顺水推舟 (Pushing a boat along the stream)

顺着水流的方向推船.比喻顺着某个趋势或某种方便说话办事

"Go with the flow" or "pushing a boat along the stream" is the rough translation of the above Chinese phrase (notice they're mostly 4 characters long, a Chinese tradition that's spread to other Asian languages too, the stellar mix of conciseness and deeper meaning has been rhythmically summarized into 4 words, there's a poetic and smooth quality to it when saying them in Chinese.

Anyway, just like responding to a strong wind, sometimes you just need to keep going where life takes you. Today I ran near one of my favorite spots when training for the marathon, the Ballona Creek bike path stretching from near downtown Culver City, crossing through Marina Del Rey, running straight to the ocean. In L.A. you hear of Griffith Park, Elysian Park, Griffith Observatory, Santa Monica, all those nice scenic routes, but you rarely hear about Ballona Creek, a truly underrated path that has a river running towards the ocean (I've often waxed poetically about wanting a river to cut through, this is the closest thing to it......the river runs into Marina Del Rey and then into the Pacific Ocean and attracts plenty of wildlife from ducks to seagulls to very large, almost Pierre-the-Pelican-scary size pelicans.

I didn't plan of running all the way to the ocean today, but the thing about running and letting your feet take you where you want to go is, you just go with the flow, and it's much easier going along the stream than against it. There was actually one boat I saw that turned on its side because of the strong wide, but nothing encapsulates that concept more than a sailboat......just go with the flow. The universe (or your own instincts) have a way of taking over and allowing you to see get to your goal, and see some really cool stuff along the way. I've actually never sailed a sailboat because of my aversion to small wobbly boats, but I imagine piloting a sailboat has that sort of "go where the wind takes you kind of feeling"----- and why you hear so many people lost in the middle of the ocean on a sailboat and needing to be rescued..........the universe has a way of reminding you who's boss, how big it is, and no matter who you are or how busy your life is, that you can disappear into the universe away from everything for awhile.

Real life application: learned Japanese and the grammatical structure, already know Chinese.......might as well keep the boat going and learn Korean.


Anyway, today I reminded myself how much I like running in the great outdoors and found a great deal of luck and success pushing my own boat (my legs and body) literally along the stream that the universe led me. (I literally looked up this word a few days ago and I guess my subconscious pushed me towards going towards the "stream" in L.A. too, so it works on a mental level too). Sometimes it's just good to let yourself be a sailboat and sail towards the open ocean.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

바람이 강하다 (Wind is Strong)

The last couple days has seen some cold temperatures in L.A., especially fueled by the strong wind blowing from the ocean breeze. I was walking on the street and saw someone chasing after a piece of paper that he had been holding; the paper kept dancing away as the man chased, the wind was that strong (Param i ganghada). It's a common sight in Illinois, but strong winds in Los Angeles are as unusual as rain......people freak out and aren't used to it.


Strong wind is a metaphor for life......most days are calm, tranquil lulling you into a false sense of security.......and then all of a sudden everything changes quickly like a tornado running through a town and tearing up buildings and houses. It's terrifying, the sheer tenacity of those hurricanes that rip through the coastal areas of America every year..... they seem to pop up on the radar suddenly and then next thing you see are CNN reports of a town evacuated and with strong winds, changing everything about the infrastructure and composition of a town that's been in existence for so many years, wiped out in a matter of hours.

Stock market- as I detailed before, it can change quickly, slow gains to make me happy for a while, but that doesn't mean the drop down will be gradual too.......it could be quick and devastating and leave me wondering why I wasted all that time on a stock that ultimately failed. Even in good times like this week when stocks were rebounding from the horrific windy conditions wiping out gains 2 weeks ago, Walmart suddenly and without warning fell 10% and wiped out all the steady 0.7% gains I had been receiving for the last few months I'd owned the stock, and now I'm in the red.

Strong winds happen in all facets of life. Relationships end within a few hours of a sudden violent argument; Job industries can be fine and plenty of people living under it as a source of income for their families but then suddenly new technology and/or Amazon comes along and breaks the industry irrevocably forever, never to come back. (The famous quote in computer science is that "software is eating the world." - Marc Andressen). Car crashes, terminal diagnosis from a doctor....

Windy conditions don't have to be bad, neither. In one swift motion of buying some lotto tickets and the numbers on the ticket being the winning numbers, life completely changes for some lucky people every few days......(Now it's almost every other night with 2 big lottos available in California). Everyone wants those sudden positive life changes and dreams about them, but it's just as likely, probably more likely, that a sudden negative life event comes and blows away all the good things that have happened up until then. Matt Damon famously said in the movie Dogma- "Life is just a series of events." Certainly those events dictate the way are lives go much more than the mundane common moments.

The suddenness of life's events, just like strong winds in California, make life unpredictable and someone terrifying- it can all change so suddenly. But at some deeper level I think humans thrive on those windy days, and respond to the wind, and eventually get used to it, are prepared for it, and get stronger by it, and become stronger than the wind.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Apple AirPods

I've never been someone who delighted in getting the newest hot toy at Christmas like the Tickle-me-Elmo or the newest video game system, but this past Christmas MJ got me one of the best Christmas presents ever: the new wireless Airpods for Apple!

I've raved in the past how Laser eye surgery changed my life, and I can't even fathom the life that I had before, one of adjusting glasses constantly, having them get knocked off my face while playing basketball, glasses getting dirty and needing to be cleaned but me not noticing and them growing moldy, the prescription changing, etc., etc. And that's without even having resorted to contacts, which are a whole other world of distraction and dry eye and whatnot.

Well Apple Airpods is to the ears what Laser eye surgery is for the eyes: no longer do I have to untangle the wires to my headphones, to worry about pulling the earphones out if I throw my hands in the air or something, or where some headphones don't stick well into one's ear and keep falling out if th ear is not properly moisturized. Sure, the bluetooth came before, but Airpods seem more compatible with the ear, have a sleeker design, and the audio quality is really nice, like somebody's talking right into your ear. The game changer is the battery pack that lets the earphones charge and more importantly for me, NOT lose them somewhere (earphones go missing on me routinely every few months or so).

It's a revolution! Every time I go running or walking to work with my Airpods on (one of the few times I'm ahead of the technology curve and using the most up-to-date technology before it's already gotten old) I see other people wearing the signature white airpods, looking like a earpiece or hearing aid (which, coincidentally, my grandpa is starting to use- I hope he gets his hearing straightened out). Going up the elevator I get asked if the airpods work well, I feel like the new kid at school whom everybody is jealous of. Yay for me!

Now for the other senses besides sight and hearing! If only they came up with some way to expedite the mouth process, like delivering food to one's mouth without utensils or a hand!

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

右肩下がり(Decreasing/ Graph Falling to the Right)

The Great Correction of 2018 is here. It's been a tough week for investors and especially for me. After a prolonged time of prosperity and profits, the stock market finally corrected and corrected in a huge way, with the Down Jones falling more than 1,000 points (1,000!) multiple times in just one week and hitting some individual stocks and investors (yours truly) even harder.

It stated innocently: After Super Bowl Sunday when the Philadelphia Eagles shocked the world with a backup QB to beat Tom Brady and the Patriots (which of course looking back might have a harbinger of things to come, kinda like when the Cubs won the World Series led to Trump's presidential win), everything seemed right with the world on Monday, until the stock market started in the red.....and just kept going. And going, fueled by a mid-day low of being down $1,500 points. Watching that decrease on Yahoo! Finance firsthand is NOT a good feeling when holding individual stocks/ mutual funds. Tuesday saw a "snapback rally" in which the Dow rose 500+ points to gain back some of the losses and prompting some "experts" to say that Monday was a great buying opportunity!


In Japan, the term for sales or stocks decreasing is called "Migikatasagari," or falling down as the graph goes to the right." And that's exactly what the stock market did this week, arrow falling down and falling down quickly towards the right.

Tips for the average schmo like me for investing:

1.) The market does NOT go evenly........It can rise slowly and steadily for a year, and give back all of those gains in a matter of days, hours even........that's why they call it a "crash," because it can happen so suddenly, and without much warning.
2.) It hurts much more to lose the same amount of money than to win that same amount of money. Winning the money is like, Nice! A piece of candy, but losing that same money is like a dagger to the heart, you question your own self worth and what you could have done with that money if you just hadn't been that greedy.
3.) Turn off yahoo! Finance for an hour and just don't look at it. It gets to become an addiction, always checking for updates because it's like fresh information or checking game scores: you're just hooked on the results and you have a lot of money on the line.
4.) Don't invest more than you can afford losing. If you put money into anything, just be prepared of the worst case scenario: what if you lose it all? (same case for gambling, except that's much more likely to actually end up in losing everything). If you invest too much, it becomes like gambling and you're hooked onto every move of the market and can't pay attention on anything else when the market is in session, and even if it's not in session can't sleep well because you're worried about waking up late on the West Coast and missing out on some huge shift in the market........the best way honestly is just set it and forget it, look at it once every day and make an informed decision.
5.) Just because the stock market's doing well doesn't mean it will always be that way. Don't get lulled into a false sense of security, and ESPECIALLY don't get lulled into adding more money into the account to try to greedily make more money (I committed one of the cardinal sins of investing, I feel like).
6.) Think long-term, not short-term. Don't buy a stock thinking you're going to sell it in a few hours when it goes up. That's called speculating. Buy it because you believe in the fundamentals of the stock and the future prospects of the company. That's called investing.
7.) Last lesson applies in fantasy sports, stocks, and life really......don't dwell on the past and how much money you've lost or won in the past......it's easy to think about all the sunk cost, but when you buy a stock or sell a stock, no one cares how much you won or lost on it before......the stock market is going to keep going in one of 2 ways.........just figure out which way it's gonna be on the RIGHT side (migikata) of the graph, not the left side.



What I learned through this whole week is that I'm not good at gambling, and I'm not good at "playing"/ speculating on the stock market. Investing as in just buy and hold as an investment? That's not terrible, although even that can lose money! But I can't control my emotions and more importantly my thoughts when handling money of that magnitude. It happens with gambling too when there's money on the line........my heart starts racing, I get excited, I care too much about winning money but even more about losing it. Greed, buyer's remorse, berating myself for NOT buying in and missing my shot........everything becomes a chance to second guess my decisions and woulda coulda shoulda, which eventually makes me emotional, irrational, and lead to bad decisions. ESPECIALLY in a choppy market where "runs" on the market happens often. I just can't handle it and tend to sell low (Ahhhh the sky is falling!) or buy high (Oh no way we can lose! It's a sure thing!), which you never want to be in the business of.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Tests (考試)

从小长大时我在美国学校获得好成绩时，老师和同学都夸我聪明，当时我没分析为什么得了好分数，就满意地认同了聪明着个名称。我长得越大越感觉，其实我不那么聪明，我碰见好多好多人比我知识量大的多，又多又广。我只是在考试的时候比较狡猾，学了些绝招现在可以分享。

1。睡觉要睡足了。不要考试前一晚补课损失睡觉。考试那一天脑子要清醒，像运动员比赛前要吃够了补声体，而考试时用的是脑子，脑子的汽油是休息。考试前要用脑子，考试时更要用脑子了。
2。按照老师的想法来看题目。为什么老师会问这个问题，他是想考哪一部分教我们的材料？
3。早晨起来不要胡思乱想，集中精力想关于考试的内容。考试多半都在早晨，是让大家脑子最清醒的时候来考，所以不要在脑子里污染環境。
4。复习以前这门课考过的考试，要有的话拿一份去年或上学期的考试，来个模拟考试。对控制时间很有帮助。
5。 考试时有个体卡住的话，占时跳过，回头再做。说不定后面有哪个题可以提醒你跳过的题的关键，给点线索。最好不要死在一个题上绞尽脑汁，浪费好多时间。经常这种题被人也不太会，大家都错的话至少你腾出时间去做别的题了。

Growing up in American schools I often got praised by teachers and fellow students when I got a good grade in class, telling me I was smart. I didn't analyze it back then and accepted my reputation as being smart. The older I get, the more I realize that I actually am not that smart, and wasn't that smart back then neither, I bumped into plenty of people who have more knowledge, both in a broad amount of subjects and the depth of their knowledge. I got good grades mostly because I was clever about taking tests, (which I guess is kind of its own "test smart") and learned some techniques which I share here.

1.) Get a good night's sleep. Don't lose sleep the night before a test studying. on test day the brain needs to be clear, like an athlete who is well-fed, the brain also needs o be well-fed, and the brain's fuel/food is sleep. You lose the ability to develop memories sometimes when you don't have enough sleep, so it's a good idea to go to sleep anyway otherwise you lose all that knowledge you just tried to cram.
2) Look at a problem from the professor/teacher's point of view. Why is the teacher asking this question, what is he trying to test out of the materials he gave us? Is there a trick I'm missing?
3.) Waking up in the morning, don't fill your mind with clutter, focus on the exam. There's a reason exams are mostly in the morning, it's to let people take the test when their minds are still fresh, so don't pollute the environment in your brain.
4. Try to get a practice test or the test from last year and actually go through one as if taking a real test. This helps time management.
5. If stuck on one problem, skip it for now, come back to it later. Later questions might trigger your memory of something that you studied and point you in the right direction, give some clues. Best not to get stuck on one question and waste a lot of time; many times this type of question will get everyone else stuck too and no one will answer it correctly; if so then at least you saved time to go to other questions and answered them well.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Computer Science (じょうほうかがく, 计算机科学)

The world is always changing around us, and so are the disciplines and abilities that people learn in order to get a job. When I was small I thought I wanted to be a sports star, then a businessman, then a lawyer because I thought I was good at social studies and history and knowledge. Turns out, though, that there are inherent flaws to my line of thinking about jobs: 1.) that a lot of people want to be all those things (sports), or 2.) it's too general of a discipline and there's really not a solidified curriculum to teach (business), or 3.) I might just not be good enough at it. The jobs market is what it sounds like, a market with supply and demand on both sides for workers and the employers, and as a worker one has to find the place where there's a lot of demand and not as much supply.

Recently I've had a surge of interest in computer science. I've heard a lot (a large portion from MJ) about these new "computer languages" like Python or C++, and as someone who's studied a lot of human languages, I'd like to get in to how these computer languages work. Most people, if I'm not mistaken, want to do something that's easy. It's natural: the easy things require less energy, cause less stress, allows you to focus on other things that you like to do. Well, computer science does not seem easy. There's a lot of mathematical concepts and stretching of the brain that simple jobs do not require. I like easy tasks too, but sometimes easy tasks aren't that gratifying: washing the dishes is not that gratifying, the dishes don't fight back. Driving a car is not that gratifying, walking to work is not that gratifying. Being able to learn a language to almost-fluent proficiency IS gratifying, not to mention has real-life implications (as well has, hopefully pays pretty well), and that's why I'm seriously considering studying computer science.

There are few other disciplines in the world that are as "hot" and high in terms of real-life implications right now than computer science. The whole world is moving towards being digitized and run on computers, and computers science teaches the language that those computers use to communicate to each other. Plus not that high of the population understands the language (well, outside of Silicon Valley and "digital boot camp" and the technological firms. That seems like a recipe for high demand, low supply for me. My neighbor who recently graduated college told me he recently started a coding boot camp, and he's not the only one to do it: everyone from finance majors, lawyers, doctors, government agencies, and others are using it. They say that English may one day be the language of the future: it might also be computer science. Get coding!


Fantasize on,

Robert Yan 

Waiting Until the Last Moment (临阵磨枪)

临阵磨枪是一个相当有趣的成语，表示某人在最后一分钟才准备，太晚了。我在美国长大就有这样的文化，很多学生早知道老师按排了考试或布置了作业，但最后拖到最后一晚上甚至最后一分钟才复习。这种习惯大家明明知道不好，但是照样去做，一个原因是可以跟朋友夸张自己临时复习还可以或得好成绩，买萌似的。其实这种想法不可靠，因为有好多学生自称没复习多少，但其实是暗暗的学了不少。人长大了就知道没什么好夸的，好成绩是应该用努力换来的，像天才似的轻而易举地得到好成绩缺乏成就感。怒力也是一种天才。

读完学以后往前赶也很重要。付租金，付国税，起床上班，回答客户的问题都越早越好。我的大错误是一直想正好准时达到地点，早到还不舒服，希望能一分钟都不差的到。尤其在洛城这是不可能的，就算有一次两次恰好准时到，总有一次会堵车或出意外，引起晚点。尤其是一件难完成的任务。咬咬牙坚持做完了就不用再担心了，否则一直像烟不下肚子的鱼刺的留在那儿。还有人生的态度，不要想做什么事情拖到后头，觉得生活那么长总有一天可以做到的。比如在加个学位，或打掃衛生，或在日记里写一张感想文章。拖了太长就忘掉了，永远没有干力了。

说的容易做的难，各位加油！

"Polishing one's gun at the battlefield" is an interesting Chinese saying that means "procrastinating," where you're literally finally polishing the gun right before the battle's about to start. Too late. Growing up in America I experienced this culture, where a lot of students knew the teacher had assigned homework due a certain day or a test to be taken, but they procrastinated until the night before the test, or even the last minutes before the test to study. This type of habit is obviously bad, but people do it partly because they can get lucky and brag that they got a good grade even without studying, thereby acting cool in front of classmates. Actually this type of thinking is unreliable, since a lot of people pretend not to have studied and got a good grade but actually secretly studied a lot, or vice versa pretended they got a good grade when they actually failed. When these students grow up they realize there's not much to brag about anyone, as good grades should be reflective of the effort put in, and acting like a genius and easily getting good grades doesn't reflect any work put in. Working hard is also a type of genius.

Life after school also requires resistance to procrastination. Paying one's rent, paying taxes, getting up to go to work, answering clients' questions are all examples of the sooner the better. My big mistake is to try to get to somewhere I need to be at the exact time I need to be there and not early, so as to get the thrill of making it just in time. Everyone in LA knows this is impossible, because even if you succeed once or twice, eventually there will be bad traffic or some other unforeseen circumstance that causes a delay, making you late. For really hard tasks it's really easy to procrastinate and not want to start, but gotta grit your teeth and get through it so you don't have to worry about it anymore, otherwise the task just sits there like a fishbone stuck in your throat you can't swallow. Also there's attitude in life, like "Oh I can get to that later, life's so long." Don't put things off till later in life like more education or cleaning in your room (MJ taught me this!) or writing a memorable event in one's blog/journal. If you wait too long, you'll lose motivation and never get to it.

Easier said than done, Ganbatte Kudasai! Add oil! Hwaiting!/ Himne! (Korean)

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan