One of the most game-changing inventions of this century, in my opinion, is the advent of Youtube. Curiously, though, even though Google is the parent company of Youtube, it's really not doing a good job raising its kid because Google Translate doesn't spit out translations for Youtube to Japanese or Chinese, I only got the Korean version. Good thing to research, and good thing to keep in mind now that I own GOOG stock.
Youtube has single-handedly changed my TV-watching habits!
1.) I don't watch sports games in their entirety anymore, or any of the game. I now just watch for highlights to come out when the game is scheduled to end, making sure of course not to spoil myself by checking in on social media (I'm off of it a lot anyway nowadays). It's like watching a condensed highlight reel of the game, and instead of spending 3 hours watching football I spend about 6 minutes getting the best stuff. Sorry NFL!
2.) Especially now that I have unlimited wireless on my phone (Finally, right? Welcome to the 21st century, Robert!) I can watch videos anywhere I go, and basically use it to play podcasts, and language videos where they just incessantly repeat Korean or Japanese grammar words, or sentences. 6000 common words, 6 hours. Play it on a loop.
3.) The advent of the idea of a "Youtuber" allows anyone to be their own star! when I was in high school, my dream was to be famous, a reality TV star and show up on screen so that everyone would see me! But I thought you have to be an actor or someone famous to do that, and I would have to change myself A LOT for that to happen, like build a lot of muscles, or become a genius, save the president's daughter or something, or worse (be known for a crime). Turns out though, I didn't have to change, the world changed! The world allowed each person to be his or her own star and have their own marketing campaign, ads, and content to try to attract people's eyeballs. You are your television show! And there's a wide audience for people who make their own channels, where if you make the right edits, have good content, catchy music, you can have a million + subscribers! A million is a pretty significant number! Perfect for the millenial "me" generation which is apparently very self-absorbed and into themselves and each one is the hero of their own story. We're all "special" and can be whatever we want to be, and definitely anyone can be a Youtuber.
4.) Unlike TV channels, you don't have to have a cable subscription, have to have wires plugged into the wall, or be in the right area of the country, etc., etc. While the TV stations that I grew up watching (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) are still stuck with basic TV and the whole television medium, NFLX and Amzn are moving on to digital and subscription service, you can watch anything you want anytime when you want it, without commericals (for the most part). Youtube has the same idea. It's really not a comparison anymore, Youtube and cable TV. My friend Babak was complaining the other day about having to pay for a cable service. My question is, why pay for a cable service at all?
5.) Great place to put videos of things that happened in the past! It's like a free photo album/ video album (as long as you're OK with everyone seeing it, but apparently nowadays most people are!) - or just use the "private" settings. I pull up old dodgeball videos of myself 3 years ago (ever since I started recording dodgeball games, what a great idea) and it brings back memories of glory games, and eventually will be "the glory days," once I retire from dodgeball, which might be sooner than later, I've been feeling less powerful and worse, maybe because of my time away and decreased schedule of games, but we'll see. Hope to capture a lot of memories too in the future of great trips MJ and I take or at least great moments.
6.) Speaking of which, we just got back from London and didn't make it to a couple spots, and I was anxious but then I thought, why fret? Someone out there must have gone to the same spot and taken some video, and sure enough, it's out there. MJ and I went to Descanso Gardens in La Canada (not pronounced like the country) this afternoon (great place, by the way) and they have a night lights celebration going on called the Enchanted Forest, and I really wanted to see it (pretty expensive), but then just caught up on it on Youtube, like I was really there! And since I had the other senses covered already (smell, feel of the fresh air), I felt like I was there!
Thanks to Youtube, I found a channel where the host compares words between English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. LOTS of stuff I didn't know about Chinese, like how to say "Burger King" in Chinese, or "Louis Vuitton," or a bunch of other things that are commonly known terms in English but don't show up in my everyday life for the other languages, and Google translate apparently doesn't know!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Monday, December 31, 2018
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Bridge (다리)(桥)(橋)
Bridge is one of those words that is completely different in all 4 of English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. They share nothing in common and sound nothing unlike. Maybe the Asian scholars back in the day were confused at the concept of a bridge? "How do we get from one side of the river to the other?" We have to have something to get over it, a boat is not practical, can't swim across......what is a magical invention that can do the trick?
Luckily for us our ancestors figured it out, and bridges came into existence. And now I love bridges. I love walking over bridges, I like being on top of bridges looking down, I like the view from a bridge, I like the idea of a bridge bridging the gap between 2 places. On our most recent trip to London, MJ and I crossed many of London's famed bridges, mostly across the Thames River, like the London Bridge, the Tower Bridge, the Westminster Bridge. I personally liked the Millenium Bridge, it was the first one we crossed upon arriving and has a futuristic, artistic design to it. And it led up to one of our favorite spots in the city, the Tate Britain. All the bridges did have their unique design and peculiarities about them though, to the point where it got me wondering why they needed so many bridges; it was almost excessive. Back home, I love the bridges in downtown Chicago, really brings the city together and connects the Loop to other great areas like River North. In San Francisco, the obvious Golden Gate Bridge is the historic icon, but the Bay Bridge is the one that gets the most traffic and the one that I saw the most often this summer working in downtown San Francisco, connecting SF to Oakland, in one of the busiest areas of the world, the Bay Area. Back home in LA, there aren't a whole ton of bridges because there aren't many rivers or bays, just one large beachfront, but the Venice Canals features some nice European-style bridges and the Manhattan Beach Pier kind of is a bridge between the land and the ocean, as it stretches into the ocean to give one the idea of what its like in the open sea, which is what a bridge usually does too. I love bridges.
I love physical bridges, but also other kinds of bridges, from being able to bridge the understanding between English to Chinese/Japanese/Korean (kind of why I like my job). There's a vast ocean of difference between those languages, but I can construct bridges to connect those understandings, and artfully too through the use of historical background, context, similar words, etc. I like being the "bridge" between being on the defensive end of basketball and passing it up to the offense on a fast break. And I like building temporary bridges from the current to the future (what's going to happen?) or from the current to the past. Really could help with the stock market; right now we're in a low-dipping jungle-like rope bridge (with jagged rocks in shark-infested waters underneath threatening to eat our portfolios alive if the bridge falls) between the all-time highs in late September to the next phase of the stock market (hopefully new highs, but also possible it could be really low lows if we falter). It helps sometimes though to take a bridge to the past like in 2011! Even in February 2011 (2/13/2011, to be exact) I was recommending on this very blog! buying AMZN, AAPL, and GOOG. All 3 stocks have at least quadrupled since then, AMZN has like gone up as much as 10x since then .What was I doing not following my own advice???? I should have a button like the one Jim Cramer uses on Mad Money every time he reminds his viewers he was right that one time in 2008 when he told everyone to sell. I was confident in 2011, and I'm confident now: I think AMZN and AAPL are still the future of technology and the future of the economy, and they're going back up despite the recent pullbacks. (GOOG, not so much, but still good!)
My twenties were a great bridge from knowing-nothing-and-being-mad-about-everything teens to the now-I-have-a-lot-of-responsibility-and-need-to-make-the-most-of-my-life 30's. That bridge of the 20's had a lot of nice views of places I visited, lots of nice locations I worked in, lots of great languages and cultures I learned about, lots of great friends I took the journey over the bridge with. And 2018 has been a great bridge year from bull market to the 2019 bear market! (Jk). Anyway, as with crossing the Millenium Bridge that first time in London, hope to arrive at somewhere really great and worth visiting!
Luckily for us our ancestors figured it out, and bridges came into existence. And now I love bridges. I love walking over bridges, I like being on top of bridges looking down, I like the view from a bridge, I like the idea of a bridge bridging the gap between 2 places. On our most recent trip to London, MJ and I crossed many of London's famed bridges, mostly across the Thames River, like the London Bridge, the Tower Bridge, the Westminster Bridge. I personally liked the Millenium Bridge, it was the first one we crossed upon arriving and has a futuristic, artistic design to it. And it led up to one of our favorite spots in the city, the Tate Britain. All the bridges did have their unique design and peculiarities about them though, to the point where it got me wondering why they needed so many bridges; it was almost excessive. Back home, I love the bridges in downtown Chicago, really brings the city together and connects the Loop to other great areas like River North. In San Francisco, the obvious Golden Gate Bridge is the historic icon, but the Bay Bridge is the one that gets the most traffic and the one that I saw the most often this summer working in downtown San Francisco, connecting SF to Oakland, in one of the busiest areas of the world, the Bay Area. Back home in LA, there aren't a whole ton of bridges because there aren't many rivers or bays, just one large beachfront, but the Venice Canals features some nice European-style bridges and the Manhattan Beach Pier kind of is a bridge between the land and the ocean, as it stretches into the ocean to give one the idea of what its like in the open sea, which is what a bridge usually does too. I love bridges.
I love physical bridges, but also other kinds of bridges, from being able to bridge the understanding between English to Chinese/Japanese/Korean (kind of why I like my job). There's a vast ocean of difference between those languages, but I can construct bridges to connect those understandings, and artfully too through the use of historical background, context, similar words, etc. I like being the "bridge" between being on the defensive end of basketball and passing it up to the offense on a fast break. And I like building temporary bridges from the current to the future (what's going to happen?) or from the current to the past. Really could help with the stock market; right now we're in a low-dipping jungle-like rope bridge (with jagged rocks in shark-infested waters underneath threatening to eat our portfolios alive if the bridge falls) between the all-time highs in late September to the next phase of the stock market (hopefully new highs, but also possible it could be really low lows if we falter). It helps sometimes though to take a bridge to the past like in 2011! Even in February 2011 (2/13/2011, to be exact) I was recommending on this very blog! buying AMZN, AAPL, and GOOG. All 3 stocks have at least quadrupled since then, AMZN has like gone up as much as 10x since then .What was I doing not following my own advice???? I should have a button like the one Jim Cramer uses on Mad Money every time he reminds his viewers he was right that one time in 2008 when he told everyone to sell. I was confident in 2011, and I'm confident now: I think AMZN and AAPL are still the future of technology and the future of the economy, and they're going back up despite the recent pullbacks. (GOOG, not so much, but still good!)
My twenties were a great bridge from knowing-nothing-and-being-mad-about-everything teens to the now-I-have-a-lot-of-responsibility-and-need-to-make-the-most-of-my-life 30's. That bridge of the 20's had a lot of nice views of places I visited, lots of nice locations I worked in, lots of great languages and cultures I learned about, lots of great friends I took the journey over the bridge with. And 2018 has been a great bridge year from bull market to the 2019 bear market! (Jk). Anyway, as with crossing the Millenium Bridge that first time in London, hope to arrive at somewhere really great and worth visiting!
Friday, December 21, 2018
パチンコ (Pachinko)
Sometimes I have deja vu moments like feeling that I've written about the same topic before with the same title "Pachinko," but I can't be sure and with almost 500 entries since this blog began it's time-consuming to go back and double check. But yes, pachinko........an interesting game played mostly in Japan where little balls go into a pinball-like machine and if it goes in the right hole you get more balls that represent money........I managed to lose 1000 yen playing Pachinko in about 2 minutes, not even figuring out how to play in those 2 minutes of max money-losing (still nothing compared to the amount of money that I've been losing in the stock market recently as stocks have been in free fall). The pachinko industry is sometimes associated with the yakuza, or the organized crime syndicate in Japan because of the gambling nature of the game; I once worked on a large litigation involving a Japanese billionaire with some yakuza ties through the pachinko industry, so it's a pretty big deal.
But the Pachinko I'm talking about is the 2017 novel by Min Jin Lee (I love saying the author's name because it's almost identical to MJ's name!) about a Korean family who moves to Japan during the Japanese invasion of the early 1900's, then stays in Japan and endures many hardships like racism, surviving through World War II, poverty, disease, etc., etc. It was named one of New York Times's Top 10 books of 2017 (I love those lists to identify really good writing in a world now that's watered down by Instagram feeds and social media posts), and Pachinko really checks off a lot of the qualities I seek in a good book:
1.) it's like the "Forest Gump" of Korea-Japan in the 1900's......it is historically accurate in that the characters live through many real events, so it made me understand the history of that area of the world more and feel like I was living history, not just some pretend-world where everything can fictionalized.
2.) It has great dialogue- characters are fleshed out, seem more real, through dialogue, and Lee is able to incorporate some romanized (written out in English letters) Korean and Japanese in there, I even learned some new words in both languages.
3.) Wrote about something she knew about- Lee moved with her husband to Tokyo and researched the topic of Koreans living Japan and the discrimination they received from native Japanese, how they had to hide their Korean accents and their roots; she interviewed like 30 something different people who actually lived through the times and added her own perspective as a Korean American...it really does help to write about something one knows and the characters kind of resonated that by having realistic worries about money and finding ways to put food on the table, the traditional Asian attitudes about getting a good education and avoiding "water industry" aka gray industries like prostitution and organized crime.
