki sushi & grill for lunch with my friend. Sushi was not bad but the lunch menu was less than I expected...

I went shopping with my friends. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a white sandal and inks.

For dinner, I went to Filibertos, a Mexican restaurant, with my friends. Meat and tortilla were good. My Korean friend played Street Fighters II'. He was good at that game.

Suffering from hearing loss

Hmm...I feel that the problem of my right ear got worse. I feel completely deaf on my right ear now. It is hard to think positively during this kind of situation.

Urgent Care 2

I went to another urgent care to see another doctor in order to check hearing loss of my right ear. A good thing was the doctor prescribed anti-bio-tic medicine because he guessed some bacteria caused this hearing problem. Anyway, it seemed not to cure yet...

China King and Kawaii Sushi

I went to eat dim sum at China King. I ate too much.

I went to casino and won. Also, I went to Kawaii Sushi and ate Nabeyaki udon. Maybe because I expected too much, it tasted so so...

Seeing students off / first urgent care

To see of the short study abroad student, I woke up so early and headed to school. At 6 am, we said good bye each other in front of school. I just left for Arizona again and drove 9.5 hours in total.

Right after I arrived, I joined Thai dinner party.

Because my ear has been problem -hearing loss- since Friday, I went to the urgent care. It was the first time experience for me in the U.S. but what the doctor did was only checking both ears and nothing else... helpless.

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom again

I went to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom with my students and teachers. I rode some rafting rides and got totally soaked.

One of students didn't pick up her lunch box when everyone took before leaving. Maybe she didn't even realize she had to take at the time...

We had a quick dinner at In-n-out.


My right ear had been weird since then...

Farmers market, Wolverine, History museum, and Sayonara pary

I went to the farmers market with students and teachers.

We found the kettle corn, students tried it. I think the kettle corn is very American.

After that, we got in the library for a while.

We went watching Wolverine with everyone together. The movie was so Japanese!! Even though the story level was "O.K.," its visual scenes were amazing.


Moreover, we had a Sayonara (farewell) party at park with students and their host family. It lasted until 9 pm.

This day was so busy but had a lot of fun.