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High-blood Pressure Scare

My wife recently had an elevated high blood pressure. It was very unexpected as she was always showing me how low her readings were every time we checked together. I have always been the one constantly monitoring both cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar readings and am really surprised to find out that her readings went through the roof last week.  My mother-in-law just left for Toronto last Sunday after a summer full of family gatherings. My wife complained days before that she had constant headaches and took the customary Advil whenever she feels the onset of migraine coming or when her time of the month is near.  This time was different however. She said that her head felt like it was about to explode and she decided to check her blood pressure readings at home. The reading came back systolic 230 and diastolic 130. After seeing this, I immediately drove us to Surrey Memorial ER to get her checked out.  If you have ever had the opportunity to wait in an emergency room, you s
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My Answers to the KP Engineering Fellow (Intern) Application

Here are the answers I provided to a fellowship application for engineering internship. I needed to provide a link in the application so I thought it would be best to include in my blog. What impact do you want to have on the world and why? I believe education is key to furthering any advancements we want to see in climate change, healthcare reform, renewable energy, etc. I want to be able to help the next generation find their purpose through professional and personal mentorship. I currently provide mentorship to my alma mater, students at University of Hawaii at Manoa and at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). I provide guidance to diploma students studying 2-year diplomas in business, web development, support operations. I also provided guidance to new immigrants looking to find jobs here in Canada. It started in university when I worked as a part-time math tutor to supplement my student expenses. I enjoyed helping fellow students pass their courses through tutoring. I

Student Story: A SUSE Scholarship in Cloud-Native Application Architecture

I was recently selected to compete in another Udacity scholarship challenge this time with SUSE to learn all about Cloud-Native microservices. As part of the challenge, we had to answer a few questions as part of the Student Story Program Yearbook. It's a requirement to be active in these community initiatives in order to be selected to proceed to phase 2 of the nanodegree program, so I gladly answered the questions below. In one or two sentences give us a BRIEF introduction of yourself. My name is Chromilo Amin and I'm from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I am a lifelong learner and believe that continuous training and re-training is the key to being relevant at your job in technology. I am disciplined enough having passed some certifications via self-study and have even loaded up on 15-credit semesters during University. I have taken many vendor certifications and many University or College degrees to further my career. There is an insatiable itch that comes with continu

Student Story: A Bertelsmann Technology Scholarship in Artificial Intelligence

As part of the Udacity Bertelsmann Technology scholarship, I was asked to write a student story to provide feedback on the overall experience. There were 3 questions on a Google form and these were my answers to those questions below.   Fast forward to July 2021, I was selected into phase 2 scholarship and have submitted all 3 projects for grading. I even submitted all the career services projects including Resume review, LinkedIn review, Cover-letter review, and GitHub review.  Make sure you don't click "Graduate" yet until you are ready because you will be kicked out of classroom chats so make sure you have said your farewells in advance.  What do you want the world to know about you?   Loving husband and father to two wonderful kids. My passion is academia and enjoy the journey of learning. I have accumulated many certificates, diplomas, and degrees over the years. Some from self-study, some from traditional brick-and-mortar schools, and more recently from online/dista

Tong Louie Family YMCA gym opens this Friday

My neighborhood gym is finally opening its doors at the end of the week. I am so excited because other fitness centers like Club16, Fit4Less, and AnytimeFitness have already opened their facilities. I can't wait to get back to my regular fitness routine and pick-up where I left off on my strength training regime. I received the welcome news via email last week with this statement and was asked to reactivate my membership which was put on pause from March to June. "We are excited to announce that we are reopening the Tong Louie Family YMCA on Friday, June 26th at 2:30 p.m." I filled in the reactivation web form on Friday and received confirmation today with details on what to expect. Gym visits are staggered to ensure physical distancing and only possible with advanced registration through the MindBody scheduling website  https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/ . I didn't want to be the first at the door at 2:30pm and appear to be too eager so I booked a 3:30pm Fitness Flo

Home for sale in a culdesac at Sullivan Heights

I just noticed a for-sale sign today on the front yard of my neighbour's house. We live in a very nice culdesac so whoever snaps this up will have hit the jackpot. I looked at the BC Assessment for 15053 61B Avenue and saw that the realtor is selling it for less than that. I think that the COVID-19 pandemic has relaxed home sales which is a great opportunity for buyers. It’s a 4 bed, 4 bath, 3044 square feet property and we both moved in to the area in 2006 to a brand new development by a respected builder.  My brother also mentioned that there was another house for sale in the same culdesac at 15009 61B Avenue. This one is a 5 bed, 4.5 bath, 3659 square feet property and am saddened to also hear about this because I have attended some neighborhood block parties with them in the early years when we first moved in to the area. I have known both these home owners for 14 years and will surely miss them when they move. 

A Nightmare on 56 Avenue & 152 Street

I had a very bad and stressful experience at the TD Canada Trust branch Sullivan Square plaza in Surrey, BC. I was working on renewing my mortgage with a refinancing agreement with a mortgage broker in early March 2020. The incident really started Tuesday April 7 when I had to step into the branch to meet with an incompetent personal banking associate to sign the paperwork for my mortgage renewal which would sit inside a new home equity line of credit (HELOC). Part of the application required closing a few credit cards by having the branch pay for them on my behalf and then writing each merchant an account closure letter. I said that the balances recorded on the paperwork were from beginning of March 2020 and therefore inaccurate. She asked for an updated outstanding balance from each credit card to be emailed to her the next day and she would pay those latest outstanding balance instead. I also said that the paperwork didn’t have the correct bank information to withdraw my future bi-w