4.) Sudden plot twists- nothing keeps the pages turning (it's a longer book page-wise at 487, but doesn't feel that way due to the short sentences and short paragraphs moving the narrative along quickly) like those, and Lee does master the sudden climaxes, changing from the perspective of a few different characters from chapter to chapter to get the maximum character development and setup for the story. (It's like Game of Thrones where we get to understand a character from his or her point of view, then in a different chapter they are described by someone else's perspective, and then suddenly they have an accident/ pass away and it's shocking that they're ripped away from us......kind of like life I guess, which makes it so realistic).
I think the No. 1 reason I like Pachinko, though, is the insight it gives me to the history of Koreans in Japan and all Asians during the Japanese occupation times. I've mentioned before how ignorant I was before learning Japanese (and now Korean) about those countries' cultures and histories, and if nothing else I'm grateful for being exposed to those cultures, more than just the surface stereotypes that most Americans know like teriyaki, sushi, Pikachu for Japanese and KPop, Psy, Korean BBQ, and kimchi for Koreans. Pachinko just added another layer in my appreciation for those countries as well as the people of those countries, especially Koreans who had to go to Japan in the early 20th century to try to start a better life for themselves, some being forced out of their homes by the Japanese invasion, yet physically looking a lot like their occupiers the Japanese (being mistaken as Japanese or trying to act Japanese to further one's standing in life is a common theme in Pachinko) and resorting to working "dirty" jobs when in the new land while trying to learn the language as well as fit in a foreign land, or at least have their children start new lives and be able to fit in. It certainly rings true to some of what my parents had to go through moving to a new land and sacrificing themselves for their children, but it still applies in today's world of people trying to immigrate to better places. Anyway, the history of the world is not, as it turns out, just revolving around the U.S. as I was sort of induced into thinking growing up in the U.S. educational system, and Korea and Japan certainly have had a rocky, tumultuous, tenuous relationship over the years (and that's not even throwing China into the mix!), and it's good to understand where some of that angst comes from.
I would highly recommend Pachinko to anyway, but especially for those like me who are interested in history and Asian culture, or just a damn good story.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
But the Pachinko I'm talking about is the 2017 novel by Min Jin Lee (I love saying the author's name because it's almost identical to MJ's name!) about a Korean family who moves to Japan during the Japanese invasion of the early 1900's, then stays in Japan and endures many hardships like racism, surviving through World War II, poverty, disease, etc., etc. It was named one of New York Times's Top 10 books of 2017 (I love those lists to identify really good writing in a world now that's watered down by Instagram feeds and social media posts), and Pachinko really checks off a lot of the qualities I seek in a good book:
1.) it's like the "Forest Gump" of Korea-Japan in the 1900's......it is historically accurate in that the characters live through many real events, so it made me understand the history of that area of the world more and feel like I was living history, not just some pretend-world where everything can fictionalized.
2.) It has great dialogue- characters are fleshed out, seem more real, through dialogue, and Lee is able to incorporate some romanized (written out in English letters) Korean and Japanese in there, I even learned some new words in both languages.
3.) Wrote about something she knew about- Lee moved with her husband to Tokyo and researched the topic of Koreans living Japan and the discrimination they received from native Japanese, how they had to hide their Korean accents and their roots; she interviewed like 30 something different people who actually lived through the times and added her own perspective as a Korean American...it really does help to write about something one knows and the characters kind of resonated that by having realistic worries about money and finding ways to put food on the table, the traditional Asian attitudes about getting a good education and avoiding "water industry" aka gray industries like prostitution and organized crime.
4.) Sudden plot twists- nothing keeps the pages turning (it's a longer book page-wise at 487, but doesn't feel that way due to the short sentences and short paragraphs moving the narrative along quickly) like those, and Lee does master the sudden climaxes, changing from the perspective of a few different characters from chapter to chapter to get the maximum character development and setup for the story. (It's like Game of Thrones where we get to understand a character from his or her point of view, then in a different chapter they are described by someone else's perspective, and then suddenly they have an accident/ pass away and it's shocking that they're ripped away from us......kind of like life I guess, which makes it so realistic).
I think the No. 1 reason I like Pachinko, though, is the insight it gives me to the history of Koreans in Japan and all Asians during the Japanese occupation times. I've mentioned before how ignorant I was before learning Japanese (and now Korean) about those countries' cultures and histories, and if nothing else I'm grateful for being exposed to those cultures, more than just the surface stereotypes that most Americans know like teriyaki, sushi, Pikachu for Japanese and KPop, Psy, Korean BBQ, and kimchi for Koreans. Pachinko just added another layer in my appreciation for those countries as well as the people of those countries, especially Koreans who had to go to Japan in the early 20th century to try to start a better life for themselves, some being forced out of their homes by the Japanese invasion, yet physically looking a lot like their occupiers the Japanese (being mistaken as Japanese or trying to act Japanese to further one's standing in life is a common theme in Pachinko) and resorting to working "dirty" jobs when in the new land while trying to learn the language as well as fit in a foreign land, or at least have their children start new lives and be able to fit in. It certainly rings true to some of what my parents had to go through moving to a new land and sacrificing themselves for their children, but it still applies in today's world of people trying to immigrate to better places. Anyway, the history of the world is not, as it turns out, just revolving around the U.S. as I was sort of induced into thinking growing up in the U.S. educational system, and Korea and Japan certainly have had a rocky, tumultuous, tenuous relationship over the years (and that's not even throwing China into the mix!), and it's good to understand where some of that angst comes from.
I would highly recommend Pachinko to anyway, but especially for those like me who are interested in history and Asian culture, or just a damn good story.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Doing Vacation Right
After going on numerous trips over the years, I've compiled some tips and tendencies to watch out for next time I'm booking a trip (or anyone is booking a trip):
1.) For me, traveling is a great opportunity to lose some weight. The two birds with one stone (一石二鳥) of not dining out at restaurants is you don't eat too much, just get the bare necessities of nutrition and food and then move quickly to the next stop, thus your wallet doesn't suffer too much neither. And having quick, simple meals also decreases the time you would normally need to prepare food or sit down at a restaurant, thus getting the most bang for your buck. (So really, like 3 or 4 birds with one stone, sorry birds!)
2.) learning about other places, cultures- doesn't mean you have to read every single exhibit in a museum or art gallery, but like the Shakespeare Globe was a great refresher course on Shakespeare- suddenly quotes from Hamlet, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's dream come rushing back as well as the project I did about who Shakespeare really was or if he was another author (Sir Francis Bacon, or Charles Wren, someone else?) or a combination of various authors of the time. Shakespeare does sound kind of madeup, doesn't it? (But then again, Robespierre or Rembrant sound just as humbug but no one questions their existence.
3.) getting great video for future memorial purposes- when I traveled alone, I would often forget to take pictures because I'm alone, or just do a hasty selfie. With MJ, I have someone built in to take pictures of me, as well as someone to take pictures of, as well as joint selfies and great scenery shots. I still have like old grainy footage in the 90's when my parents took a roadtrip down to Florida for a trip to Disneyworld, with me as the 5-year-old star of the show. There was a long gap, though, between then and adulthood that I don't have many photos or videos, mainly because I wasn't very photogenic as a teen, I didn't like to be on camera, and there wasn't a mirror I liked. Nowadays, though, I've reached acceptance of my physical appearance, I do look a bit better and more stylish, and most importantly I understand the importance of preserving memories and moments in time, just as watching those 5-year-old videos of me makes me reminisce about times long gone. GoPro is nice and compact now and has about 4 hours of memory, plenty of time plus I have my phone I can use for shorter videos before I run out of upload space.
4.) Experience different weather- can't complain about the LA weather, but it does get monotnous- London was as expected wet, damp, and gloomy, but we did get one blue clear skies day! I'd forgotten what it's like to carry around an umbrella all day and have to wear gloves walking out. I'm extremely susceptible to losing all those extra pieces of winter gear, though.
5.) The airplane movies! A big part of the appeal of going on international trips. You got 10 hours on a plane, it's a great excuse to just let my mind enter different worlds 90-120 minutes at a time. It's like Netflix, though, there's almost too many options nowadays (I remember back in the day airplanes gave you one movie to watch, and that's it, no fussing over it!) with different genres. Maybe because I haven't had much time to sit down for consecutive hours and just watch a movie for a while, I thought this crop of vacation movies were really stellar. I did pretty well this time to pinpoint what I needed, including watching TWO movies that came out in 2018 featuring Asian co-stars and being 1-2 in the box offices for a week in the summer. That was Searching and Crazy Rich Asians. Searching can become a cult hit in time, I think because of the number of Easter eggs within the movie that suggested the outcome of the mystery and the fact it was done through social media and warns about the perils of using social media, while Crazy Rich Asians wasn't as great a movie as the significance it had on the Asian American community to have such a movie exist. Its plot and messages weren't bad though, about Asian mother-in-law trying to accept her son's girlfriend/soon-to-be fiance? And class differences.
Isle of Dog was typical Wes Anderson good (Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel) with animal characters taking up sophisticated human personalities, apparently the Chinese are doing a series of movies about the Journey to the West, I watched the newest release where they venture into the Kingdom of Women (only women are allowed in the kingdom), can you imagine the problems an all-woman society would have in our world today, watched 20 minutes of 28 Days Later cuz, you know, it was set in London, and even the newest Predator movie "The Predator" didn't disappoint. And I learned that there is a world puzzle competition that experienced jigsaw puzzle contestants strive to win every year! (The Puzzle- movie with a great idea that we enjoy completing puzzles because in a messy disorganized world where things don't make sense, at least you can count on a puzzle to create a clear picture in the world and have the pieces all fit together, even if life doesn't). Yes, I do think subconsciously I engage in that endeavor to achieve some order.
6.) Hotels- I used to love going to hotels as a kid because they had cable TV and my house didn't. And I liked watching TV in foreign countries to see what kind of channels they had. Turns out, I still like to do so.
7.) Handling other countries' currencies, in this case, the pound sterling. I didn't enjoy it as much this time, and with the exchange rates and converting money over and all that, I've realized it's a bit of a scam which took some of the luster off it.
8.) Have some podcasts loaded up to while you still have WiFi, then play them while walking on long hikes around the cities. MJ and I walked 10+ miles almost every day of the trip.
9.) Get comfortable shoes for walking. And get ready for your feet, back, knees, entire body to hurt since you're walking all day, unlike normally sitting in the office.
10.) Bring snacks and fruit onto the plane! They could be a lifesaver in the new country.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Ichaicha in London Part 2
People smoking all the time! If you thought Vegas casinos had a lot of people, try any street corner in London!
Shakespeare- lots of influences on contemporary English! Such famous idioms as dead as a doorknob, all the world is a stage, — all things Shakespeare can be found at The Shakespeare Globe in London.
Wicked- excellent story line- surprised Disney didn’t pounce on a story like this. A girl (!) Disney’s been focusing on female protagonists recently- who is born green and not like everyone else, discovering magical powers and having a comical friend- truly a script that was made for disney. Wicked was just one of the places around The West End that one could go to enjoy plays- Hamilton, Les Mis, Mamma Mia, and Lion King (Disney!) were all options!!!! As a high school student as part of my duties at the orchestra I would be in “the pit” playing music for the play the drama club put on every year, and it’s a pretty neat experience.... the first 5 times practice. By the time the performance rolled around I would be dreading it and just phoning it in, especially if there were 3 different performances on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday or something. Props to the performers and musical talent playing behind the scenes.
For years since my adult life, If there was one last bastion of hope for restaurants on my eyes, it was that they provided water free of charge. But guess what, NOT IN LONDON! We found out the hard way that even the most plain vanilla drink, water, had a price sigh. Not a good look, London.
But at lead the museums and galleries are free, right? Yea they are, but there’s a sign posted every 500 feet urging you to donate 5 pounds. And some “volunteer” pushers who make you feel like a jerk if you don’t. And special exhibitions that charge if you want the full experience of the museums.
People in London need to figure out if they walk on the left or the right. I know cars are on the left, so that’s been figured out, but walking and seeing people approach from the other side was always a guessing game of which way to stay on, narrowly averting an accident or collision each time.
Shakespeare- lots of influences on contemporary English! Such famous idioms as dead as a doorknob, all the world is a stage, — all things Shakespeare can be found at The Shakespeare Globe in London.
Wicked- excellent story line- surprised Disney didn’t pounce on a story like this. A girl (!) Disney’s been focusing on female protagonists recently- who is born green and not like everyone else, discovering magical powers and having a comical friend- truly a script that was made for disney. Wicked was just one of the places around The West End that one could go to enjoy plays- Hamilton, Les Mis, Mamma Mia, and Lion King (Disney!) were all options!!!! As a high school student as part of my duties at the orchestra I would be in “the pit” playing music for the play the drama club put on every year, and it’s a pretty neat experience.... the first 5 times practice. By the time the performance rolled around I would be dreading it and just phoning it in, especially if there were 3 different performances on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday or something. Props to the performers and musical talent playing behind the scenes.
For years since my adult life, If there was one last bastion of hope for restaurants on my eyes, it was that they provided water free of charge. But guess what, NOT IN LONDON! We found out the hard way that even the most plain vanilla drink, water, had a price sigh. Not a good look, London.
But at lead the museums and galleries are free, right? Yea they are, but there’s a sign posted every 500 feet urging you to donate 5 pounds. And some “volunteer” pushers who make you feel like a jerk if you don’t. And special exhibitions that charge if you want the full experience of the museums.
People in London need to figure out if they walk on the left or the right. I know cars are on the left, so that’s been figured out, but walking and seeing people approach from the other side was always a guessing game of which way to stay on, narrowly averting an accident or collision each time.
Ichaicha in London Part 1
Name of trip: Icha Icha in England
Previous trips: Ten or so hours in Taiwan (honeymoon 2017)
snowless in Seattle (December 2017)
honeymooning in Hawaii (honeymoon 2017)
scorching in St. Louis (summer 2017 wedding)
Weekend at The Met (New York 2017)
Dont Let Me Down, Georgia (May 2016)
Texas two-step ( January 2016)
Everything is expensive! It’s like bad weather and bad weather at New York or Silicon Valley prices.
People are polite! If I was at risk of being too negative: here’s something positive: most people are genuinely nice! In Mexico and China I noticed people giving the stink eye to foreigners or travelers or artificially nice to just get a tip, etc... it really seems that British people are nice to travelers, to the point where one can tell. That goes a long way in wanting to visit somewhere again, because really a country is a business in terms of travel: your country is your brand and you want people to have a good time and maybe even visit again! Every country gets some needed revenue from tourism, some more than others.
I’m the digital age of the internet and people connected to everywhere, visiting places is becoming obsolete... there are thousands of YouTube channels dedicated to travel, the most famous tourist areas get visited again and again by so many people it’s really not necessary anymore to actually go somewhere. Food, you can get in your own local ethnic market; just go on YouTube for a week and you can go to all corners of the world, not just your select destination....... is what I thought before coming out this time. Certainly, it’s true that a lot of things can be done online, but there’s still nothing that beats actually being somewhere new, the sense of adventure that you engender when going somewhere new, the new stimulus open experiences, the wind blowing in your face, the smell of the ocean or food being made at a restaurant( or smoke from cigarettes in London!) , the choose your own adventure of making decisions on a trip, figuring out the subway system of a new city, those experiences make a much more indelible impression in my mind, as opposed the superficial impression of another person’s travel experiences broadcast through YouTube, that draws me towards continuing to go on vacation....... no matter the cost (and yes London was pretty costly).
Randomly selected for search out of England! Starting to think my name is associated with some international wanted man In Europe, I’ve been randomly selected both in Greece/Turkey but not in Asian countries. Luckily I had no drugs, no electronics, no smuggled goods, no money! Just a ticket out of the country as soon as possible, please!
Previous trips: Ten or so hours in Taiwan (honeymoon 2017)
snowless in Seattle (December 2017)
honeymooning in Hawaii (honeymoon 2017)
scorching in St. Louis (summer 2017 wedding)
Weekend at The Met (New York 2017)
Dont Let Me Down, Georgia (May 2016)
Texas two-step ( January 2016)
Everything is expensive! It’s like bad weather and bad weather at New York or Silicon Valley prices.
People are polite! If I was at risk of being too negative: here’s something positive: most people are genuinely nice! In Mexico and China I noticed people giving the stink eye to foreigners or travelers or artificially nice to just get a tip, etc... it really seems that British people are nice to travelers, to the point where one can tell. That goes a long way in wanting to visit somewhere again, because really a country is a business in terms of travel: your country is your brand and you want people to have a good time and maybe even visit again! Every country gets some needed revenue from tourism, some more than others.
I’m the digital age of the internet and people connected to everywhere, visiting places is becoming obsolete... there are thousands of YouTube channels dedicated to travel, the most famous tourist areas get visited again and again by so many people it’s really not necessary anymore to actually go somewhere. Food, you can get in your own local ethnic market; just go on YouTube for a week and you can go to all corners of the world, not just your select destination....... is what I thought before coming out this time. Certainly, it’s true that a lot of things can be done online, but there’s still nothing that beats actually being somewhere new, the sense of adventure that you engender when going somewhere new, the new stimulus open experiences, the wind blowing in your face, the smell of the ocean or food being made at a restaurant( or smoke from cigarettes in London!) , the choose your own adventure of making decisions on a trip, figuring out the subway system of a new city, those experiences make a much more indelible impression in my mind, as opposed the superficial impression of another person’s travel experiences broadcast through YouTube, that draws me towards continuing to go on vacation....... no matter the cost (and yes London was pretty costly).
Randomly selected for search out of England! Starting to think my name is associated with some international wanted man In Europe, I’ve been randomly selected both in Greece/Turkey but not in Asian countries. Luckily I had no drugs, no electronics, no smuggled goods, no money! Just a ticket out of the country as soon as possible, please!
Thursday, December 13, 2018
先禮後兵 (Be Polite First, then resort to force)
The Chinese have many idioms that stretch back centuries to war time, tales of battles being won through brilliant stratagems, clever use of resources, or just knowing one's opponent. A lot of Chinese live their life through these axioms, and "xian li hou bing" is one of them. It reads like a self-help manual: it literally says: First be polite, then use soldiers. In fact, Chinese armies first were polite to other neighboring kingdoms (hey, respectfully, can I borrow this land and never give it back?) and when they got an expected refusal, they would summon their troops and take over the land by force.
The situation also fits well with today's warfare, or the form of warfare that people in today's society encounter: best example would be litigation: First lawyers are expected to be civil to opposing attorneys, to use convincing arguments and merits of one's case to win arguments, not have to result to use of force, or in many cases, go to trial. It's something I do well, the "first be polite part," but then the resorting to force and aggressively advocating for one's client by attacking the other side fiercely, through damnations of their case and making the other side feel bad about their case, that I feel bad out. It seems a bit disingenuous, to start a relationship amicably but then flip on a dime if you don't get your way and become highly hostile and withdrawing all pleasantries, as if you were just being nice before. I'm currently on a large international case with multiple depositions and witnesses, so the lead attorneys are constantly sitting down in the same room with their clients. It's such a weird dynamic: On one hand they're both attorneys from prestigious law firms who've been practicing law for many years (both are partners at their respective law firms), so they give each other the utmost courtesy during breaks, like talking about their evening plans, etc., but then when the deposition starts and the video starts playing, they making objections and argue with each other harshly, sarcastically, and pretty rudely, if it was a normal conversation. It's just such an interesting dynamic, that of opposing attorneys on a litigation matter, it's like no other relationship in the world.
I do understand, though, sometimes why people in litigation resort to force, and why sometimes leaders of countries resort to force: the other side isn't motivated otherwise. Without the threat of force, those polite words are only just words. Diplomacy can only go so far without the threat of something happening. That's why wars break out unfortunately; I wish there would be no wars in the world, but then there would probably be more tyranny and oppression in those countries where a dictator or group has taken over without fear of reprisal and won't listen to threats. I wish there wasnt' any tyranny nor war; but sometimes it has to be one or the other. I kind of understand it now as an attorney; I have been trying to come up with a solution for a trademark litigation case for my relative in China and have been talking nicely to the opposing attorney for weeks, months even and it keeps getting delayed; he promises to get back to me soon; he doesn't get back to me. My client and I have no choice but to wait. We wait, we wait, but eventually the clear conclusion is that they're going to make us wait as long as we can, they don't have any reason to resolve the matter, and it's up to us to give them a reason to act and resolve the matter: threat of going to trial, or "resort to force" in today's terms. Unfortunately, I think we're headed in the direction of war. Necessary war.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
The situation also fits well with today's warfare, or the form of warfare that people in today's society encounter: best example would be litigation: First lawyers are expected to be civil to opposing attorneys, to use convincing arguments and merits of one's case to win arguments, not have to result to use of force, or in many cases, go to trial. It's something I do well, the "first be polite part," but then the resorting to force and aggressively advocating for one's client by attacking the other side fiercely, through damnations of their case and making the other side feel bad about their case, that I feel bad out. It seems a bit disingenuous, to start a relationship amicably but then flip on a dime if you don't get your way and become highly hostile and withdrawing all pleasantries, as if you were just being nice before. I'm currently on a large international case with multiple depositions and witnesses, so the lead attorneys are constantly sitting down in the same room with their clients. It's such a weird dynamic: On one hand they're both attorneys from prestigious law firms who've been practicing law for many years (both are partners at their respective law firms), so they give each other the utmost courtesy during breaks, like talking about their evening plans, etc., but then when the deposition starts and the video starts playing, they making objections and argue with each other harshly, sarcastically, and pretty rudely, if it was a normal conversation. It's just such an interesting dynamic, that of opposing attorneys on a litigation matter, it's like no other relationship in the world.
I do understand, though, sometimes why people in litigation resort to force, and why sometimes leaders of countries resort to force: the other side isn't motivated otherwise. Without the threat of force, those polite words are only just words. Diplomacy can only go so far without the threat of something happening. That's why wars break out unfortunately; I wish there would be no wars in the world, but then there would probably be more tyranny and oppression in those countries where a dictator or group has taken over without fear of reprisal and won't listen to threats. I wish there wasnt' any tyranny nor war; but sometimes it has to be one or the other. I kind of understand it now as an attorney; I have been trying to come up with a solution for a trademark litigation case for my relative in China and have been talking nicely to the opposing attorney for weeks, months even and it keeps getting delayed; he promises to get back to me soon; he doesn't get back to me. My client and I have no choice but to wait. We wait, we wait, but eventually the clear conclusion is that they're going to make us wait as long as we can, they don't have any reason to resolve the matter, and it's up to us to give them a reason to act and resolve the matter: threat of going to trial, or "resort to force" in today's terms. Unfortunately, I think we're headed in the direction of war. Necessary war.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Thursday, December 6, 2018
イチャイチャ (Lovey-Dovey)
Christmas season is here, and although the stock markets aren't giving us a Santa Clause rally (Santa Clause caught in customs, Christmas is cancelled, Red Christmas, whatever analogy you want to use for the markets not doing that well), Christmas is certainly in the air here in downtown Los Angeles. Almost everywhere I go, I can see a Christmas tree, Christmas wreaths, etc., (seriously, it's like every office building has a huge Christmas tree out in front to greet their guests, every shopping mall is has lights galore, and even our apartment building has residents putting up their own Christmas decorations), giving evidence that despite all the different types of religions and types of people in the world, Christmas is still the most popular holiday of the year.
Christmas is also a time for romance, especially in Asian cultures, where Christmas is not that much celebrated as a religious holiday or a chance for family gathering but a couples holiday, taking opportunity of the aforementioned lights and celebratory atmosphere to take strolls in the park, see the Christmas lights, and snuggle up in the cold weather. Just writing that sentence would have made me kind of nauseous and sick to my stomach back in my single days and inspire me to move on to another fantasy baseball or dodgeball post, but now I see what all the hype is about: it's romantic. Japanese people even have a word for this: "Icha-icha" which means flirting and making out, usually used by single people who are jealous of the couples who have someone to flirt out and make out with, or older people who are just kind of sick of the young love. I used to be in that exact position! Trying to elbow my way through the crowds of couples who are holding each other, thus causing one less open space to pass through, the couple is usually oblivious of other people as they gaze dreamily into each other's eyes, as if there's not a care in the world. That moment is so perfect for them! Meanwhile, I'm just trying to find out the score of the football game, check traffic to see if the highway is still clogged, etc., etc. There's a lot of jealousy towards those icha-icha couples, and I'm just glad I'm one of them now!
Another chance to expand our icha-icha horizons will be next week, when MJ and I travel across the pond to London to enjoy all the sights and sounds of a winter in Britain (sounds wet and cold). But I've never been to London before, and if everything from the movie "Love, Actually" is true, Christmas will also be very romantic over there! Should be fun! I'm really looking forward to doing a lot of new activities, even if it's just in one city; (we considered doing a quick stop in Paris from London riding the Eurostar, but Paris really came under a little bit of turmoil due to the riots against President Macron, so we're opting to get away from all of that this time). And I was hoping to put that very basic French language knowledge to good use. C'est la vie!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Christmas is also a time for romance, especially in Asian cultures, where Christmas is not that much celebrated as a religious holiday or a chance for family gathering but a couples holiday, taking opportunity of the aforementioned lights and celebratory atmosphere to take strolls in the park, see the Christmas lights, and snuggle up in the cold weather. Just writing that sentence would have made me kind of nauseous and sick to my stomach back in my single days and inspire me to move on to another fantasy baseball or dodgeball post, but now I see what all the hype is about: it's romantic. Japanese people even have a word for this: "Icha-icha" which means flirting and making out, usually used by single people who are jealous of the couples who have someone to flirt out and make out with, or older people who are just kind of sick of the young love. I used to be in that exact position! Trying to elbow my way through the crowds of couples who are holding each other, thus causing one less open space to pass through, the couple is usually oblivious of other people as they gaze dreamily into each other's eyes, as if there's not a care in the world. That moment is so perfect for them! Meanwhile, I'm just trying to find out the score of the football game, check traffic to see if the highway is still clogged, etc., etc. There's a lot of jealousy towards those icha-icha couples, and I'm just glad I'm one of them now!
Another chance to expand our icha-icha horizons will be next week, when MJ and I travel across the pond to London to enjoy all the sights and sounds of a winter in Britain (sounds wet and cold). But I've never been to London before, and if everything from the movie "Love, Actually" is true, Christmas will also be very romantic over there! Should be fun! I'm really looking forward to doing a lot of new activities, even if it's just in one city; (we considered doing a quick stop in Paris from London riding the Eurostar, but Paris really came under a little bit of turmoil due to the riots against President Macron, so we're opting to get away from all of that this time). And I was hoping to put that very basic French language knowledge to good use. C'est la vie!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Monday, December 3, 2018
河童の川流れ (Be Humble!)
Yesterday ( I'm writing this at 1AM in the morning I took the JLPT N2, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It was the culmination of a long endeavor, as I have studied Japanese for approximately 6 years now extensively (not like passively studying like going for a run an hour a day or lifting some weights 3 times a week or something) but actually devoting a lot of time and energy into it, and I believe at this point that I'm pretty fluent, not totally fluent, but able to do the main things in any language: read, write, listen, and speak. So I thought I'd be in pretty good shape for the N2, the second hardest exam offered to non-native Japanese speakers. And my study time kind of reflected that, not devoting all my energy towards the exams, not even getting the urgency the day before the exam (the exam is on a Sunday, kinda weird but theoretically gives testtakers all of Saturday to study) to go all-out, or "EXTREME" as MJ puts it. I also walked into the exam like I owned the place and they should just give me the pass certification now just based on me being there. I even entertained thoughts that N2 was kinda beneath me, that I was an N1 level (highest level proficiency) just taking the N2 test, like a major league player playing a minor league game.
Guess what? The JLPT doesn't care how much you THINK you know, it tests you based on what is needed. I was able to get through the vocab and kanji sections pretty easily, and I thought with plenty of time leftover, but the reading passages are rather difficult even for someone who reads Japanese as part of his job, they're like LSAT passages where you have to summarize essays and sense the author's tone, etc., except it's all in a foreign language, even the question and the answer choices. It takes a while. I admit I let my mind wander a bit because I thought I was doing pretty well, had 30 minutes to do like 12 questions, but each passage only has 3 questions, so that's really like having to read 4 whole essays, and then all of a sudden I was rushing, and time management became an issue, and then I was guessing for the last part. It was just like the SAT and LSAT again: rushing for every last second, something I didn't think I needed to know.
But AFTER the break was the hard part. The listening portion of the JLPT, in my opinion, is way disproportionate to the level of say, vocabulary. There are long passages which you have to digest all the information, then get it all sorted out in time to answer a question about them that wasn't given before the passage began. Miss a few words, and you miss parts of the meaning. And no repeating the passage! No matter how good one's Japanese is, it's about catching all portions of whats said and then digesting that information. Some of the questions, even if they told me them in Chinese or English, I'd have problems answering the question just because I didn't memorize all of that information, like East City is 5 miles away by car and has a nice sports facility with tennis court, but West City is just 1 mile away with no tennis court, and South City is 10 miles away by train but with a dog park, and then all of a sudden at the end they ask which city Ms. Risa wants to go to for leisure. I need a chart or something! It's hard to process all that information just listening to it once! So if I do fail the JLPT N2, it's because of the listening. Apparently they do scale the scores based on how everyone did, but a testtaker must at least get the minimum score for each section (reading, vocabulary, listening) to pass the whole test, no matter how well they did on the other sections. So who knows.
If that was the N2, what will the N1 (which I one day hope to pass) be like? Shudder!
The lesson, of course, is the title of this post, a Japanese idiom meaning "The River God can drown in the river!" The River God was a demon who was great in the river, but because he thought he was so good he went into the river dangerously and drowned! Same thing applies for human swimmers, it's not the people who can't swim that drown (they still out of the deep end) but the ones who think they're really good who drown. BE HUMBLE! Don't be cocky! Don't be arrogant! Take every challenge seriously and not like a walk in the park. I learned that painful lesson for what feels like the umpteenth time today. Other examples: losing at chess to someone I thought I could beat, going to law school thinking I would do really well, losing money in stocks thinking I was the smartest investor ever and would never lose money, etc., etc.
Also, quick note: Cal State LA has always been just another exit on the way to Chinatown where MJ and I go eat our authentic Chinese food, but it's got a pretty nice campus! In fact, most SoCal college campuses I've been to are pretty nice: Cal State Channel Islands (like an oasis in the desert), Pomona and Clairemont McKenna, UC-Santa Barbara, even Santa Monica College, where MJ attends now: they all got a nice touch to it. Only Loyola and Southwestern Law Schools kind of gave me a vibe of being enclosed, trapped in an urban atmosphere.
Guess what? The JLPT doesn't care how much you THINK you know, it tests you based on what is needed. I was able to get through the vocab and kanji sections pretty easily, and I thought with plenty of time leftover, but the reading passages are rather difficult even for someone who reads Japanese as part of his job, they're like LSAT passages where you have to summarize essays and sense the author's tone, etc., except it's all in a foreign language, even the question and the answer choices. It takes a while. I admit I let my mind wander a bit because I thought I was doing pretty well, had 30 minutes to do like 12 questions, but each passage only has 3 questions, so that's really like having to read 4 whole essays, and then all of a sudden I was rushing, and time management became an issue, and then I was guessing for the last part. It was just like the SAT and LSAT again: rushing for every last second, something I didn't think I needed to know.
But AFTER the break was the hard part. The listening portion of the JLPT, in my opinion, is way disproportionate to the level of say, vocabulary. There are long passages which you have to digest all the information, then get it all sorted out in time to answer a question about them that wasn't given before the passage began. Miss a few words, and you miss parts of the meaning. And no repeating the passage! No matter how good one's Japanese is, it's about catching all portions of whats said and then digesting that information. Some of the questions, even if they told me them in Chinese or English, I'd have problems answering the question just because I didn't memorize all of that information, like East City is 5 miles away by car and has a nice sports facility with tennis court, but West City is just 1 mile away with no tennis court, and South City is 10 miles away by train but with a dog park, and then all of a sudden at the end they ask which city Ms. Risa wants to go to for leisure. I need a chart or something! It's hard to process all that information just listening to it once! So if I do fail the JLPT N2, it's because of the listening. Apparently they do scale the scores based on how everyone did, but a testtaker must at least get the minimum score for each section (reading, vocabulary, listening) to pass the whole test, no matter how well they did on the other sections. So who knows.
If that was the N2, what will the N1 (which I one day hope to pass) be like? Shudder!
The lesson, of course, is the title of this post, a Japanese idiom meaning "The River God can drown in the river!" The River God was a demon who was great in the river, but because he thought he was so good he went into the river dangerously and drowned! Same thing applies for human swimmers, it's not the people who can't swim that drown (they still out of the deep end) but the ones who think they're really good who drown. BE HUMBLE! Don't be cocky! Don't be arrogant! Take every challenge seriously and not like a walk in the park. I learned that painful lesson for what feels like the umpteenth time today. Other examples: losing at chess to someone I thought I could beat, going to law school thinking I would do really well, losing money in stocks thinking I was the smartest investor ever and would never lose money, etc., etc.
Also, quick note: Cal State LA has always been just another exit on the way to Chinatown where MJ and I go eat our authentic Chinese food, but it's got a pretty nice campus! In fact, most SoCal college campuses I've been to are pretty nice: Cal State Channel Islands (like an oasis in the desert), Pomona and Clairemont McKenna, UC-Santa Barbara, even Santa Monica College, where MJ attends now: they all got a nice touch to it. Only Loyola and Southwestern Law Schools kind of gave me a vibe of being enclosed, trapped in an urban atmosphere.
Monday, November 26, 2018
Overweight (초과 중량, 超重, 過体重)
Listened to an interesting stat today, apparently Americans on average eat 4500 calories on Thanksgiving Day! Unbelievable! Certainly makes sense that Thanksgiving is the most calorie-filled day for most people, as everyone gathers to eat the biggest feast and give thanks for everything they have (and waistlines everywhere give thanks for the expansion they're about to undergo), but 4500 calories is truly scary, considering the average male's only supposed to consume 1800 calories per day, and the average female less than that. (According to MJ from her nutrition class, so I believe her!)
Where does all those calories go? When I go on the treadmill the most I ever burn is 200 calories and only a percentage of that is fat burn, and that's a big portion of my calorie burn for the whole day! (if you don't count walking around, doing some other tasks, etc.) That seems like a drop in the bucket normally anyone, but a drop in an even bigger bucket.
I've lived most of my life in the "overweight" category. Even when I consider myself to be of "normal" weight nowadays, I'm still scientifically considered "overweight for my height, just at the borderline of 5'9'' and 5'10'' should be about 170 pounds. So even in this slim version of myself compared to junior high and high school days, I can stand to lose a few pounds. Most of America is overweight, can they really afford to have those extravagant Thanksgiving feasts and 450 calorie days? Is there a system to convert number of unburned calories to pounds? Last year we spent Thanksgiving with MJ's friend and it was fine having tofurkey, this year our family didn't even have a turkey. Thanksgiving, as a whole, in my opinion, should put a little more emphasis on the giving and a little less emphasis on the taking (food from the feast). I do find that exercising more helps me lose weight, but it has to be like INTENSE exercise and lots of it to make a different towards the weight. MJ's experience contributes to my opinion, but from my own personal experience too I think what one eats is more important than how much one exercises. I've come to realize this a little later in life, but better to know especially now entering the "danger years" of high cholestrol and heart problems of age 30+.
Different cultures, too, apparently have different attitudes toward being overweight, and what qualifies as overweight. Apparently in Korea, MJ is not considered skinny and constantly feels conscious about her weight, which is fueled by the prototypical image of Korean women. (Also pretty much all Asian people, to be skinny). "Overweight" probably has a scientific metric similar to US, but a completely different "socially acceptable" metric. Unfortunately, the second metric is very difficult to quantify and different for many different people. Shouldn't go overboard the other way and develop an eating disorder.
As I've grown older I've realized that being overweight isn't a reason to look down on somebody, but there is a good reason to try to avoid it. Running and walking, it feels better to run and lighter on my feet because I carry less weight around, plus there's a mental factor of liking one's body and maintaining discipline to try to look great, give oneself some positive self-esteem.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Where does all those calories go? When I go on the treadmill the most I ever burn is 200 calories and only a percentage of that is fat burn, and that's a big portion of my calorie burn for the whole day! (if you don't count walking around, doing some other tasks, etc.) That seems like a drop in the bucket normally anyone, but a drop in an even bigger bucket.
I've lived most of my life in the "overweight" category. Even when I consider myself to be of "normal" weight nowadays, I'm still scientifically considered "overweight for my height, just at the borderline of 5'9'' and 5'10'' should be about 170 pounds. So even in this slim version of myself compared to junior high and high school days, I can stand to lose a few pounds. Most of America is overweight, can they really afford to have those extravagant Thanksgiving feasts and 450 calorie days? Is there a system to convert number of unburned calories to pounds? Last year we spent Thanksgiving with MJ's friend and it was fine having tofurkey, this year our family didn't even have a turkey. Thanksgiving, as a whole, in my opinion, should put a little more emphasis on the giving and a little less emphasis on the taking (food from the feast). I do find that exercising more helps me lose weight, but it has to be like INTENSE exercise and lots of it to make a different towards the weight. MJ's experience contributes to my opinion, but from my own personal experience too I think what one eats is more important than how much one exercises. I've come to realize this a little later in life, but better to know especially now entering the "danger years" of high cholestrol and heart problems of age 30+.
Different cultures, too, apparently have different attitudes toward being overweight, and what qualifies as overweight. Apparently in Korea, MJ is not considered skinny and constantly feels conscious about her weight, which is fueled by the prototypical image of Korean women. (Also pretty much all Asian people, to be skinny). "Overweight" probably has a scientific metric similar to US, but a completely different "socially acceptable" metric. Unfortunately, the second metric is very difficult to quantify and different for many different people. Shouldn't go overboard the other way and develop an eating disorder.
As I've grown older I've realized that being overweight isn't a reason to look down on somebody, but there is a good reason to try to avoid it. Running and walking, it feels better to run and lighter on my feet because I carry less weight around, plus there's a mental factor of liking one's body and maintaining discipline to try to look great, give oneself some positive self-esteem.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Transformation (変身)
When I was a kid, I wanted to be able to transform into different animals, superheros, etc. (similar to nowadays where I want to go back in time, but as myself). I probably was inspired by "Beast Wars" or Pokemon or some other TV out there, but it's natural, the desire to experience into something that one is not. Nowadays, though, I realize I DO change a lot, just more subtly: not only my physical body is changing, but my mentality changes every day, little by little, and it sometimes only manifests itself after 2 years or so when I realize the transformation become very apparent. For example, my attitude towards money, from carelessly spending and not bothering to budget to evaluating what items I really value in my life, or my attitude towards developing friendships (from assuming I would always just make new friends and not needing to maintain them to missing people and feeling lonely and needing to reach out to them at least once in a year, treasuring the ability to meet again and reminisce on the good times). These are the transformations I can personally make for myself without having to try to become a fox or an eagle or a transformer or something impossible like that. Actually, I think very few people rationally would want to transform into animals, basically moving backwards in the evolutionary process with less brain capacity and sophistication, moving backwards in the food chain, and how do body parts grow themselves like a tail? Sounds painful.
Speaking of animals transforming though, the stock market has transformed, and not in a good way, from a bull market to a bear market, seemingly almost overnight. One would think that there would be some prior warning, some passing of the torch, a magic word that causes the change, an announcement issued, a grace period like for a new law to be implemented effective a certain date, nope, basically at the end of September 2018 into the first week of October 2018 will be remembered as when the 10-year historic bull market turned into a bear market. It used to be investors were hopelessly optimistic, stocks just went up in a gradual upslope, even when there was a slight pullback it would just be a great opportunity to "buy the dip" (oh how I loathe that term now), everyone was happy, everybody's portfolios got fat, all news was perceived through rose-colored glasses, and there was no end in sight. Unfortunately, that complacency is what caused the sudden advent of the bear market, as stocks so sorely needed to be sold off that when they did start selling off, the sell-off was fierce and sudden. Suddenly no dip was safe to buy, if you bought back into the market it just immediately went down lower, every stock was in the red, there was no respite. (I, again, would have liked a week or 2 of stagnant flat-line stock activity before the bear market hit) but nope. And the problem is, because the change happened so quickly, everyone psychologically was still in bull-market mode, so they lost a lot of money holding on to stocks thinking they would go back up. When I look back at the beginning of October and wonder why I didn't sell at the beginning of the bear market (hindsight always being 20/20), it's because I thought the market, like the last 10 years, would just go back up! It was like a bear that still wore bull's clothing except it had changed already, and we all missed it. Problem with stocks: by the time you know for sure it's a bear market, it's already gone down so much that the lesson can't be used this time. It was a embarrassing lesson to take, but a necessary lesson to have .Hopefully later on in life I will have more money to invest and learn from this time's mistakes? I keep telling myself that at least.
My wife MJ, though, is making a stunning transformation from economics to nursing! I always admire people who can make a change in their life pattern, so I hope her the best!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Speaking of animals transforming though, the stock market has transformed, and not in a good way, from a bull market to a bear market, seemingly almost overnight. One would think that there would be some prior warning, some passing of the torch, a magic word that causes the change, an announcement issued, a grace period like for a new law to be implemented effective a certain date, nope, basically at the end of September 2018 into the first week of October 2018 will be remembered as when the 10-year historic bull market turned into a bear market. It used to be investors were hopelessly optimistic, stocks just went up in a gradual upslope, even when there was a slight pullback it would just be a great opportunity to "buy the dip" (oh how I loathe that term now), everyone was happy, everybody's portfolios got fat, all news was perceived through rose-colored glasses, and there was no end in sight. Unfortunately, that complacency is what caused the sudden advent of the bear market, as stocks so sorely needed to be sold off that when they did start selling off, the sell-off was fierce and sudden. Suddenly no dip was safe to buy, if you bought back into the market it just immediately went down lower, every stock was in the red, there was no respite. (I, again, would have liked a week or 2 of stagnant flat-line stock activity before the bear market hit) but nope. And the problem is, because the change happened so quickly, everyone psychologically was still in bull-market mode, so they lost a lot of money holding on to stocks thinking they would go back up. When I look back at the beginning of October and wonder why I didn't sell at the beginning of the bear market (hindsight always being 20/20), it's because I thought the market, like the last 10 years, would just go back up! It was like a bear that still wore bull's clothing except it had changed already, and we all missed it. Problem with stocks: by the time you know for sure it's a bear market, it's already gone down so much that the lesson can't be used this time. It was a embarrassing lesson to take, but a necessary lesson to have .Hopefully later on in life I will have more money to invest and learn from this time's mistakes? I keep telling myself that at least.
My wife MJ, though, is making a stunning transformation from economics to nursing! I always admire people who can make a change in their life pattern, so I hope her the best!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
할로윈 (Halloween) - Most Terrifying Things
A co-worker dressed up as a clown for Halloween today at the office and wore the mask, had the red balloons (from the movie IT), looked very convincing.....and I was freaked out. I think it stems from back in the day when I was a kid watching network TV (we didn't have cable when I was a kid!) on a channel called UPN where they showed old movies (with commercials! How did I last through those!) and "It" or something came on, and the clowns transformed into human-sucking monsters, or maybe that was a Ghostbusters Extreme (cartoon) episode......anyway, I've been pretty freaked out by clowns ever since. When I went to a scary amusement park attraction a few years back, I got pretty stressed out due to various employees dressed up in clown costumes where they could creep up on you and whisper in your ear to make it extra creepy.
Anyway, here are the scary things in order of things I took off the Koreanclass101.com "Must Know words for Halloween" site:
마녀 (witch): have never been scared of them, maybe cuz they seem avuncular to downright familial in all the Disney movies and all seem to be misunderstood, plus Asian cultures tend to make them nice witches like Japan's Kiki Delivery Service (excellent movie).
검은 고양이 (black cat): I see plenty of black cats around my old neighborhood and had plenty cross the street in front of me. Nothing to worry about.
흡혈귀 (vampire): tend to look young and beautiful. Probably would be able to fool me into giving them blood. I often wonder if Red Cross is their front organization
늑대 인간(werewolf): these guys seem misunderstood more than anything: I know a few friends who have too much hair, and nowadays it's acceptable for me to have a lot of facial hair. There's times I glaze longingly at the full moon......it is very beautiful.
Miira (mummy): seriously, what harm do these guys inflict? No obvious physical threat, seem very slow, and how do they see? Other than The Mummy movie where it's more about an Egyptian god than anything else, I've never ever seen mummies do harm, other than to my senses when someone gets toilet paper and does a really lazy Halloween costume.
프랑켄슈타인 (Frankenstein): He's more of a hero anyway, and just trying to get to a loved one! A sympathetic figure. Oh and also slow. A common theme among these Halloween characters.
유령 (Ghost): It's hard to understand how a ghost would hurt me if it can't have a physical form, but ghosts that possess people or even me........that's pretty scary. I feel like when I get angry, I do that because a ghost has taken control.
Anyway, the scariest things are the unknown........(like death) Hollywood and TV has kind of desensitized us to all the monsters Halloween can offer. They need to come up with something new.......
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Anyway, here are the scary things in order of things I took off the Koreanclass101.com "Must Know words for Halloween" site:
마녀 (witch): have never been scared of them, maybe cuz they seem avuncular to downright familial in all the Disney movies and all seem to be misunderstood, plus Asian cultures tend to make them nice witches like Japan's Kiki Delivery Service (excellent movie).
검은 고양이 (black cat): I see plenty of black cats around my old neighborhood and had plenty cross the street in front of me. Nothing to worry about.
흡혈귀 (vampire): tend to look young and beautiful. Probably would be able to fool me into giving them blood. I often wonder if Red Cross is their front organization
늑대 인간(werewolf): these guys seem misunderstood more than anything: I know a few friends who have too much hair, and nowadays it's acceptable for me to have a lot of facial hair. There's times I glaze longingly at the full moon......it is very beautiful.
Miira (mummy): seriously, what harm do these guys inflict? No obvious physical threat, seem very slow, and how do they see? Other than The Mummy movie where it's more about an Egyptian god than anything else, I've never ever seen mummies do harm, other than to my senses when someone gets toilet paper and does a really lazy Halloween costume.
프랑켄슈타인 (Frankenstein): He's more of a hero anyway, and just trying to get to a loved one! A sympathetic figure. Oh and also slow. A common theme among these Halloween characters.
유령 (Ghost): It's hard to understand how a ghost would hurt me if it can't have a physical form, but ghosts that possess people or even me........that's pretty scary. I feel like when I get angry, I do that because a ghost has taken control.
Anyway, the scariest things are the unknown........(like death) Hollywood and TV has kind of desensitized us to all the monsters Halloween can offer. They need to come up with something new.......
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Affirmative Action
There's a lot of news stories out there recently, including the Saudia Arabia killing of a journalist causing international indignation, shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 people (last year at this time we were still talking about the Las Vegas shooting, but these shootings have seemed to maintain if not picked up in intensity.) Plus the pipe bombs sent by a Florida man targeting the Clintons, Barack Obama, etc. Oh and a senseless killing of a 21-year-old college student at University of Utah by her ex-boyfriend who was threatening her with compromising photos. The world is so wacky. One ongoing story that I've been following that's not as depressing but nonetheless controversial is the Harvard University affirmative action lawsuit. It's a lawsuit brought by a nonprofit group of Asian Americans who feel like Harvard University's admission standards discriminates against Asians, and the outcome of the case might change the face of affirmative action in America forever.
Affirmative action, when put into the dictionary, doesn't have a direct translation in Chinese or Japanese (there might be one in Korean, not sure because my skills are not that high yet). Makes sense, because in Japan and China they don't really have this problem, but in America Asian Americans like myself struggle to understand sometimes why they can't get into their dream schools despite stellar resumes and admissions applications, and why other minorities seem to get "a boost" due to their race. When applying for college, I was deeply against affirmative action as it directly affected me and my explicit goal of getting into a top university. I ultimately was rejected from several Ivy League-caliber schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. despite really good SAT (admittedly not perfect 1600) scores. So I can understand why Asian students get upset about affirmative action, it's like you work so hard in school in hopes of achieving your goals, but then the schools don't want you just because of your race? Seems like reverse discrimination. On the other hand, the schools are also in a difficult position because they're try to ensure a diverse student body with many different types of backgrounds, which includes race. And they're not trying to reverse discriminate, but part of the process requires a bit of selecting by race when it comes down to it.
1.) All Asians are not alike. Yes a lot of us look similar (I get mistaken for different types of Asians all the time), but many have different interests, pursue different activities, come from different backgrounds, etc. Some have gone through the difficult childhood and come from a "diverse background" just like other races, but Asians usually get lumped in with the category of "hard worker," "too smart," "only care about grades," etc. We don't all want to become doctors or computer programmers, or lawyers (I did become a lawyer).
2.) I think some races do need a "lift up" by society to do well and have success stories that become positive role models in society, like Barack Obama becoming president and proving to the African American population that you can have a career in the most powerful positions in America, or Sonia Sotomaier in the Supreme Court, or other pillars of the society. This social boost is one of the most positives of affirmative action, to try to expand the possibilities (not saying that Obama or Sotomaier got into great schools because of their race, but it allows more opportunities for the next generation)
3.) Getting into an Ivy League school isn't the end all and be all. It carries prestige on one's resume and stays with you for life, but so does that enormous student debt. I personally went to my state school university, graduated in 3 years without paying much in student loans, and saved for law school. When I was in high school, I didn't see that far ahead, all I saw was this big banner at the end of the marathon of childhood that said "you need to get into an Ivy League school!" I didn't even think that maybe I could try again for grad school, maybe way down the line.
4.) Personally, I wasn't ready for an Ivy League school, and some of the Asian students clamoring to get in might not be, neither. Just because you get a perfect SAT or ACT score, doesn't actually mean you are entitled to getting into an Ivy League school. I do understand that schools consider other factors besides grades and test scores including "soft skills" like community involvement, maturity, achievement in sports, etc., so I do think there should be other qualifications, and adjusting the admissions criteria for these other factors that determine eligibility for one of the top schools is a good solution, especially if you can say beforehand what weight those carry. The achievement tests were artificially created to help weed out students anyway, schools can add other factors in addition to those tests, and students (especially 1600 or now 2400-score Asian students who spend all 4 summers of high school studying exclusively for those tests) should understand that those tests aren't the end-all be-all.
5.) One of Harvard's arguments in its defense of the lawsuit is that "they don't punish a student for being Asian, but they do reward points for being a certain race." I understand the sentiment behind that, but ultimately it's a zero sum game- if you bump up one student for his or her race, doesn't that bump him above the student right above him that didn't have that race, and thus disadvantage that student? Seems like a
6.) I feel pretty strongly against racial quotas, and so does U.S. law. "We can only let in so many Asians" should not be a valid reason for not admitting someone. The Harvard suit claims that Harvard uses a "soft quota" to get the number of students they want of a certain race. To avoid adopting a blatant quota system, Harvard introduced subjective criteria like character, personality and promise. Apparently, Asian Americans scored the lowest out of those personality traits, which I believe. When I was 17 years old applying for Harvard, I had an interview with a local alumni. I pretty much bombed the interview, couldn't discuss in-depth issues about what I was doing and what my dreams were, and at the end of the interview the alumnus asked me what other schools I was applying to and that "it's good you're applying to so many schools." Aka, "you're not getting into Harvard." I look back and agree with his analysis: I was immature and not ready for Harvard, and had only focused on grades and tests and didn't have an understanding of the world yet. I think there's something to be said for this "personality test" without being discriminatory, where interviews can be used to dig deeper into a candidate's understanding without just identifying the candidate's race.
Regardless, affirmative action has been and remains a hotly debated issue, especially for Asian Americans. I look for the Harvard lawsuit to draw lines on having quotas for race but maybe suggesting some alternatives to satisfying racial quotas. Repeal and replace racial balancing; enact diversity balancing based on personality and background factors.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Affirmative action, when put into the dictionary, doesn't have a direct translation in Chinese or Japanese (there might be one in Korean, not sure because my skills are not that high yet). Makes sense, because in Japan and China they don't really have this problem, but in America Asian Americans like myself struggle to understand sometimes why they can't get into their dream schools despite stellar resumes and admissions applications, and why other minorities seem to get "a boost" due to their race. When applying for college, I was deeply against affirmative action as it directly affected me and my explicit goal of getting into a top university. I ultimately was rejected from several Ivy League-caliber schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. despite really good SAT (admittedly not perfect 1600) scores. So I can understand why Asian students get upset about affirmative action, it's like you work so hard in school in hopes of achieving your goals, but then the schools don't want you just because of your race? Seems like reverse discrimination. On the other hand, the schools are also in a difficult position because they're try to ensure a diverse student body with many different types of backgrounds, which includes race. And they're not trying to reverse discriminate, but part of the process requires a bit of selecting by race when it comes down to it.
1.) All Asians are not alike. Yes a lot of us look similar (I get mistaken for different types of Asians all the time), but many have different interests, pursue different activities, come from different backgrounds, etc. Some have gone through the difficult childhood and come from a "diverse background" just like other races, but Asians usually get lumped in with the category of "hard worker," "too smart," "only care about grades," etc. We don't all want to become doctors or computer programmers, or lawyers (I did become a lawyer).
2.) I think some races do need a "lift up" by society to do well and have success stories that become positive role models in society, like Barack Obama becoming president and proving to the African American population that you can have a career in the most powerful positions in America, or Sonia Sotomaier in the Supreme Court, or other pillars of the society. This social boost is one of the most positives of affirmative action, to try to expand the possibilities (not saying that Obama or Sotomaier got into great schools because of their race, but it allows more opportunities for the next generation)
3.) Getting into an Ivy League school isn't the end all and be all. It carries prestige on one's resume and stays with you for life, but so does that enormous student debt. I personally went to my state school university, graduated in 3 years without paying much in student loans, and saved for law school. When I was in high school, I didn't see that far ahead, all I saw was this big banner at the end of the marathon of childhood that said "you need to get into an Ivy League school!" I didn't even think that maybe I could try again for grad school, maybe way down the line.
4.) Personally, I wasn't ready for an Ivy League school, and some of the Asian students clamoring to get in might not be, neither. Just because you get a perfect SAT or ACT score, doesn't actually mean you are entitled to getting into an Ivy League school. I do understand that schools consider other factors besides grades and test scores including "soft skills" like community involvement, maturity, achievement in sports, etc., so I do think there should be other qualifications, and adjusting the admissions criteria for these other factors that determine eligibility for one of the top schools is a good solution, especially if you can say beforehand what weight those carry. The achievement tests were artificially created to help weed out students anyway, schools can add other factors in addition to those tests, and students (especially 1600 or now 2400-score Asian students who spend all 4 summers of high school studying exclusively for those tests) should understand that those tests aren't the end-all be-all.
5.) One of Harvard's arguments in its defense of the lawsuit is that "they don't punish a student for being Asian, but they do reward points for being a certain race." I understand the sentiment behind that, but ultimately it's a zero sum game- if you bump up one student for his or her race, doesn't that bump him above the student right above him that didn't have that race, and thus disadvantage that student? Seems like a
6.) I feel pretty strongly against racial quotas, and so does U.S. law. "We can only let in so many Asians" should not be a valid reason for not admitting someone. The Harvard suit claims that Harvard uses a "soft quota" to get the number of students they want of a certain race. To avoid adopting a blatant quota system, Harvard introduced subjective criteria like character, personality and promise. Apparently, Asian Americans scored the lowest out of those personality traits, which I believe. When I was 17 years old applying for Harvard, I had an interview with a local alumni. I pretty much bombed the interview, couldn't discuss in-depth issues about what I was doing and what my dreams were, and at the end of the interview the alumnus asked me what other schools I was applying to and that "it's good you're applying to so many schools." Aka, "you're not getting into Harvard." I look back and agree with his analysis: I was immature and not ready for Harvard, and had only focused on grades and tests and didn't have an understanding of the world yet. I think there's something to be said for this "personality test" without being discriminatory, where interviews can be used to dig deeper into a candidate's understanding without just identifying the candidate's race.
Regardless, affirmative action has been and remains a hotly debated issue, especially for Asian Americans. I look for the Harvard lawsuit to draw lines on having quotas for race but maybe suggesting some alternatives to satisfying racial quotas. Repeal and replace racial balancing; enact diversity balancing based on personality and background factors.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Friday, October 26, 2018
October (神無月)
Curiously, the Japanese to the month of October as "the Month without Gods," and it certainly has felt that way this month. I don't attend church and don't profess to be affiliated with any organized religion, but I do "pray" or "wish for" things to happen, usually related to me, but sometimes to other people. For example, I pray that something good will happen to someone else in the world, that there will be less death and suffering. I also pray for winning to win the lottery, which was I'm sure a common prayer this month with the Mega Millions lottery ballooning to 1.6 billion; I also do wish that whoever ultimately won that grand prize (somewhere in South Carolina, as reported) will do something good with it, as I would have. Easy to say, I know, but I honestly would have devoted a lot of time and energy and obviously money towards solving social issues with the money, visit different charities or countries to make sure my money was going to a good cause, and then give to those causes. I also wish for my wife and my family's success, health, and happiness.
My No.1 prayer, though, this month, has been for the stock market to rebound, and since I'm writing about it, you can probably guess that it hasn't rebounded; worse, it keeps going down. I read my February entry about the Great Recession of 2018 and I've basically all the checkmarks of things I shouldn't do that I wrote about then. I pay too much attention to the market, I don't realize things can go down a lot faster then they go up, I don't realize how much losing hurts compared to winning. Added some other lessons though:
1.) Many in the market say don't panic sell. I agree with this, but sometimes having a little panic is good, as opposed to being complacent and always thinking the market will go up. I ask myself how I can just watch the stock go down this month without taking much action, and a lot of the reason stems from continuously thinking the stock will bounce back any time. Yes, eventually stocks SHOULD bounce back, but it's very difficult to call a "bottom," and can become very costly if you're wrong.
2.) Kind of related to No. 1, don't think I'm the smartest guy in the room, or even smart, at playing the market. As Jim Cramer says, "THEY KNOW NOTHING!" not even the best people in the world can know exactly what the stock market is going to do next; let alone the casual investor like me. I can't think that just because I try to "buy low" that the stock's going to go up just because I bought it. The stock market's like a raging bull (well, actually, in the last month, a bear); you can't try to outsmart it or tame it and plant a flag that says "I defeated the market! I called the bottom!" you just got to react, try to take some profit if you can, limit the losses, and try to stay alive.
3.) I started trading on a site called Robinhood a few months ago, and it's helpful to not have to pay commissions on any trades, which is a blessing, but it also becomes a curse for me to make reactionary moves all the time. It allows for much easier panic-selling, feeding into my buyer's or seller's remorse ( I regret buying/selling and want to redo my position, basically neutralizing what I just did minutes ago), and it becomes such a mess I forget what I was trying to do in the first place. And I also make tiny trades so that mistakes wont' hurt as much, but then that leads to leaving too much of position open to a huge sell-off ( I didn't sell enough).
4.) I think I'll always remember the day of October 25, 2018. I knew Amazon earnings were coming out, but the whole day the stock market went up and up, recovering a lot of the losses that I had incurred this past month. "Let's go! This is it!" it was like I was a fan at a sports game, cheering for my team, the (stock market) bulls. I considered hedging a bit from Amazon, but I thought earnings were coming out, they did so well last time, if they do well, I might get all the money back! 3:00PM was the close of the market, I eagerly await, and at 3:01PM the stock plunges, instantly eviscerating all the gains from the 7-hour trading day in a click of a button, then going down more, and dragging the stock market with it today. It was really the worst-feeling website click in my whole life, watching the AMZN stock say -80.00 in red letters after-hours. Hopefully that will FINALLY, FINALLY ingrain in me the lesson that all gains are temporary until you close out the trade, and that I'm much more likely to sell when things are looking up and I'm still feeling good about msyelf (SELL HIGH!) than I am to do so when things are going down because of how emotional I get (maybe set stop limits?)
Also some other things going on that are making October difficult: I keep just missing buses and trains; the timing is just off. Like I am coming up on the train and it's in view, but it just goes by before I get there. To me, as most know, that's one of the worst feelings: I very much dislike getting delayed. I'm sure it's not that extreme and I'm exaggerating the frequency of it, but in September it felt like it never happened, and in October it feels like it's happening all the time.
I can't wait for this month to be over. Why does it have to be a 31-day month?
My No.1 prayer, though, this month, has been for the stock market to rebound, and since I'm writing about it, you can probably guess that it hasn't rebounded; worse, it keeps going down. I read my February entry about the Great Recession of 2018 and I've basically all the checkmarks of things I shouldn't do that I wrote about then. I pay too much attention to the market, I don't realize things can go down a lot faster then they go up, I don't realize how much losing hurts compared to winning. Added some other lessons though:
1.) Many in the market say don't panic sell. I agree with this, but sometimes having a little panic is good, as opposed to being complacent and always thinking the market will go up. I ask myself how I can just watch the stock go down this month without taking much action, and a lot of the reason stems from continuously thinking the stock will bounce back any time. Yes, eventually stocks SHOULD bounce back, but it's very difficult to call a "bottom," and can become very costly if you're wrong.
2.) Kind of related to No. 1, don't think I'm the smartest guy in the room, or even smart, at playing the market. As Jim Cramer says, "THEY KNOW NOTHING!" not even the best people in the world can know exactly what the stock market is going to do next; let alone the casual investor like me. I can't think that just because I try to "buy low" that the stock's going to go up just because I bought it. The stock market's like a raging bull (well, actually, in the last month, a bear); you can't try to outsmart it or tame it and plant a flag that says "I defeated the market! I called the bottom!" you just got to react, try to take some profit if you can, limit the losses, and try to stay alive.
3.) I started trading on a site called Robinhood a few months ago, and it's helpful to not have to pay commissions on any trades, which is a blessing, but it also becomes a curse for me to make reactionary moves all the time. It allows for much easier panic-selling, feeding into my buyer's or seller's remorse ( I regret buying/selling and want to redo my position, basically neutralizing what I just did minutes ago), and it becomes such a mess I forget what I was trying to do in the first place. And I also make tiny trades so that mistakes wont' hurt as much, but then that leads to leaving too much of position open to a huge sell-off ( I didn't sell enough).
4.) I think I'll always remember the day of October 25, 2018. I knew Amazon earnings were coming out, but the whole day the stock market went up and up, recovering a lot of the losses that I had incurred this past month. "Let's go! This is it!" it was like I was a fan at a sports game, cheering for my team, the (stock market) bulls. I considered hedging a bit from Amazon, but I thought earnings were coming out, they did so well last time, if they do well, I might get all the money back! 3:00PM was the close of the market, I eagerly await, and at 3:01PM the stock plunges, instantly eviscerating all the gains from the 7-hour trading day in a click of a button, then going down more, and dragging the stock market with it today. It was really the worst-feeling website click in my whole life, watching the AMZN stock say -80.00 in red letters after-hours. Hopefully that will FINALLY, FINALLY ingrain in me the lesson that all gains are temporary until you close out the trade, and that I'm much more likely to sell when things are looking up and I'm still feeling good about msyelf (SELL HIGH!) than I am to do so when things are going down because of how emotional I get (maybe set stop limits?)
Also some other things going on that are making October difficult: I keep just missing buses and trains; the timing is just off. Like I am coming up on the train and it's in view, but it just goes by before I get there. To me, as most know, that's one of the worst feelings: I very much dislike getting delayed. I'm sure it's not that extreme and I'm exaggerating the frequency of it, but in September it felt like it never happened, and in October it feels like it's happening all the time.
I can't wait for this month to be over. Why does it have to be a 31-day month?
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Attention to Detail (세심한, 細心)
The kanji for "meticulous," (an SAT word!) or paying attention to detail, is the same in Japanese and Chinese and is very interesting: it means having a "thin heart," as one can picture someone examining with a fine magnifying glass or focusing all of one's energy into that one thin piece of one's heart. The opposite is true in Chinese, being rough and oblivious to detail is called 粗心, or having a thick heart. Really don't know why these analogies are what they are, but it definitely describes me.
Today I noticed that my pants have a whole in them on the inner leg; near the crotch area. It's not really obvious to others and not in a critical area, but the problem is I've been wearing these pants for 2 days, and didn't notice. I don't know if the hole was caused by me tripping on something or trying to stretch out and overdid it, or just got washed too many times in the laundry (probably the laundry). But yes I don't notice things, even about myself. MJ constantly adjusts my hair back and forth because I notice my own appearance. MJ is great at paying attention to detail especially appearance wise, not just for herself but the things we own, the places where we live, the hotels we stay at, the beds we sleep in (and whether they are dirty!) so she's a great compliment to my rough ways. She definitely would not have let me walk out of the house wearing pants with a hole in them!
But it's not just that, there's other areas where it's critical to be fastidious. Checking one's bank account or credit card statements, for example, is really important to go over with a fine tooth comb. Contracts, legal agreements.
There are industries where the whole basis of the job is to be meticulous and look over details. I just watched a Japanese drama where the main character (Satomi Ishihara, kawaii!!!!) is a book editor and has to check over whole books for factual accuracy, grammatical accuracy, etc. I used to have to do that job in law school for the Interdisciplinary Law Journal at USC; very, very tedious job to get a law journal published, not just for the author, but for the staff working on the journal who have to check everything.
My job now, for example, requires a lot of meticulousness: I go over a lot of documents in different languages to see if something is pertinent to the case and might prove the case. One paragraph, one sentence, or even one word (one single character! in Asian languages) can be the difference between something being unimportant to the one that breaks open a case and is the "smoking gun" and used as evidence.
Sometimes just in life, it's important to notice details of the world that surround us: the color of leaves changing in the neighborhood, which neighbors have cars parked on their driveway (house burglars actually hone in on these details to see who's on vacation), it's just good to notice things. I used to when I was a kid, question things, try to remember differences, but now it's just one big mush of information crammed in and forgotten immediately by the next article I read online about the next big sequel to come out or who's playing in the World Series.
As a result of not paying enough attention to detail, some things build up over time that I notice and become a burden eventually. My car deteriorating bit by bit until I need to have a major fix-up (recently it was my tires had almost worn out entirely), earwax clogs my ears gradually until one day I can't hear normally out of my ear, subscriptions to the MLB app pile up month by month before I remember to cancel, and over a year they become a 12x cost. That's how they get ya, these subscription-model businesses! And over time lotto ticket costs pile up (unless I win in which case they will seem trivial!)
Ironically, I might have already made a post about the importance of being meticulous, but I didn't pay attention enough to detail to check!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Today I noticed that my pants have a whole in them on the inner leg; near the crotch area. It's not really obvious to others and not in a critical area, but the problem is I've been wearing these pants for 2 days, and didn't notice. I don't know if the hole was caused by me tripping on something or trying to stretch out and overdid it, or just got washed too many times in the laundry (probably the laundry). But yes I don't notice things, even about myself. MJ constantly adjusts my hair back and forth because I notice my own appearance. MJ is great at paying attention to detail especially appearance wise, not just for herself but the things we own, the places where we live, the hotels we stay at, the beds we sleep in (and whether they are dirty!) so she's a great compliment to my rough ways. She definitely would not have let me walk out of the house wearing pants with a hole in them!
But it's not just that, there's other areas where it's critical to be fastidious. Checking one's bank account or credit card statements, for example, is really important to go over with a fine tooth comb. Contracts, legal agreements.
There are industries where the whole basis of the job is to be meticulous and look over details. I just watched a Japanese drama where the main character (Satomi Ishihara, kawaii!!!!) is a book editor and has to check over whole books for factual accuracy, grammatical accuracy, etc. I used to have to do that job in law school for the Interdisciplinary Law Journal at USC; very, very tedious job to get a law journal published, not just for the author, but for the staff working on the journal who have to check everything.
My job now, for example, requires a lot of meticulousness: I go over a lot of documents in different languages to see if something is pertinent to the case and might prove the case. One paragraph, one sentence, or even one word (one single character! in Asian languages) can be the difference between something being unimportant to the one that breaks open a case and is the "smoking gun" and used as evidence.
Sometimes just in life, it's important to notice details of the world that surround us: the color of leaves changing in the neighborhood, which neighbors have cars parked on their driveway (house burglars actually hone in on these details to see who's on vacation), it's just good to notice things. I used to when I was a kid, question things, try to remember differences, but now it's just one big mush of information crammed in and forgotten immediately by the next article I read online about the next big sequel to come out or who's playing in the World Series.
As a result of not paying enough attention to detail, some things build up over time that I notice and become a burden eventually. My car deteriorating bit by bit until I need to have a major fix-up (recently it was my tires had almost worn out entirely), earwax clogs my ears gradually until one day I can't hear normally out of my ear, subscriptions to the MLB app pile up month by month before I remember to cancel, and over a year they become a 12x cost. That's how they get ya, these subscription-model businesses! And over time lotto ticket costs pile up (unless I win in which case they will seem trivial!)
Ironically, I might have already made a post about the importance of being meticulous, but I didn't pay attention enough to detail to check!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Prison (감옥)监狱
There are a lot of different names for prison in Asian languages, to the point of almost romanticizing the idea of it. There are words that express the idea of "justice implementation station," a "holding cell," a "man house," and even a "pig box" in Japanese. Even in English there's various connotations including "the slammer," the "big house," "penitentiary" (with the idea to pay penitence for your crimes), "juvie," the "joint," etc., etc. It makes prison seem like some sort of fantasy land, and Hollywood has glorified the idea of being locked up in various movies (Shawshank Redemption, the Rock, The Green Mile come to mind).
I would not do well in jail. Not only am I physically weak causing me to be bullied (or worse) by other inmates, I dislike very much the idea of staying in one place all the time, and being trapped. Which is why I feel like I'm in prison sitting at my desk for approximately 80 hours a week, week after week. I get a brief respite to get on a subway to get home and sleep, but otherwise I spend 12 of my 16 or so waking hours in the same room, trapped to my yearning to make more money. It's a metaphorical prison that I live in, always yearning to achieve financial independence but never really ever getting there. There are so many different types of prisons and restrictions in life!
Which is why the lotto (record 1.6 billion dollars!) could be my salvation! On another level, I'm in a wealth prison of being stuck in the middle class (a good problem to have considering the plight of those living in poverty who can't escape poverty), but as it stands now I won't be able to unlock the door into the upper-middle class or the top 1%, which is fine I guess but those people seem like they have it all! It'd be better if I was ignorant of that wealthy class, didn't know about the fresh air outside the prison, but I do and it's all around us, seemingly just beyond our reach inside those glass houses and fancy dinner parties that I just can't break into and won't for the foreseeable future.
I think I have an abnormal need to move around from time to time; it's kind of why I run around a lot (to change my location) and partly why I shake my leg while sitting which MJ sits: I'm anxious to change location, change scenery, get new stimulus. Some people are content with having a home (in fact, some people like prison and enjoy the free healthcare, rent, and provisions). Being trapped in a cage would be torturous spiritually in that I can't access the outside world, go where I want to, and experience something new. That sometimes is the real prison for me: being trapped in the same existence, reliving the same day over and over again, like a rat in a maze (or labyrinth!)
My water weight is being locked in a prison inside my body right now: no matter how much I run in Chicago, the weather has cooled down enough to make my body not sweat at all, and the water is totally absorbed into the body, unable to be dispersed through sweat. And I drink a lot of water at work to keep hydrated and to keep my skin from drying out, so that water has nowhere to go. No wonder I gain weight every time in Chicago, even if I don't eat italian beef sandwiches, deep dish pizza, hot dogs, or all the different kinds of yummy but fatty food they got around here. In LA I would do 2 miles or so every day and by the time I got home I would have worked up a pretty good sweat.
I would not do well in jail. Not only am I physically weak causing me to be bullied (or worse) by other inmates, I dislike very much the idea of staying in one place all the time, and being trapped. Which is why I feel like I'm in prison sitting at my desk for approximately 80 hours a week, week after week. I get a brief respite to get on a subway to get home and sleep, but otherwise I spend 12 of my 16 or so waking hours in the same room, trapped to my yearning to make more money. It's a metaphorical prison that I live in, always yearning to achieve financial independence but never really ever getting there. There are so many different types of prisons and restrictions in life!
Which is why the lotto (record 1.6 billion dollars!) could be my salvation! On another level, I'm in a wealth prison of being stuck in the middle class (a good problem to have considering the plight of those living in poverty who can't escape poverty), but as it stands now I won't be able to unlock the door into the upper-middle class or the top 1%, which is fine I guess but those people seem like they have it all! It'd be better if I was ignorant of that wealthy class, didn't know about the fresh air outside the prison, but I do and it's all around us, seemingly just beyond our reach inside those glass houses and fancy dinner parties that I just can't break into and won't for the foreseeable future.
I think I have an abnormal need to move around from time to time; it's kind of why I run around a lot (to change my location) and partly why I shake my leg while sitting which MJ sits: I'm anxious to change location, change scenery, get new stimulus. Some people are content with having a home (in fact, some people like prison and enjoy the free healthcare, rent, and provisions). Being trapped in a cage would be torturous spiritually in that I can't access the outside world, go where I want to, and experience something new. That sometimes is the real prison for me: being trapped in the same existence, reliving the same day over and over again, like a rat in a maze (or labyrinth!)
My water weight is being locked in a prison inside my body right now: no matter how much I run in Chicago, the weather has cooled down enough to make my body not sweat at all, and the water is totally absorbed into the body, unable to be dispersed through sweat. And I drink a lot of water at work to keep hydrated and to keep my skin from drying out, so that water has nowhere to go. No wonder I gain weight every time in Chicago, even if I don't eat italian beef sandwiches, deep dish pizza, hot dogs, or all the different kinds of yummy but fatty food they got around here. In LA I would do 2 miles or so every day and by the time I got home I would have worked up a pretty good sweat.
Friday, October 19, 2018
기차역 (Train Station) 火车站, 駅
Recently I watched the animated prequel to the 2016 hit South Korean movie, "Train to Busan." Train to Busan was one of the most memorable movies I've ever seen because MJ and I saw it in her own home with the lights off, on our awesome movie projector (that replaced a TV for us). It was a horror zombie movie but more of a thriller with heart-pumping action, and MJ's hands apparently got sweaty. The prequel is called "Seoul Station" and has some of the same themes, but definitely not the real-life pounding action of the live-action. Zombie movies have to be live action to get the real gut-wrenching affect of the real people turning into zombies, in my opinion. Requires lots of crowd actors and a lot of makeup, but worth it in my opinion.
A LOT happens at a train station, and now living in a city where trains basically take me everywhere I need to go, I spend a LOT of time at train stations. Seriously, I don't even take Uber, I can get almost everywhere in the downtown Chicago area by train and sometimes bus.
MJ and I saw a guy wearing a shirt from Osaka called 弱肉強食, or "weak meat, strong eat," meaning the strong will eat the weak, it's a dog eat dog world. (same in Korean and Chinese). Ironic because the guy did not look like someone who would have gone to Osaka to get the shirt, and was doing some kind of drug that MJ identified as possibly cocaine. Kind of sums up the crowd late at night in downtown train stations. Some have weird music playing where bands basically set up shop for what seems like eternity, there are rats that invade the tracks and have made a home. I've been able to ponder a lot about where my life has turned out (come from) and where it's going, all while real trains come and go on the train platform. It's like that crossroads scene at the end of "Castaway" (probably not as memorable for most because Castaway wasn't that popular of a movie) but that metaphor exists elsewhere as well. Wondering where my life is headed next, if my stock portfolio will recover from the latest stock beatdown this week (We had a wonderful day Tuesday, but it was a bull trap! Euphoria only to see it dashed later and provide false hope that the market would rebound and get back in. What a treacherous beast, this market is!)
I prefer train stations that are outdoors, and on an elevated platform. I know in Japan there are people who make a hobby out of going to all the train stations in the country, which is probably possible in an island country like Japan, but they have a LOT of stations, and many in interesting places. Now there's something America can aspire and learn from other countries, how to maintain train stations. Their train stations are better run than our military bases, in my opinion. All trains running on time, people cleaning constantly, station workers coming around to help out and gently push people into stacked trains. Stations have nice restaurants, some are known for them. Some have great views of the Japanese scenery, it's really a pleasure to ride one of their trains. Chicago train stations look like they haven't been cleaned in years. Not to say that Koreans don't have nice train stations like Seoul station (the name of the Train to Busan prequel that everyone should watch!- It's a pun on "Soul station" where the zombies are like humans with lost souls!) I just haven't experienced Korea's KTX trains as much but from watching Train to Busan they're nice as long as they're not teaming with the undead!
Btw, Train to Busan 2 is filming and coming out in 2020!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
A LOT happens at a train station, and now living in a city where trains basically take me everywhere I need to go, I spend a LOT of time at train stations. Seriously, I don't even take Uber, I can get almost everywhere in the downtown Chicago area by train and sometimes bus.
MJ and I saw a guy wearing a shirt from Osaka called 弱肉強食, or "weak meat, strong eat," meaning the strong will eat the weak, it's a dog eat dog world. (same in Korean and Chinese). Ironic because the guy did not look like someone who would have gone to Osaka to get the shirt, and was doing some kind of drug that MJ identified as possibly cocaine. Kind of sums up the crowd late at night in downtown train stations. Some have weird music playing where bands basically set up shop for what seems like eternity, there are rats that invade the tracks and have made a home. I've been able to ponder a lot about where my life has turned out (come from) and where it's going, all while real trains come and go on the train platform. It's like that crossroads scene at the end of "Castaway" (probably not as memorable for most because Castaway wasn't that popular of a movie) but that metaphor exists elsewhere as well. Wondering where my life is headed next, if my stock portfolio will recover from the latest stock beatdown this week (We had a wonderful day Tuesday, but it was a bull trap! Euphoria only to see it dashed later and provide false hope that the market would rebound and get back in. What a treacherous beast, this market is!)
I prefer train stations that are outdoors, and on an elevated platform. I know in Japan there are people who make a hobby out of going to all the train stations in the country, which is probably possible in an island country like Japan, but they have a LOT of stations, and many in interesting places. Now there's something America can aspire and learn from other countries, how to maintain train stations. Their train stations are better run than our military bases, in my opinion. All trains running on time, people cleaning constantly, station workers coming around to help out and gently push people into stacked trains. Stations have nice restaurants, some are known for them. Some have great views of the Japanese scenery, it's really a pleasure to ride one of their trains. Chicago train stations look like they haven't been cleaned in years. Not to say that Koreans don't have nice train stations like Seoul station (the name of the Train to Busan prequel that everyone should watch!- It's a pun on "Soul station" where the zombies are like humans with lost souls!) I just haven't experienced Korea's KTX trains as much but from watching Train to Busan they're nice as long as they're not teaming with the undead!
Btw, Train to Busan 2 is filming and coming out in 2020!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
水涨船高 (A Rising Tide lifts all boats)
2 expressions today! ( I will get to Korean proverbs soon as I'm learning quite a lot of them!)
Chinese: 水涨船高A rising tide lifts all boats- first associated with John F. Kennedy, this quote has a long history and was possibly derived from the Chinese, and the 4-character idiom says exactly that. It's exactly what happened yesterday, when good earnings reports from different companies in various sectors (Goldman Sachs, United HealthGroupand then Netflix!) all reported good numbers to combat the recent worries of high interest rates and trade war with China to send stocks higher, a welcome reprieve from the fretting and worrying I'd been doing recently due to stocks being down. Finally was able to take a sigh of relief, as ALL my stocks and went up steadily throughout the day without dropping off for a bit as usually happens. Home-game personal investors like myself live for days like yesterday where all the boats rise......
only to have them sink a bit today as the exact opposite happened: housing information caused companies related to housing to sink (like Home Depot, one of my stocks!) and the whole Dow came crashing down again. The market is a fickle person: one day she can be really happy and energetic and positive, the next day it's like she changed into a totally different person: negative, complaining, aggressively get upset at a drop of a hat. Most of my stocks went down, even some of the technology stocks that have nothing to do with housing, the ripple of the tide was so pervasive. So I guess a Falling tide sinks all boats as well, hopefully those boats have enough support and safety inside them to have them rise up again and not totally submerge into the bottom of the ocean.
Japanese 鵜呑み (unomi ni suru):
literally means swallowing without chewing (not a good idea in itself because you're eating too fast and may cause indigestion, don't inhale food!) but more commonly associated with the idea of accepting facts without questioning, as in being too gullible.
As hardened as I am and as practical-minded as I try to be, sometimes I am still too gullible. I've been able to block out the people on the street in downtown Chicago who ask for money (it's almost every street corner and almost every subway station!) but the other day I had a normal-looking guy come up to me. I thought he was asking for directions, so I actually stopped to talk. BIG mistake. He said he left his wallet on a bus, and he just needed to get home, so if I could call him an Uber. In retrospect, his story seemed too perfected, too freely offering details, so he said he lives pretty close by, not too far from downtown Chicago. I accepted his story without asking, which is my mistake: I could have asked him any of many questions, like "why don't you try to track down the bus now?" or "did you lose your wallet too? Can you pay me in cash?" but I just took him for a guy in distress who needed to get home, so I pulled up an Uber for him. He said he'd venmo me back and had me pull up "his Venmo account." It was late at night so I didn't think much about it, but I figured Uber can only send you to one place, it's not like you can trade the Uber money for cash. Needless to say, he didn't pay me back. It's my fault in being too nice and believing without asking questions. If I had just thought to ask a more direct question and be skeptical, he probably would have backed off. Sadly, that guy has an even more negative affect on society in that those who ARE actually in distress will be less likely to get help, just like I will be less likely to help next time.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Chinese: 水涨船高A rising tide lifts all boats- first associated with John F. Kennedy, this quote has a long history and was possibly derived from the Chinese, and the 4-character idiom says exactly that. It's exactly what happened yesterday, when good earnings reports from different companies in various sectors (Goldman Sachs, United HealthGroupand then Netflix!) all reported good numbers to combat the recent worries of high interest rates and trade war with China to send stocks higher, a welcome reprieve from the fretting and worrying I'd been doing recently due to stocks being down. Finally was able to take a sigh of relief, as ALL my stocks and went up steadily throughout the day without dropping off for a bit as usually happens. Home-game personal investors like myself live for days like yesterday where all the boats rise......
only to have them sink a bit today as the exact opposite happened: housing information caused companies related to housing to sink (like Home Depot, one of my stocks!) and the whole Dow came crashing down again. The market is a fickle person: one day she can be really happy and energetic and positive, the next day it's like she changed into a totally different person: negative, complaining, aggressively get upset at a drop of a hat. Most of my stocks went down, even some of the technology stocks that have nothing to do with housing, the ripple of the tide was so pervasive. So I guess a Falling tide sinks all boats as well, hopefully those boats have enough support and safety inside them to have them rise up again and not totally submerge into the bottom of the ocean.
Japanese 鵜呑み (unomi ni suru):
literally means swallowing without chewing (not a good idea in itself because you're eating too fast and may cause indigestion, don't inhale food!) but more commonly associated with the idea of accepting facts without questioning, as in being too gullible.
As hardened as I am and as practical-minded as I try to be, sometimes I am still too gullible. I've been able to block out the people on the street in downtown Chicago who ask for money (it's almost every street corner and almost every subway station!) but the other day I had a normal-looking guy come up to me. I thought he was asking for directions, so I actually stopped to talk. BIG mistake. He said he left his wallet on a bus, and he just needed to get home, so if I could call him an Uber. In retrospect, his story seemed too perfected, too freely offering details, so he said he lives pretty close by, not too far from downtown Chicago. I accepted his story without asking, which is my mistake: I could have asked him any of many questions, like "why don't you try to track down the bus now?" or "did you lose your wallet too? Can you pay me in cash?" but I just took him for a guy in distress who needed to get home, so I pulled up an Uber for him. He said he'd venmo me back and had me pull up "his Venmo account." It was late at night so I didn't think much about it, but I figured Uber can only send you to one place, it's not like you can trade the Uber money for cash. Needless to say, he didn't pay me back. It's my fault in being too nice and believing without asking questions. If I had just thought to ask a more direct question and be skeptical, he probably would have backed off. Sadly, that guy has an even more negative affect on society in that those who ARE actually in distress will be less likely to get help, just like I will be less likely to help next time.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Labyrinth (미궁) and Maze (미로)
Yesterday MJ (who was in town for the weekend to revisit our awesome days in Chicago, yay!) and I went to a little-regarded place in Chicago called the Garfield Conservatory- a greenhouse-like building that showcases various types of plants and flowers- and of course had a great time. Apparently Garfield Park has a bad reputation among most Chicago people and it's located on the green line, the bastard child of Chicago CTA lines (red line cuts through the city and hits both baseball stadiums, orange and blue runs run to the airports, and brown is the most scenic), but both times we've gone we've had a blast.
There's a grass formation on the lawn of the Garfield Conservatory that taught me the difference between a maze and a labyrinth. Yes, there apparently is a different. A maze has many false endings and ways you can get lost, but labyrinth has just one way to get in, one way to get out, despite its windy and circuitous nature. They both have a sort of "target" within the center of its layout. What a metaphor for life, a vague, undefined, well hidden goal at the heart of a huge structure that we're all try to get to, like the pursuit of happiness in life. To get there, some might prefer mazes, or some might prefer labyrinths. Mazes have a lot of surprises, lots of failures, but among those failures some turn out to be lessons in how to find the right path, whereas a labyrinth is one track, single-minded, no surprises (except there was a Minotaur or something roaming around that could cause certain death? Seems kind of hazardous). Some people bounce around one, two, maybe many different jobs before finding the right career, others go to a medical school-track program right out of high school and never stop until they've gotten their residency. Personally, the maze route seems more interesting (and is in fact what I've done, bouncing around and experiencing many different jobs) and stimulating, as long as in the end you get to the pot of gold at the center of the maze just like a labyrinth. There's more adjusting, disappointment but then recovery and resiliency against disappointment, but it definitely makes me feel more appreciation if and when I do make it to the end, that golden goal of "achievement."
The stock market's definitely a maze. It's by no means a straight line up (although based on the last 9 years of charts, it sure has seemed like it). It goes up and down without any noticeable pattern, often with forward progress yielding to sudden and unexpected pit falls before climbing out of it and going forward. I'm trying to decide whether I should just go with the labyrinth approach (buy and hold, through all the good and bad times, weathering the storm and just hold onto all invests) or the maze approach (ditch the bad stocks, try to find the good ones, actively manage the portfolio). It certainly would make me less anxious to go with a low-return labyrinth route, but it also might be less profitable.
Personally, if I were a kid, (and I'm kind of a big kid still) I'd prefer mazes. Why go through that whole big mess of a garden/ prison with walls called a labyrinth if you can't venture out a bit, get lost and have to figure it out? I've often told people I don't want to feel like a rat in a maze to describe taking the same route to work every morning, or doing the same routine every day, I'm sure the rat understands. But what I meant to say was I don't want to be a rat in a labyrinth fighting to get to that cheese....you're going to get it, but you didn't work for it, you just followed a path down that seems predestined, preordained.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
There's a grass formation on the lawn of the Garfield Conservatory that taught me the difference between a maze and a labyrinth. Yes, there apparently is a different. A maze has many false endings and ways you can get lost, but labyrinth has just one way to get in, one way to get out, despite its windy and circuitous nature. They both have a sort of "target" within the center of its layout. What a metaphor for life, a vague, undefined, well hidden goal at the heart of a huge structure that we're all try to get to, like the pursuit of happiness in life. To get there, some might prefer mazes, or some might prefer labyrinths. Mazes have a lot of surprises, lots of failures, but among those failures some turn out to be lessons in how to find the right path, whereas a labyrinth is one track, single-minded, no surprises (except there was a Minotaur or something roaming around that could cause certain death? Seems kind of hazardous). Some people bounce around one, two, maybe many different jobs before finding the right career, others go to a medical school-track program right out of high school and never stop until they've gotten their residency. Personally, the maze route seems more interesting (and is in fact what I've done, bouncing around and experiencing many different jobs) and stimulating, as long as in the end you get to the pot of gold at the center of the maze just like a labyrinth. There's more adjusting, disappointment but then recovery and resiliency against disappointment, but it definitely makes me feel more appreciation if and when I do make it to the end, that golden goal of "achievement."
The stock market's definitely a maze. It's by no means a straight line up (although based on the last 9 years of charts, it sure has seemed like it). It goes up and down without any noticeable pattern, often with forward progress yielding to sudden and unexpected pit falls before climbing out of it and going forward. I'm trying to decide whether I should just go with the labyrinth approach (buy and hold, through all the good and bad times, weathering the storm and just hold onto all invests) or the maze approach (ditch the bad stocks, try to find the good ones, actively manage the portfolio). It certainly would make me less anxious to go with a low-return labyrinth route, but it also might be less profitable.
Personally, if I were a kid, (and I'm kind of a big kid still) I'd prefer mazes. Why go through that whole big mess of a garden/ prison with walls called a labyrinth if you can't venture out a bit, get lost and have to figure it out? I've often told people I don't want to feel like a rat in a maze to describe taking the same route to work every morning, or doing the same routine every day, I'm sure the rat understands. But what I meant to say was I don't want to be a rat in a labyrinth fighting to get to that cheese....you're going to get it, but you didn't work for it, you just followed a path down that seems predestined, preordained.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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