Thank You!

Occasionally I find myself in a position where I'm extremely thankful for a person or an organization, but I cannot find an appropriate forum to express my gratitude. In some cases the person is a total stranger. In other cases it's an organization that provides no obvious mechanism to provide feedback. Or, it could just be that I want the world to know how much I appreciate the gesture. All of these reasons contributed towards my motivation in creating this page.

Thu Apr 29 10:58:36 PDT 2010

Google

My first "thank you" goes to Google. Specifically, it goes to the team who provides Gmail spam filtering. My spam folder regularly contains somewhere around 8 or 10 thousand messages at any given time, none of which I have the slightest interest in reading. Considering spam gets deleted automatically 30 days after detection, this translates into thousands of new spam messages monthly. I don't know how they determine what is spam and what is not spam, but they almost never get it wrong. Thanks!

Tue Sep 14 00:27:04 PDT 2010

Jackie Wilson

My next thanks goes to Jackie Wilson. My earliest memory of hearing your song "Higher and Higher" is in Ghostbusters II making the statue of liberty come to life. Now, sitting here past midnight, processing speed dating forms for Your Asian Connection, knowing I have to give a presentation early tommorrow morning, listening to Higher and Higher in the background really gives me motivation to keep going.

Thu Nov 17 10:15:16 PST 2011

Kaiser Permanente

This thanks goes out to the wonderful staff at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, California. I recently underwent arthroscopic surgery on my left shoulder to repair damage caused by various mishaps earlier this year (including five different incidents that resulted in shoulder dislocations). It's hard to imagine how this could have gone any more smoothly. I met with the surgeon (Bob Nguyen) who showed me my MRI results and explained to me in detail what the problem was. He then explained how he planned to fix it and we set a date for the surgery. I arrived at the Kaiser facility at 6am on the day of the surgery. I was terrified. However, from the moment I walked in the door I felt like royalty. Every person who assisted me that day (and there were many) greeted me by name with a smile, took the time to explain what they were about to do, and asked if I had any questions before proceeding. These people are true professionals in every sense of the word. They helped me relax, made me comfortable, and the entire process went off without a hitch.

Sat Jan 26 22:25:16 PST 2013

Southwest Airlines

My girlfriend Julia and I took a trip up to Vancouver on Southwest Airlines flight 702 to spend the weekend with her son & daugher-in-law before Chinese New Year. Shortly after landing in Seattle, Julia inadvertently left her purse in the restroom at the Seattle Airport. In our rush to claim our bags and pick up our rental car, neither of us realized this until we were already onboard the shuttle bus to the rental car facility. Julia jumped off the bus just as the doors were closing and ran back into the terminal to get her purse, leaving me shocked & confused with all the bags. As the bus started moving, two significant things occurred to me: 1) Julia's cell phone was in her purse, which she didn't have. We had no way to contact each other. 2) The restroom was on the other side of airport security--there was absolutely no way Julia was going to get back there, particularly with no ID whatsoever. However, as fortune would have it, the flight attendant who served our drinks saw Julia running through the airport terminal and stopped her, asking "Hey, did you forget your purse in the restroom?" This particular flight attendant, whose name I cannot recall, happened to go to the same restroom as Julia, saw the purse, recognized it as belonging to a passenger on the flight she just worked, and, knowing Julia would never be able to get past airport security again, brought her purse through security to the front ticket counter. I have always loved flying Southwest Airlines. This flight attendant went above & beyond her duties, giving me even more reason to believe that customer service simply doesn't get any better than this.