Yayoi 弥生(March)

Japanese have nicknames for each month of the year, usually based on the nature of the month, like june is "the month without water" or "the long month" for September or the funniest, "Priests Running" for December (because priests are preparing for New Year festivities). 弥生 (Yayoi) is the nickname given for March and means "new life," and I really felt like a new way of life this month.





1.) Yayoi Kusama is the current name big name at the Broad Museum in downtown L.A., as she's one of the most famous artists to come from Japan. My co-workers knew her mostly for having checked herself into a mental hospital, (look at her picture in her wikipedia page and you might begin to understand why), but she seems to have a very grand vision and from what I understand, her work is more than just polka dots and infinity rooms. (But I personally think polka dots and infinity rooms are really cool!)

2.) There were many, many upsets in the March Madness NCAA tournament this year, but no upset in my annual donation to my bracket league, where my winner (Virginia!) became the first No. 1 seed ever to lose to a No. 16 seed. Go figure. In other news, though, Chicago got some much-needed basketball energy due to the unlikely Final Four run by the Loyola Ramblers, a school most in the country probably had never heard of and is not well known even in the Chicago area, much less Illinois. It wasn't just that they made it to the Final Four, it's how they did it: as a No. 11-seed, which usually doesn't even win a single game, they had back-back-to-back buzzer-beating wins to advance, one of the most exciting things in sports due to the single-elimination structure of the NCAA tournament, and most importantly their team mascot, 98-year-old nun named Sister Jean who went to all their games in a wheelchair, rooting the Loyola Ramblers on. In America, and the world, really, you need some sort of symbol, gimmick may be too negative of a connotation, but something that tugs at the heartstrings, inspires others, and gives everyone hope: sometimes it comes in the form of Jeremy Lin and Linsanity living off his brother's couch to starting in the NBA, this year it was Sister Jean and her story and excitement for underdog Loyola. A welcome respite from the other news cycles involving the President, porn stars, North Korea, Russian investigations, and........stock markets.

3.) More lessons in the stock market! After February's near-meltdown in which I promised never to get complacent again, I got complacent again! and become too optimistic about stocks, assuming they would be never-ending stairs to gains and happiness. As it turns out, they're not, and the bottom can fall out pretty quickly, and all the gains from a month's worth of slow and steady build and eviscerate in a few hectic training days. That's the kind of volatile market (and world!) we're in now, ESPECIALLY if you invest in tech stocks like I do. When will Robert finally learn?

4.) I got really busy for three weeks at work, preventing me from writing in this blog but also preventing me from going to Korea and Shanghai! I had tickets booked already but had to cancel. I don't feel bad about cancellation costs, but sometimes I wonder if I'll look back at my life when I'm at the end of it and wonder, "should I have taken that March 2018 trip to Shanghai/Korea? It might have changed my life. The x amount of dollars I made by going to work didn't really do that much." That's the price we pay to try to make money: human life cost, the cost of not being able to live and do what one wants to do.

5.) Volunteered for the 3rd straight year at an Easter Egg hunt! Except we were told to call it a "Spring Egg hunt" for legal reasons that they don't want to exclude other religious affiliations. It all seems kind of silly to me in that there was a guy dressed in a bunny suit walking around giving out eggs, I'd say that's celebrating Easter, just like Santa Clause for Christmas but saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

6.) Fantasy baseball draft happened! I once again slacked in preparing even though this year's draft was the 10th anniversary of our league and happened in Vegas!!!!!......kind of a letdown though as the most predictable things happened in Vegas: drink a lot, go to nightclub, pay a high resort fee, pay high prices in packed places because it was St. Patrick's Day weekend and March Madness weekend......great to see everyone though, and at my age in life I realize that each encounter with friends could be the last time in a while (people are getting married, having kids!) and it's important to cherish the moments together.
Actionable fantasy advice: still stay the course, get the old but proven guys like Nelson Boomstick Cruz, avoid hype like Yu Darvish and "The Next Big Thing" like Scott Kingery or Robbie Ray. Get good values: My general rule of thumb: I want the guy who you haven't heard from at all during the whole draft season or heard negative news about that went too far. Which is why I ended up with Paul Goldschmidt amidst all the talk of humidors deflating his numbers, or Ryan Braun and Robinson Cano (RB duo!) literally nobody getting excited about these guys but they play in good lineups and stayed consistent environments. I like the consistency.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

