Precautions (预防, 予防, 지침)

The Canadian band "Men Without Hats" had their only major hit in 1983 with the song "Safety Dance." Unfortunately, that song wasn't actually about doing anything safely, it was actually protesting the safety measures at a nightclub and preaching dancing however you wanted to do, apparently with reckless abandon. Not typical of rock bands or any type of music to preach caution, it's usually "love," rebel, fight the power, we won't take anymore of this, you only live once type of stuff. No one sings about safety because it's not cool, it's not sexy, and it doesn't sell. The whole US economy is predicated on people taking chances, spending unwisely, throwing caution to the wind and living just for today. "Safety" is for cops, condoms, and parents, some of the most uncool things there are. MJ might disagree when I pick up food from the floor I just dropped and eat it, but I live a pretty safe life....no drugs, not much alcohol, no skydiving, no alligator feeding, no guns, and I drive barely past the speed limit. Which is why I cringed today when I drove past a guy on his bicycle in the middle of traffic, driving in the opposite direction of traffic, without a helmet...and looking at his phone. This really took the cake for me in an environment where I see pedestrians crossing the street in front of cars regularly, people stopping in the middle of the road and putting their hazard lights on as if that fixes the whole problem, and pedestrains "taking a head start" (previously complained about here) walking into traffic and coming inches away from having their feet run over by the passing car's tires. I cringe both for their lack of care but also for myself in having to deal with these situations because it makes it so much more dangerous for me as well. I'm about to one of those 3 "safety" categories (a parent) trying to bring up a baby and take precautions by getting vaccines, buying the safest car seats, having the most precautions delivering a baby....and here are these bozos singlehandedly making the world a more dangerous place. I've also learned a lot about precautions to take when having a baby: like I didn't know babies shouldn't drink water; hmmm, seems like the lifeblood of human life and my life (I drink almost only water every day) but apparently that's not recommended until 6 months old. Carseat should face towards the rear of the car, not supposed to kiss the baby (we have a lot of germs in our mouths), don't put jacket on a baby in a carseat, lots of things to avoid. This is in addition to all the normal things in life that we have to worry about like being too hot or too cold, sharp objects, being turned upside down, etc. I realize learning about all the precautions to take with a baby, that this is like a forever thing: parents are always going to try to keep the baby as safe as possile, and it's always going to be anxiety-inducing worrying about what these babies do. Even as an adult, there are still concerns about safety: getting into a car accident, getting sick, life is pretty delicate, we're all just delicate flowers traveling through the world with so many pitfalls lying in wait that can trip us up. Probably good to avoid the actual pitfalls in the road......especially when riding a bicycle in a car lane in the wrong direction...while checking your phone, without a helmut. Aigu! (the Korean equivalent of English exclamation "OMG")

Weight Gain (体重增加, 体重増加, 체중 증가)

On the night of my high school's 20th reunion (didn't go after the 10-year reunion was underwhelming), a new source of stress has reared its ugly head, something I hadn't had to worry about since high school: weight gain, especially unexpected weight gain. Working out the same amount (in fact, my health tracker says I moved 300% more than my target, doesn't happen every day), eating roughly the same amount, but.....weight is persistently high. For the last 20 years or so, ever since I started a daily routine of doing about 5 miles of cardio at least a day, I've been able to keep a steady weight, and even if I let myself go and got a little overboard (maybe 10 pounds over), I was able to gradually whittle that down without anyone dramatic changes). Not this time; this time I'm dreading getting on the scale for fear it will tell me some bad news; whereas usually I get on as a form of routine just to check myself like checking the weather or checking the stock market, recently checking the scale has been painful, a daily reminder that I'm not where I'm supposed to be. I can see why people struggle with weight issues or self-image issues; it's not necessarily that I can tell I've put on 7-10 extra pounds, it's that sinking feeling that I'm at my upper limit now without any room to spare, and I need to watch myself; getting any heavier is not acceptable. Except I'm not sure what's causing this most recently episode of weight gain, with the main culprit maybe something we all dread: aging. Perhaps my body just doesn't have the same metabolism anymore. It's not breaking down the same amount of food as fast anymore so more of it is staying on my body. Which means: I have to eat less. I have to curb myself so I don't overeat, and watch it with the high-sodium, high-calorie, high-fat foods. Aka everything tasty in life. I've never been THIS heavy before, hopefully my knees are doing ok, the rest of my body isn't breaking down and buckling under all that weight? I'm now worried about life after baby (not just the lack of sleep, the constant attention you have to give) but also not being able to run outside for too long to burn off all the calories. I might have to prevent weight gain by (gasp) watching what I eat, which has never been my forte for controlling weight gain. Ideally I would go into parenthood at the lower threshold for weight; have a couple months to work on that! Or maybe the cause was the saline that they pumped in me for my platelet donation today, or waking up early in the morning not allowing my body to fully burn off pounds at night. It was a Snoop/Peanuts cartoon T-shirt giveaway today, a blatant marketing gimmick to get more people to donate blood, and of course when I showed up at the site...only XL and XXL t-shirts left. I've always wondered why large corporations giving out giveaways don't make more Medium and Larget T-shirts....why are there always XL's left? I used to go to L.A. Clippers games and they'd give out all XL shirts. Not everyone is XL! In fact, most people are not XL! Only people like my mom encouraged me to wear XL's as a kid because "maybe it'll shrink in the laundry" or "it's more comfortable and it won't be too tight." I've since come to realize, even with my limited fashion sense, that wearing baggy clothing isn't aesthetically pleasing for most, and MJ has pretty much rid me of the nation of going outside wearing something too big. Maybe it's too much to ask for when you're getting a free shirt, but the giveaway only has value (and acts as another incentive for people to come give blood) if the shirt can be worn. Oh yea, and this means I've now lived more years after high school than before high school. They say that life begins after high school.......I guess I'm 20 years old now! I hesitate to go to high school reunions because even if people are cordial and nice now, I feel like they'll always remember in the back of their mind their image of Robert Yan during high school, which was not a version that I'd like people to remember, the awkwardness, the lack of social awareness due to not having parents or older siblings telling me how to behave in American society. I was such a babe in the woods ripe for reputation slaughter. I wish I could get another chance at doing high school over again, but going to the high school reunion is not going to resuscitate my image or allow me to relive those years. And I had weight gain in high school.

Tuberculosis (结核病, 결핵)

I often, like most humans, lament and complain about what I don't have (a big car, a big house, a bigger bank account, a more athletic body, the ability to throw a baseball 95 MPH, etc.), but it's important to take a step back and reflect on what I do have, or to put it another way, what bad things I don't have: I don't have tuberculosis. And according to John Green and his latest work "Everything is Tuberculosis," that's definitely something to celebrate. Tuberculosis has been around for centuries and was highlighted in many famous works by Shakespeare, Jane Austen, etc., it's been very present in human life for centuries but doesn't get the top billing of other more lethal and contagious diseases like Ebola, Covid, HIV/AIDs, etc, but it's definitely there and it's definitely deadly. The most common symptom is coughing up blood and having your napkin turn red, which we're all familiar with in movies and other media, and John Green does his usual excellent job in describing all the horrors of it, including how it just decimates families and villages and whole communities of people in Africa, who suffer due to cramped living conditions (where tuberculosis can spread the fastest and most easily) and bad healthcare. I think people in the U.S. are extremely lucky tuberculosis is just not that much of a problem here (although there were some breakouts this summer as a wake-up call), so much so we don't even vaccinate for it. Let's hope that continues and that everything doesn't turn into tuberculosis like John Green's book. I recently heard that humans are still at our infancy about understanding the human body, and there's still so much go to go about understanding diseases, how they interact with the body, how the body tries to heal itself, and how everyone's body is different. So doctors don't have all the answers (just ask my mom who's going through a difficult situation with medical professionals right now), but the answers they do have have made a profound effect (vaccines, surgeries, anesthesia). I still feel like the best way to go through life is all-natural, let the body heal itself and do its thing, don't subject oneself to too many medications and being dependendant on artificial stuff. But to the extent it's needed, do rely on medical help: for childbirth, for example. I think I've become very naive and complacent about diseases: I've never once had a surgery, had to use anesthesia, had any broken limbs/arms, never had to go to a hospital except to visit others. Never had to worry about tuberculosis. It's almost like my parents just wished upon a healthy baby and put all their energy in giving birth to a health kid, and I was the beneficiary of all those well wishes I feel like I have a circle of protection around me (not to say I'm invincible and I like to think I drive cars to maximize safety and make sure I don't test the physical limits of that circle of protection). I think every parent probably wants that for a child and it's one of the No. 1 things that they prioritize (MJ might prioritize being pretty and cute over this), but it's health for me. Just be healthy, be free from disease, be able to live like I have, pain-free. But of course the baby will get sick in the first few years, like all the time, is what I've heard, because they have the immune system......of a baby, it hasn't been tested and it's prone to everything. So I'm anticipating some really bad grossness and being sick a lot....one of the things that has probably kept my relationship with MJ alive is that I don't get sick very often and don't really get her sick, so we're both relatively healthy most of the time (except those Covid bouts everyone had to get over)......that's about to be tested with the arrival of a baby. As long as it's not tuberculosis!

Encyclopedia (百科全书, 百科事典, 백과 사전)

Playing chess. Going camping. Going surfing. Taking a road trip. Going to a baseball game. Going to a music concert. Watching TV. Sleeping all weekend. Reading a book. Going to a wedding. I hear a lot of fun things that other do in this wild wacky world of ours, but of all the activities I've heard friends say they are actively doing, I've never heard anyone say they are busy reading the encyclopedia. I suspect this is partly because of the nerdiness associated with reading dictionaries and books that never really went away after grade school where you just don't want to be outed as the nerd who is in the library reading references books for fear of getting your lunch money stolen or just bullied by other kids in your class, but it also could be that encyclopedias seem boring. They don't have a plot like novels do, they don't have a famous actor or actress on the cover marketing their tell-all memoir, they don't prepare you for any particular test like the LSAT or the GRE or the MCATs. There's really no purpose especially in our internet age of reading physical encyclopedias like the Britannica or the World Book Encyclopeda (my go-to encyclopedia). And yet, I must be a special breed because whenver I go to a new library, I always wonder where their encyclopedias are, and often crack open the A section to check out where all the familiar sections of "Alaska," "atoms," and "aardvarks" are and what they say about them (a lot of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Samuel Adams action in the first few pages of the A's in the encyclopedia, by the way). I often find that these encyclopedias are in near-mint condition because nobdy has read them; it's like cracking open a new book and the pages still kind of stick together, and pages turn crisply with a little "whoosh" sound. I get enjoyment out of taking an adventure into those pages, but also of the content of the encyclopedias: they've really made an effort (probably to attract any readers they can) to put in more pictures, make the entries more reader-friendly, full of stats, quotations, fun facts, etc., so that it's not pages upon pages of full text. Still....reading an encyclpedia front-to-back is pretty hard work, I like the overviews of states with their capitals, populations, landmarks, famous peoples, famous universities, largest cities, etc., but in between are entries that you can only take so much of like random species of trees, plants, bygone technology, books you've never heard of, old medieval instruments, yet another type of antelope native to Africa. One really is incentivized to skip ahead to something that you're interested in. I've just never ever in my life been interested in fashion and clothing, and it's just a bore sometimes reading about all kinds of shoes, fabrics, styles of the 1930s, etc. It doesn't help that each tome is 800 pages or so, depending on it's a meaty letter like "A" or "M" or even if they have to divide certain letters like C (C-Ch is just one tome). It really doesn't help that encyclopedias are characterized as "reference books," so they're for libary use only and can't be checked out. In this day and age, who's going to steal an encyclopedia? I wonder each time I go to the library and have to put the book back for the next time. Luckily, there are encyclopedias on various topics that CAN be checked out like Space encyclopedia, dog encyclopedia (I really like that one, shows a lot of pictures of dogs and gives the illusion that I have one of those dogs, without actually having one). Yup, reading the encyclopedia is difficult, which is why I give props to an author named AJ Jacobs (I've discussed him before) who took on the monumental project of reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover in about 2003-2004. This was before iPhones and just the beginning of the Internet, so people had more uses for encyclopedias back then as a source of knowledge, but still his story inspires me that others have done it before. He didn't even read the read-friendly World Book version, he did the Britannica all-text black and white copy version. Yikes. I honestly don't know if any normal person would do that in today's day and age without some serious monetary incentive now. There's just too much out there. I'm able to go to the library and sit down for a solid hour without checking my phone (and actualy my eyes thank me for letting them read a physical piece of paper instead of a screen, either phone or computer) but it's just too tempting nowadays with a device smarter than any encyclopedia just sitting in your pocket and beeping all the time with new alerts, new information, new communication from friends, there's just too much to do nowadays to read encyclopedias. I wonder how college kids read textbooks, to be honest. But Jacobs's book about reading the encyclopedia is great: he describes trying to use the facts he learned in normal conversation, to no avail; he just sounds kind of weird at parties, he lugs the book around the New York City subway and other inconvenient places to have a 5-pound brick of a book with you at all times, and he discusses important entries he learns about Descartes (liked cross-eyed women), gagaku (Japanese music), all very relatable to an encyclopedia reader: so much human knowledge that is right at our fingertips everyday that we just brush by without a second's thought. Before reading the encyclopedia and getting into trivia (more like general knowledge), I was naive like a babe in the woods. Now after having read the encyclopedia, there's still a world of information I don't know, but I at least know a little about the stuff that I don't know and how much else there is to know. The more you learn, the more you understand how much more there is to learn. In 10 years when all human beings will be programmed with a microchip with all the knowledge in the universe or there's a magic pill that increases your IQ by 100 points, and encyclopedias including digital encyclopedias become obsolete, I'll always look back on those days spent leafing through an encyclopedia and getting endorphin hits each time I learned something new, as "those were the good ol' days."

Caesarean section (剖腹产, 帝王切開, 제왕절개)

What a time to be alive: we have the internet at our fingertips, indoor plumbing, personal showers available at any time, food stocked in neat categories to shop from, almost anything you could ever dream of available upon a click of a button on Amazon, and....Caesarian sections don't require the mother dying. Of all the things you learn about childbirth, one of the many things is how common mothers died during childbirth before modern scientific advances, so to give birth was literally risking your life, and in case of C-sections, it was a death sentence back when it began in the B.C. era: they just cut the mother's stomach, pulled out the baby, and left the mother to die. Pretty disturbing stuff. Nowadays, C-sections are pretty common and come with a very minimal chance of adverse damage and certainly death is not on the table, but it's still a big sacrifice for the mothers as the recovery time is much longer than natural births. And why do they call it Caesarian section? Supposedly Julius Caesar was born from one, but that's not been confirmed, more of an apocrophyl story like Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants. I was born through Caesarian section, not that I remember it happening. I do remember a little bit about my sister being delivered through C-section, and my mom spent 2 days in teh hospital afterwards. The doctor who performed the c-section also made a mistake and made a small incision into my sister's head, of which she had a scar for the first few years of her life, without causing any brain damage or developmental issues luckily (that we know of). Still, it's not the easiest of processes, and intuitively it seems pretty daunting: There's a human being somewhere inside the mother's stomach, and your job is to cut around the baby without touching the baby with the scalpel. Maybe one of the things that we might entrust AI with in the future, the precise cuts. I can barely figure out where the baby is now when I touch MJ's belly, even though MJ is pointing out where the kicks are coming from. I'm just looking at a sea of belly, no indications of any human life anything (life walking on the surface of the moon). And how do you know if the baby is head first or feet first? if the baby is moving around during the C-section? She's moving around a lot now, what if she gets nervous and starts thrashing around because suddenly a hole has opened up to the world? The answer is probably ultrasound and other scientifcally proven techniques, which is why the doctors get paid the big bucks, I guess. Philosophically, that's a pretty significant moment and metaphor for one's entry into this world: The baby is in a dark place in the mother's belly, kind of existing in this world but not yet, kind of a limbo before wherever we all come from and this world, can't see anything, can't hear anything, can't go anywhere, and then when you're ready to join the world, suddenly.......you go through the portal of your mother's belly into the next world, our world. It's really like the movie The Truman Show, once you go through those doors, you can't go back: the world is a wonderful, delightful place but also a dark, dangerous place...apparently we're starting with generation beta now, not even generation alpha, and this new generation of people are going to be growing up in a world of AI, robots, something we could never have imagined......maybe one day they'll come up with something more advanced than C-sections, like the baby will just be teleported out of the woman's body, or some sort of womb-simulated area that babies grow in instead of the mother's womb.... who knows? Although, childbirth seems like one of the only things left that is not totally explained by science, there's an aspect of magic and creating life out of seemingly nothing is one of the few miracles humans can perform. It doesn't make sense, but it happens, and now the C-section part makes a lot of sense scientifcally, but the numbing the pain part and stitching the scar up, that's also miraculous. Hoping for a great c-section!

Loyalty (忠诚, 忠誠心, 충의)

Loyalty- one of the most cherished values in our society, often preached but executed less, it's the idea of staying true to something or someone, or in the business world, it means keeping a customer for life and not having them go to a competitor. A truly sacred idea for big corporations, as loyalty means a steady cash flow, like signing someone up for a subscription or getting them to apply for a credit card. It's why Costco makes so much money every year and will keep having me back as a customer: loyalty, and the promise of $1.50 hot dog combo and $1.99 pizzas. It's also why MJ books Delta almost every time she flies, avoiding all other airlines if she can help it, and why she just scored one of the best things airline loyalty can get you: business class international flight. Ahh the Holy Grail of travel that I have yet to experience. I imagine it's like getting into the VIP club or being the guest of honor, or how you're treated on your wedding day.....except better. The flight attendants raise a curtain for you as you enter, they write a handwritten note to you wishing you the best of luck, the drinks come often and abundantly, the snacks are healthy and desirable. And the best thing of it all.......the ability to lie down and sleep on the plane over a long transocean flight. One day, if I'm feeling really good about myself and I have all my ducks in a row and my big boy pants on, I might book a flight like that for myself. But for now MJ has gotten it, mostly from her undying loyalty towards Delta Airlines. May they keep rewarding her and keep buying Airbus planes, because Boeing planes are the ones that are having some major issues recently. I consider myself loyal in the ways that really matter, like to family and close friends, but in terms of business I am NOT loyal at all. Whatever is convenient at the time, at the location where I am, is good for me. I will take the cheapest flight or cheapest option that I can get at all times (except Spirit and Frontier) and will always give something new a shot, until it screws me. That's why I tried this new airline called Breeze (from the same people that gave us JetBlue) from Huntsville to L.A. recently, because (you guessed it) it was the cheapest option and the most direct option (Delta only had flights back to Atlanta then to L.A., which for anyone who knows geography, that's going backwards east first and then doing a U-turn and going west. I don't like that; I never doubling back like that and will break loyalty to avoid that. Breeze....is totally fine, happy to report. Everything operated as expected, I was offered an exorbitantly expensive $4 for a Spindrift sparking water that I could get at home for a unit price about $0.25, so I refused and just got regular water, which was still $0 (at some point I feel like this might change, and at some point I feel like airlines will start charging tip for their flight attendants, I just have a feeling) but otherwise I was not charged a fee for my "laptop bag" that I brought with me, no surprise charges, the flight took off on time and landed on time, and I even accessed Wifi for $8 to summon some trivia study materials while on the plane. My thing is, I'm not the biggest fan of unpredictability, but taking a chance on something also brings me unexpected joy sometimes that I somehow got a good deal out of it, maybe the gambler's mentality of trying something new and adventuring out into the unknown. When I stop on a long road trip to get gas, I don't really care if it's a Mobile, Chevron, Speedway, 76, Shell, Sheetz, whatever is pumping out unleaded fuel, I will get, preferably the cheapest option available. I am definitely not the type of person corporate executives are targeting when they send out loyalty plans and subscription models; I am very very fickle about what I buy (if anything) and have walked out of line at a Subway before when the line was longer than I wanted it to be (one person). This kind of "whatever works" approach has probably saved me a lot of money over the years and given me a lot of shall we say "different" experiences as a customer (I was once stuck in Durham, NC for the whole night waiting for a Greyhound bus that never came, and I had to book a 5AM flight instead), and it has also made me not ever get close to anything MJ can do with her loyalty points on airlines, I've always been her guest at airline lounges, the riffraff from "Group 6" boarding zone who somehow is with the Silver Medallion Gold Star status that MJ has. I don't need to be loyal to Delta; I just need to be loyal to MJ.