巧遇

人生里每天有很多普遍的事情发生，起来刷牙，上所，都是平常不能再平常的习惯。但有时人生会有新的体验和巧遇。这些通常会永久留在脑海里。今天发生了一件特别巧的事。我从两年前开始去一家海鲜店，他卖的食品是夏威夷传过来的，在一碗饭里加不同的生鱼片，比如鲑鱼，金枪鱼，虾，蟹，等等。跟寿司很相似，为此在美国最近很受欢迎，我和我老婆变成这家的常客了，没几个星期去吃一次。今天也去了，没想到碰到了我爸妈！他们住的一小时以外的郊区，为啥遥远的跑到洛城城内来了。真是吃了一惊，像是在国外哪里旅游时不约而合地见到了老朋友似的。原来也有道理，我太太喜欢吃鱼片，带了我妹妹去吃了那家一次，过一段时间我妹妹又拉着我爸妈去吃过，我爸喜欢那里厕所干净，就也变习惯到那儿去喝奶茶之类的，今天正好给我碰上了。经常我在朋友圈里有熟人认识另外朋友圈里的人时也有这样的感觉，世界一下子显得小了。

有些人说巧遇是有缘分的，我也不知道是不是，但很多生活里的大事是从碰巧引起的。我做的功作就是碰巧申请了一个在网上登出来的广告，结果以后就一直干下去了。主要是给机会让生活产生巧遇，经常做些新的，改改口味之类的，申请不一样的工作，脑子开放一点。生活偶尔会回报个有趣的事情或重要的发展。试试吧！

Chance meeting

In the course of life many ordinary things happen like brushing one’s teeth, going to use the restroom, they’re all the most mundane of mundane occurrences. But once in a while life will give a new experience or chance encounter. Many times, these are the ones that are etched into one’s brain. Today, there was an extremely chance encounter. From two years ago I started going to a seafood poke restaurant, its recipe is brought over from Hawaii, and each bowl has a variety of different types of raw seafood, including salmon, tuna, shrimp, crab, etc., etc. It’s a lot like sushi, so it’s garnered a lot of popularity recently in America. MJ and I have become regulars at this restaurant, we go every week or so. Today we also went, but who would have thought we’d bump into my parents! My parents live in the suburbs an hour away from where we live, so why did they come from so far away to the L.A. downtown area? I was really surprised, almost like bumping into an old friend in a foreign country without planning on doing so. Actually it makes sense, MJ likes eating poke, and she took my sister to that restaurant once, and then my sister took my parents to eat there once, my dad liked that place because its toilet is clean, so they made it a common practice to buy boba there, so today we met up. It’s the same feeling I get when someone from my friend group knows someone else from another one of my friend groups, suddenly the world seems very small.

Some say that chance meetings are destiny, serendipitous. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but many of life’s biggest moments are caused by “getting lucky” and being in the right place at the right time. The work I currently do is because I happened to apply for a job posting on the internet, I was hired during law school, and as a result I’ve been doing that type of work ever since. The main thing is to allow life to give you those opportunities for lucky encounters, and in order to so one should try new things, change up the restaurants one visits, apply for different types of jobs, expand one’s way of thinking. Life will once in a while give back and offer a unique occurrence (like the one today) or important development. Give it a try!

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

看好电影 (Watching a Good Movie)

我最近看了个又精彩又动人又有历史价值的中国电影， 特有意思，我从头到尾看得津津有味，一口气两个小时就看完了。名字叫
芳华， 英文叫“Youth“， 是指文大革命时长大的年轻人过的生活，很靠近我个人父母那个年代。第一印象就是命苦，哪像现在我住在美国天天潇洒的用电脑住的舒服， 过轻松生活。那一代人简直是拼命活下去，不要说有钱没钱了，打起仗来连命都保不住。看了像芳华的电影真同情别人而且了解到”活雷锋“这词是不容易给的。而战争是有多大的代价，牺牲多少人的生命。更遗憾是人的青春也给耗掉了，再也不能回头了。现在世界算是停在平安时代，上一世纪的战争好像是遥远的记忆似的，但永远不能忘记战争的残忍性，万一国际关系恶化了不能轻举妄动的打起来。就像芳华里的主角所说的，人生不能说是好，但总是比埋在地下死去的战友比起来好多了。这样一想就想得通了，知足了。

人生很少比看个好电影的刺激感，真的是像人都钻进电视或电影屏幕似的，好像主角感受的感情自己都能感受。尤其是动人的电影，我小时候不太懂，现在了静到人生的某种牺牲和遗憾之类就忍不住哭起来了。现在很少有机会坐下来集中百分之百的精力在节目上，但好电影就有那种吸引力，逼着观众继续看下去。芳华就是那种可以改变人生观点的电影，又可以为有过那种生活的老干部（我爸妈和更老的中国人挽回一些年轻时的记忆，值得一看。

Memories of a Wedding (and was it worth it?)

Some days in one's life, one spends more money than normal days. Some days one exercises more than one does in several weeks (running a marathon, for example). Some days in one's life are more special than others. Some days in one's life, one remembers for one's lifetime. And some days in one's life deserve more than just one blog entry- 6 months later, I'd like to recap that awesome day in my life. Wedding day is one of the more memorable days of my life, along with 1.) first day coming to America, 2.) certain days on vacation in Europe,

My wedding coincided with being probably at the apex of my life- I just turned 30 (my athletic peak, career peak, knowledge peak), I had just completed the Ultimate Dodgeball Championship and achieved my lifelong goal of making it to ESPN, lived in a brand new apartment in downtown Los Angeles, no kids or pets to worry about so all my free time was my own, had pretty good financial independence, and was worrying a wonderful woman of my dreams......basically living the dream, which is what helped make my wedding so special.......just the timing of the day, the location of the venue, the time of year (late summer breeze), I think I will forever look on that day as the best day of my life.

1.) At no point will I have so many people who I know and care about come to celebrate something that I put together, unless I become a huge movie or sports star or someone very important (unlikely) until my funeral. It's like that scene at the end of "Titanic" where Jack and Rose meet together at the end of the movie and all of their friends and family are in the large ballroom together.......that's the point of a wedding, to live on for eternity and be remembered as the day all family and friends converged and had that scene from Titanic.

2.) I really had to practice getting in short one-liners for guests of the wedding due to the many obligations that we had.

3.) I took a chance at my wedding to play the "Game of Thrones" theme with my violin, which could have fell flat on my face because of a missed note due to nerves, or people didn't find the music appropriate, or something. The good news is, it was my wedding, so even if I messed up people played along with it! In fact I did mess up and put the ring on my own finger instead of let MJ put it on my finger, but recovered quickly and joked around about it! MJ also did a great job playing a duet with me!


4.) I had heard before the wedding about "taking a moment to enjoy each other" because the day goes so fast. While this is really true, MJ and I enjoyed each other's company at the beach right after the ceremony and our celebratory mood was captured by a personal photographer! So I think enjoying each other and the moment wasn't a problem during that 30-minute window. What I did lack was speaking to various people who had come all the way from distant places to see us, and instead we were enjoying time to ourselves! I guess some sacrifices must be made.

5.) I got really sweaty during dancing! It's fine to take a break for a few songs and get some alcohol at other people's weddings, but we were the center of attention and didn't want to disappoint, wanted to keep the party going, but it is definitely tiring to be constantly moving. I don't think I sat down once to take everything in! I felt like when back in high school when I was coordinating fundraising events or something, trying to keep everyone engaged, make everyone feel part of the party. Inevitably some people will feel left out, but I tried to be as inclusive as possible because I know what it feels like to not feel important. and I felt like the coolest guy at the club that day! (Only had to spend 30,000 dollars + to do it!)

6.) There's a feeling out there that weddings are pretty burdensome not only for the people who do the wedding (financially) but also for those who come to the wedding, who have to set up travel, lodging, and on top of that give a gift to the bride and groom, that it's almost an imposition or obligation to be invited and have to go. Well, I don't subscribe to that notion at least for our wedding because a.) we made it very close to the closest airport LAX, made it local to the beach but also for most of my friends who lived in LA, and made it on a Saturday night (as opposed to other less convenient times like Friday night or Sunday morning), and there was plenty of entertainment like open bar, lawn games, live DJ, etc., appetizers and happy hour while watching the sunset (we timed that part too!) so that guests should have been very happy to come to such a grand party! Heck, I'm jealous I didn't get invited to my own wedding! I really feel honored to go to other people's weddings and take part in their joyous day, and looking back they are great opportunities to reconnect with friends or family you once knew and maybe meet some new people, even if you're the one friend who's not connected to any of the other partygoers. Everyone's happy, in a cheerful mood, and looking to have a great time! I think we did a great job providing that!

Often times when I'm stressed about finances and the future I start letting buyer's remorse creep in and wonder if we did the right thing to have a wedding (a lot of people nowadays forgo the whole thing entirely!) but ultimately I think we made the right decision. If only to get one big celebration of me and MJ before our funerals, if only to get that sensation of feeling loved and feeling special, if only to feel like the coolest guy at the club for one night, if only to make that one lasting image of us to all the attendees of the wedding be us dancing and happy and standing in front of each other during the wedding ceremony, that will justify the cost of the wedding in the long run. And hey, if we didn't have the wedding I'd always wonder what we'd do at one. Now I know and it's a great feeling!


Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

2018 Pyeonchang Olympics and 2002 World Cup (평창군)

Pyeongchang is a small ski town outside of Seoul that is spelled in Korean hangul like above but also has the hanjak (Korean version of Kanji, or Chinese letters) as 平昌郡. Never having cared too much about the Winter Olympics in my lifetime and not even knowing which cities they had been in ( I didn't know the Turin Games were in Italy in 2006!), it was an incredible experience for me to watch the Olympics with MJ in her home country of Korea and root for someone other than the U.S. or China for an event.

Highlights of the event were when MJ and I saw the Opening Ceremony together, where we saw North Korea and South Korea walk in together as the same country (historic!), the Olympic torch being lit by Yuna Kim, a famous figure skater in Korea (iconic!), U.S. vice president Mike Pence not standing for N. Korea and S. Korea dual entry (political!) and NBC broadcasters getting some wrong information about Korea (frustrating for MJ!). There were several times MJ and I noticed the U.S. broadcast had certain biases or focused on certain things like Katie Couric remarking that Korea had a large video game addiction problem in order to promote her new show on addiction on NBC, and wondered instead what the Korean broadcast would have focused on, showing the power of media. I realized that I've always watched the Olympics from the U.S. perspective of rooting for U.S. athletes, and not necessarily considered the rooting interests of other countries and that Apollo Anton Ohno (a known U.S. speed skating hero!) is actually not appreciated at all in South Korea because he infamously caused a Korean skater to get a penalty by exaggerating a move. The power of media, someone can either be a hero or pariah depending on how they are portrayed (especially true of the Amazing Race and all reality TV as well)

Events I really loved:
1.) Curling and the Korean "garlic girls" who were a really tight-knit group
2.) Speed skating- it's like indy car racing except much faster! And people slip on the ice risking serious injury!
3.) Chloe Kim- the story of Chloe Kim might be the story of the Olympics, but maybe also of her dad taking her to Big Bear every weekend- that's a dedicated dad!
4.) Figure skating- the first winter olympic event I focused on, wasn't exactly the Michelle Kwan/Christy Yamaguchi days but still really fun to watch! Elegance.


These games also signified a change in perspective for me of how I considered Korea. When I was growing up in a Chinese household living in America, it was mostly about pride for China, and seeing the world in terms of how it related to China. When in school, I would read U.S. textbooks and consume U.S. media, portraying U.S. and other countries in a way to fit the media's agenda and they way they deemed fit. Other countries seemed small and insignificant, like I didn't know that "Kim" was a typical Korean name until I became an adult, I had always associated it with Japan! Even in the 2002 World Cup, a huge international event, I didn't know much about Japan or Korea and where the games were being played, only that they were far away countries in different time zones, thus I had to wake up in the middle of the night to watch any World Cup games live. I didn't care much about their politics or their leadership or their culture or anything about them, which I should have. Foreign relations is much more important and pressing than who wins the Game of Thrones on HBO's hit show, but I certainly have spent more time with Game of Thrones due to......dragons. It's amazing how getting to know someone who is from that country, who is passionate about their country and have different views than you, can provide a different perspective and drastically change my thinking about the way people think. I now know that Korea isn't just some place the U.S. fought in during the Korean War, I understand that Korea has a tense relationship with other Asian countries, China with ASAD missiles, with Japan due to Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 1900's and the "comfort women" issue, own internal unification issues with North Korea, actually improved relations with U.S. now that Trump is president (Trump is a little friendlier to Korea than Obama was, apparently, not an endorsement of Trump as a leader but still should be noted), but also so much Korea culture with their holidays, food they eat, religion, ajumma, impeachment of their last president, attitude of men towards women, so many more.

It's a reminder for me that a lot of times we should step away from our "In" group and learn about other cultures more intimately and listen to other peoples' perspectives. I feel that's missing in internal politics, most countries and leaders have to listen to their own peoples' citizens (that's their job) whose opinions are very nationalistic and unaccepting of other countries without fully understanding other countries and where they come from. Hopefully more Olympics and World Cups but also global awareness and acceptance will help improve those relations.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

多様化 (Diversification)

Diversification can apply in various areas of life. The most common area you hear it in is finance, where everyone from Jim Cramer (Are You Diversified?) and all financial analysts insist that you diversify and buy a wide range of investments to mitigate the risk and keep a steady portfolio. But is diversification really the best answer or is it one of those aforementioned pyramid schemes in life to get people to buy a bunch of different stocks thus increasing the commission fees for stock brokers like ETrade or any other exchange website? I sometimes get embarrassed as an attorney or finance major because theoretically I should know the answer to this. Sure, the theory behind it is sound: you reduce risk because if one industry goes totally out of commission or one company unexpectedly declares bankruptcy or something, you're not totally screwed by that one event happening, the easiest iteration of "putting your eggs in one basket." But what if that egg is a really nice, solid, unbreakable egg? The last year or so of investing/ trading in the stock market has made me a skeptic of diversification, illustrated by the rise of just 2 "FANG" stocks, Netflix and Amazon. The last year or so I've owned varying amounts of Netflix and Amazon as both have risen to unparalleled highs, Amazon from 995 to 1500 in about half a year (50%!) and Netflix even more astoundingly from 194 to 294 (also about 50%)  in just 2 and a half months. During those times I also owned other stocks like TRVG (big mistake!), WMT (doing well until it got hit by Amazon!) and a mutual fund (group of stocks pooled together, what the experts recommend you do!) which I barely made anything on, if not took a loss. Throughout these months I often wondered, "Why don't I just put all my money in Netflix and Amazon?" (the opposite of what the experts say to do as they're both in the same sector, both listed on the Nasdaq, both are in video streaming and a lot of the same industries). The world is becoming digital, and we're more and more relying on computers and online buying for our everyday things, and Netflix and Amazon provide that. If they fall, that means the world has changed in some fundamental way, and likely the other stocks that you can buy would also be in jeopardy, probably more so. It's really hard for me to justify, and increasingly hard to resist, just putting money in those companies, except for the fact that they're already so expensive already (theoretically you want to sell high, buy low). But time and time again I wake up every morning to check stocks and NFLX and AMZN are up big, other stocks are dragging along. Mutual funds just follow the market direction, AMZN and NFLX outperform the market! I don't know why I didn't understand this just a few short months ago and messed around with other investments. I sometimes think about how much money I missed out on not investing in those companies and get sick. 

Diversification is also an issue in life and finding one's next career. Should you put all your eggs in one basket and go fully into computer science, for example? (the new hot career in a newly digital world) or learn a bunch of different things, hoping that one of them will pan out. This is a daily issue for me, whether to spend more of my time applying to jobs, researching reddit, teaching myself a little computer science, learning more Korean/Japanese, checking out the stock market (I've had mixed results), or just focus on ONE of these things, knock it down, and then move on after I've finished. That's actually my mindset and why I get irritable about being late and trying to multi-task: I want to accomplish too many things and have too many side projects, I get overcommited trying to diversify my portfolio of life activities, when actually becoming really good at just ONE thing might be more effective. It's the curse of "jack of all trades, master of none." (by the way, good Aziz Ansari show). Diversification is not always a good thing even in general life.

It IS a good thing in daily nutrition! Eat plenty of veggies and spread out your diet and rotation!

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan