Like eating rice porridge 식은 죽 먹기

This past Memorial Day weekend I went to a bachelor party for a longtime friend in Denver, Colorado consisting of rafting, drinking, watching TV, going to a brewery, steaks, riding ATVs, etc. Not just any rafting, whitewater rafting, the kind that gets romanticized on TV as battling the currents of a wild river, barely being able to control the boat past treacherous whirlpools, crashing against the rocks, and possibly going down a waterfall, or at least that's what I thought it would be. 

The reality, alas, is a bit different than reality, and whether due to legal reasons and/or practical concerns, the actual whitewater rafting was kind of a piece of cake (the Korean idiom is that it's like eating rice porridge, something easy to digest), with the real currents not being like the notorious "Lava Falls" of the Colorado River and instead  being a slightly higher level than Disneyland's Kali Rapids; I actually slightly enjoyed the Kali Rapids more honestly, there was a vertical height component to it. We all wore dry suits and helmets for safety reasons, but there really wasn't any serious dangers for anybody and not THAT much water rushing into the boat. Kind of a disappointment in the lack of treachery (if we're going to go for it, we want something more exhilarating!) Kind of a gentle reminder of how some things don't exactly turn out the way they think they will, or where the fantasy of something is better than the reality (other examples include adult life, cruises, and fancy restaurant dishes). 

The second part of the "adventure day" was the ATV (all-terrain vehicle, I learned something new!) riding into the Colorado desert roads. It was all fun and games except one of our bachelor party members went too fast on the ATV and fell off, busting his lip and requiring stitches! (and a hefty bill for damaging the ATV). A cool experience, but just like they don't tell you that all the legal issues waters down the whitewater rafting experience, they also don't tell you that ATV's cough up a ton of dust in their wake, and when 10 dudes in a party all have to follow each other in single file formation, all that dust gets into the faces of the next person in line. All the eye poop I kept digging out of my eyes the next day as a result dampened the nice experience of riding in a motorized bike, probably the closest I'll come to riding a motorcycle ever. And as our fellow bachelor party member illustrated, they can be kind of dangerous! No seat belt, just a helmet to protect one's head, all other parts of one's body are unprotected. 

Other things in life that are like eating rice porridge: 

1.) hitting an open 3 in the NBA: should be easy with all the practice that the pros get and you get paid to hit them, but the Houston Rockets missed 27 (!) straight 3-pointers in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals and coughed up a 15-point lead at one point to lose to Golden State. Sigh. 

2.) Watching a well-behaved cat: MJ has been tasked with cat-sitting for a week and the cat is so adorable, she barely needs to be watched. It's more like the cat is humansitting MJ and letting her touch her all the time and have a feline friend. 

3.) picking Chinese-based stocks and making a profit lately (BABA, BIDU, IQ, BZUN), except if your name is Robert Yan and you picked up Weibo stock even after their stock tumbled after their earnings report thinking it was some kind of overreaction by the market. Nope, people just don't like the stock. Learn from this, Robert! 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Futures

Recently in my move to understanding stock markets instead of fantasy baseball player value markets, I realized one thing in common about those things that I really thrive off of: trying to predict the future. Predicting the future is a TOUGH business, and no one can say with 100% certainty of course what will come in the future, but it's the sum of many educated guesses that accumulate over time, eventually one starts to notice patterns and ways to make a better educated guess than just a wild one.

One of the main things I look at the night before the stock market opens is the Dow Futures market. It's a useful tool I get on CNBC (but I'm sure that other sites also have it) to show the predicted future value of stocks; it's basically what investors are betting the stock market will do the next day. And based on those future markets, the market sets a price to "Open" on the next day. This is actually really important, because you're basically making and losing money while you sleep! Sometimes on big dramatic rise and falls, a stock can move 5 to even 10 percent from where it traded at the close of the market the previous day without you even being able to trade on it! Kind of a scary concept, how much money one can lose. But it's also an opportunity, where if one thinks that the market is going a certain direction (and most individual investors are hoping that it's UP!) you can get good value at the opening of the market because that's when the market is the most fluctuating, has wild movements setting the tone for the whole day. Sometimes the futures values are right: futures say they go up, the Dow actually does trade higher the whole day, surprise surprise! Sometimes the future values are dead wrong, the actual prices go the opposite direction. It's the predicting, though that's exciting.

I really feed off of this futures business and trying to guess the future. Maybe it's an innate thing that humans do, trying to guess the future, but there's a lot of money to be made in it too. I'm usually either dwelling on the past (Why didn't I do x already, I could have been a millionaire by now!) or trying to know what happens in the future (what stock do I bet on now to become a millionaire?) It's the thrill of gambling too: you think you know what the future is, and you act upon that thought.

I've really turned my attention from sports outcomes (Who will win? OMG I'm dying to know!) to financial outcomes (What stock will double in the next year! OMG I'm dying to know!). I feel like my hunger in those pursuits is derived from wanting to know a future outcome, not to necessarily see great basketball and athleticism and who has the coolest shoe, I've always been someone who was motivated to get more information, see what the outcome was. That's why I was always huddled on my phone refreshing my page checking baseball scores, to get more information, see what the outcome was, know what the future is as it becomes the now. I've been able to control myself now in my 30's as, "I don't really care who wins this game, I'm not betting on it, I'm not gaining anything form it." to really caring about what stocks are doing because I am directly affected by the result, or at least my bank account is. For people like me, baseball and stock markets are addicting: there are results that come out almost every day (baseball is every day for 6 months, stock market is every weekday) and constantly more information, second-by-second, pitch-by-pitch, comes out, and the information I'm dying to know about the future, becomes the present and I get reinforced by that knowledge. It's a bit much sometimes, I admit, but now I'm able to control those urges because I understand what's motivating them: The yearning for knowledge of the future.

So what will happen in the stock market: I think despite the fears of inflation and a trade war with China, stock markets remain steady for the most part in 2018, it's safe to put money in stocks for now, and just try to weather the storm if any bad news (and there are a lot of potholes out there- presidential turmoil, oil, interest rates, Chinese trade, fear of a bubble, bitcoin collapse, etc., etc.) because the fundamentals of a lot of these stocks and companies are solid. And if the average worker like me wants to hedge their future job/ career from being taken over by computers (mine already is starting to!), bet on Amazon or some other big tech company. Amazon, for now, appears to be the "Evil Empire" (Jim Cramer's comparison) taking over all industries and eventually, all jobs. Hopefully in that future, we've all made a lot of money from having predicted the future a bit.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Royal Family (王家, 왕가)

Today was the second Royal Wedding of my lifetime, the first for Prince William and Kate, and then today early in the morning, Prince Harry married American actress Megan Markle. I've always followed the United Kingdom's Royal Family because they've been a nice parallel to my own life, with Prince Harry (I still remember when he was a kid!) just a couple years older than I am, then one of the tragedies of the 1990's, Princess Diana dying in a car accident on August 31, 1997. I remember that morning very vividly as I woke up at a sleepover at my friend's home and my friend's mother was watching TV while crying, as Princess Diana had been a hero/heroine for many women in her independent ways eventually leading to divorce from Prince Charles. That was a sad day.

I also remember the first Royal Wedding in 2011 (seems like the Royal Family is known for these grandiose occasions!) as being a huge event, one of the most spectacular events one can dream of. Seems like both today and in 2011, everyone seemed to be happy, smiling the whole time, and a joyous occasion for all. But is it all so cheery and wonderful in the Royal Family? The internet doesn't seem to think so, indicating that people in the highest places in society and with the most money can be unhappy and have chinks in their (literally, Harry was wearing what looked like) armor.

First of all, it seems so stuffy and repressed to be a prince or any member of the Royal Family. So many rules, customs, people watching. It's one thing to be known for basketball or an entertainer where you can let loose with your own creativity, a prince is always only going to be known for being the prince, really hard to imagine them topping that, and sure enough the current two princes have settled into their princely duties. They also have to avoid causing shame to the family, which Harry in particular has had difficulty doing, being captured on video/camera partying in Vegas, doing drugs, etc. I've been 21 too and made a lot of mistakes; princes apparently can't afford to without it splashing the front page.

Second of all, their wedding didn't seem that great! They basically had to have the same wedding as Prince William seven years ago, with the same chapel, same ceremony, same horse-drawn carriage taking them back to the castle.......if I were Harry I'd want my own unique wedding! Let's go to a mountain or beach or something to get married! And the whole world watching just because it's easy to get ratings. Even with all the pomp and circumstance with the Royal Wedding, I personally preferred the wedding MJ and I threw! Near the beach instead of in the city with no sign of water, a perfect California sunset on a beautiful Saturday evening instead of a dreary British cloudy morning, we played our own violin duet instead of have a full orchestra do something scripted and impersonal. And Megan's dress had to have a gang of 10 flowergirls/little dudes carrying it around? Too gaudy, in my opinion.

Third of all, much like the thinning hair in the back of Harry's head marking a physical defect in even the royal bloodlines, the Royal Family has many personality defects that they just sweep under the rug. Prince Charles and Prince Diana's conflict and infidelity leading to divorce was well publicized, Prince Harry was no saint as a child, and Megan's father didn't come to the wedding, with the official statement being that he was "too ill." Megan was in a previous marriage. These things aren't like terrible and can happen to anybody, so I guess as part of the common folk the jealousy seeps through and it makes me root against perfect people, but everything just seems too perfect with the Royal Family's ideals, get married, have beautiful children, make them prince and princesses, rinse and repeat and continue the bloodline. Life just doesn't work that way. Life is imperfect and people need to adapt to it; no one is above that. I hope that Prince Harry and Megan have a wonderful life together; just be prepared that much like everyone else, they'll have their ups and downs and part of marriage will be working through those problems and imperfections.

Here's to the Royal Couple!

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Furniture (가구)(家具)

For most of my adult life, I was able to push it to the back burner. I feared it, I disdained it, I wished it would never come. But since last year when MJ and I got our own place together to live in, it reared its ugly head: furniture, or "kagu" in both Korean and Japanese. It literally means, "family tools." Up until last year, though, I never viewed furniture as tools, or much of anything really. I always arrived at a new location with the bare necessities needed, and usually to a place that had existing inhabitants with refrigerator already attached, almost in fear of fully moving in and getting attached, and also of the day that I had to move out and take all the stuff with me. For a few years, I operated on air mattresses, fold-up tables, bean bag chairs, and sleeper sofas. If anyone were to name the kind of "style" of furniture I had, it was "meager," or "near homeless," or "nomad."

Turns out, furniture can be fun and define the type of style you have! Or at least according to MJ. Our new apartment is not large, but we have a distinctive white, modern, clean style to go along with the walls, cabinets, and floors. Turns out, furniture should not be too colorful, unless it's a kids room or something. My parents' old home used to have blue carpet, an interesting but ultimately misguided idea (apparently the people we sold it to weren't too keen on it).

When buying new furniture, IKEA becomes your new best friend. I read an article online that said IKEA is great for 20-early 30-year-olds until you're 34, but I think that's nonsense. Every time I go there are whole families of people trying out their showrooms and filling out their checkout lines, kind of like the Chinese family checking out Tom and Summer in "500 Days of Summer." Everything seems nice, instructions are do-able depending on how detailed the pictures are, and every time I go I get the Swedish meatballs! MJ and I went today and remarked how our apartment is basically an IKEA showroom, except a little messier.

The tough part about furniture is MOVING all the furniture, and the nomad in me is always on the go, go, go. I used to move all my furniture myself, but it turns out a real bed is NOT the same as moving an air mattress. The pros are required, and they seemed to assemble and disassemble a bed really quickly, much faster than me cringing over all the instructions over a bed. Not having ever hired movers before, I was actually pretty impressed with how efficient everything went, taking all our items down into a truck and then putting them all back into the new apartment in 3 hours. Trolleys, lifts, rope, something called "wardrobe boxes" were all involved, but not too painful! MJ stresses out about a lot of things for days, not eating, sleeping, or drinking until the day finally comes, but even she had to admit it was pretty smooth. I didn't even see the dudes moving the awkwardly long sofa out the door, which I thought for sure was going to cause problems getting out the door and turning the corner (I am in genuine awe of pianos that have to be brought down not from the stairs or elevator but by a rope pulley system out the window. I've heard of those type of situations and they don't seem fun, safe, or particularly cheap, so I'm glad we didn't have to resort to that.

The underrated furniture-related tidbit? Cabinets and closets. Little did we realize how much stuff we've accumulated over the years, especially clothes, and it doesn't look much normally because it's all crammed into closets and cabinets where you can't see them, like a magic tool box or invisible cloak that makes all the messiness disappear. You can never have enough closet space, a walk-in closet is even better, especially for 2 people who are sharing a closet. Something called "his-and-her closets" are like a fantasyland with unicorns and rainbows, you can never have enough space in closets and cabinets.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Showing off on Instagram (インスタ映え)

One of my favorite learning activities is to look up the top Japanese "buzzwords" of the year, a new word usually that's trending in Japan that depicts part of the culture of the country as well as reflects what's popular in the world. Other years it's been "arukismaho," or walking while using one's smartphone (helped by the Pokemon Go craze). In 2017, the top buzzword was "Insta-bae," a word basically meaning to put up an attractive photo of oneself on Instagram, to essentially show off, show others what an awesome life you're living. This type of peacock-like pretentiousness is not limited to Instagram, as people do it on all the other social media sites like Facebook and Snapchat, but it seems more pervasive on Instagram, to the extent it's generated a buzzword in Japan.

I just recently joined Instagram, and I would tend to agree that it's prone to show-offness. Really, the whole idea of social media is to publicize a certain image of oneself, and everyone's conscious of it when they post. The other primary motivation to post stuff is to document one's life and leave a trail for the future when you look back and reflect on one's life, which is what this blog is for!

The whole idea of "followers" too has a direct causal relation with the pretentiousness of the posts. You don't get followers by posting mundane pictures of sitting in traffic or working at the office, you get rewarded with followers by posting more entertaining photos, of depicting the image of a cool person others want to aspire to. It's reflective of today's society where everyone wants to be cool, use the trending lingo (what I call assassination of the English language) where no one wants to be behind the times, and thus we lose our identity. It's like in high school when I looked at how many times I appeared in a yearbook, how good I looked in the school portrait, it's that except it happens every day, not just once every year when the yearbook comes out.

What's depicted on Instagram is not what "life" is to me. Life is working your way out of struggles, dealing with life's ups-and-downs, adapting to situations, being able to handle stress. Once in a while there's that happy "I won a dodgeball championship!" worthy moment to get excited about, and I was guilty of posting it on Instagram (my third ever Instagram post!), and that's what goes on Instagram. What doesn't go on Instagram is the amount of practice hours we put in, how many disagreements we had about how to win, sitting through long hours on a plane getting to the tournament, etc., etc. If life is, as Matt Damon said in "Dogma," just a series of moments, than Instagram is great at capturing those selective series of moments when emotions are high, when one is at their best, but I argue what makes those moments sweeter are the lows and getting through the hardship that doesn't get detailed line by line because it'd be swallowed up by the TL:DR posts.Nowadays, everyone's attention span is really, really short, and if you don't capture someone's attention with something perceived as "awesome," you don't get their attention. (True story: we just moved across the street from our old apartment to our new apartment, MJ saw a lady in the lounge flipping through Gucci bags on her smartphone figuring out what to order, almost losing herself in a sea of options. There's just so much to choose from and so much content to choose from, no one has any time to learn other people's life stories and what makes them really tick, what they've been through. Just the Instagram pics, please, is the message that we get.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

合間を縫う (Squeezing every second out of the day)

A Japanese colloquial term, pronounced "aima wo nuu," its literally translated as to make good use of one's spare moments." That is one of my daily philosophies, and I try to live it as soon as I wake up. I sleep more than the average adult I think, I try to get my 8 hours in, which is a huge luxury to have in the hustle and bustle of today's society. Therefore, I feel like I gotta make up for lost time right off the bat, and that includes getting up quickly, use the restroom quickly, get dressed, and get going. I used to diddle daddle in bed, struggling to wake up, but now it's just a quick "kick out" and go. Plus I've been motivated recently by finding out the stock prices and checking the market, in case I have to make a panic trade or something (Pro tip: never make a panic sell). At night, I dread when the late hours are creeping up, meaning I have to end the day soon when I haven't accomplished everything I want to do (I always feel like I'm budgeting for 20 hours but only get 16). That's really the reason I wake up late and get to work late sometimes, it's not because I'm chronically late, it's because I'm trying to squeeze every last drop of the previous day and bargain with myself to give a little bit of extra time, sacrifice a little sleep, except I often sleep the same amount anyway cuz you know, the body likes sleep, and wake up late as a result.

I do feel, though, that every second of the day, just like every morsel of food left on a plate, is precious. There's no idle moments when you've turned 30 and possibly living your "golden age," I want to be able to enjoy them as much as I can, and in order to do that I have to take care of the mundane tasks quickly, or even multitask. It takes a lot of discipline to stay on task all the time, but making it a daily routine helps. Walking to work can be combined with listening to podcasts or the news, sitting on the bus can be good for checking emails (since you shouldn't look at your phone while walking), driving somewhere can be coupled with making work calls or to friends, during lunch you can walk around and get in some exercise, everything has a purpose, I feel the most anxious when I feel like I'm wasting time, not accomplishing anything. Every action I do has to have a purpose, I must feel like I'm achieving something. It's a little manic, for sure, and it's motivated by the fact that I feel my life passing by sometimes, like one day I'll wake up and I'm 40. (I'm gonna wake up in 2 days and actually be 31, which is a little worrisome). Have I accomplished enough and lived enough relative to my age? Probably, but can I keep it up? I need to use wisely the world's most previous resource, time! Just ask Dr. Strange in the Avengers movie series, but don't spend 2 hours + watching the whole movie because that would be wasting time!

I realize, that not everyone's programmed like I am and can only focus on one task at a time, so I tend to drive other people a little crazy if I impose my standards on others. My philosophy's amplified on vacation to the point of me calling my schedule a "Robert vacation," where in a single day I try to squeeze as many tourist attractions or activities in as possible, not even stopping for lunch and just eating granola bars en route to the next location. Sometimes I get upset if I JUST miss the elevator going down, or JUST miss the train that just left, or get stuck in heavy traffic without any language podcasts to listen to! OMG! lf sometimes and go, "It's OK, Robert, life won't end tomorrow." (actually, it might, there are no guarantees, but its OK sometimes to just sit back and do nothing.) In order to me, you need to be a pretty high energy person, and not everyone is.

Balanced Diet (食養生)

Today I ate Topper's Pizza, a delicious pizza near my parents' home in Camarillo. Excellent for the taste buds, not so good for my athletic performance. I played tennis with my dad after that meal and was really sluggish, not having much energy to go through rallies and feeling tired before I should have. Topper's pizza, not a great choice for a balanced diet.

Until about a few years ago, I ate anything I felt like without worrying too much about how it'd affect my athletic performance or even my day-to-day-life. I wasn't fat or anything because I would still run a lot to burn it off, but microwave pizzas, muffins, bananas, and Chinese grocery store dumplings (my favorite!) were all part of the daily menu. I loved it; I had a specific routine to make these things, they were fast and easy, and they were tasty! What could go wrong?

Well, a lot can go wrong, especially with athletic performance. I often wondered why I would struggle sometimes playing dodgeball or get tired faster while running a marathon....it's the food that you put in your stomach, dummy! That and getting enough sleep are the 2 things I learned from watching athletes train. Football players sleep 10 hours a day during the season to achieve maximum performance from their bodies (they also kill themselves every day training and use their body to put food on the table, so it's understandable), and MMA fighters start eating the right foods (partly to be able to make weight on weigh-in day) but also to get exactly the right mix of foods for maximum energy. Last year, at the biggest event of the year for me, the Ultimate Dodgeball Championship, the thing I train for and can win money at, our team ate pizza way too much for athletic competition. Eating pizza is nice for 6 or 7 dudes on their own, but guess what? It stays in your body when facing other teams and can make the difference on that one crucial play where my body is a little late or sluggish compared to the other guy who is lean and fit and ate the right foods. Gotta make sure to eat the right things before and during game day.

I've found that for athletic competitions, eating consistently the same thing every day helps, just to have the body in approximately the same state every day for whatever you're doing, running, jumping, catching, so you don't feel extra "heavy" or have some weird days where nothing's working right. It's why pitchers can throw a no-hitter one day but look totally lost another start.....something's different about the body, just a minute, undetectable tweak somewhere in the composition of the body can alter one's aim, whether it's a pitcher or dodgeball player who throws balls. That's all food-related! I feel like we all wake up every morning slightly different in the way our bodies are composed based on the foods we ate, so we need to try to be as much of the same as possible!

Also, it's not just doing well athletically.....your body doesn't respond well to pizza, I've noticed of my soon-to-be-31-year-old body. Getting gassy, farting abundantly, are all indicators of the body rejecting certain foods. I've had some bad experiences with having ramen noodles: a sudden burst of carbs from the noodles, sure, but then a crash after that, almost like sugar. Great experience from salad and rice and eggs/ unfried chicken. Ever get a queasy feeling in your stomach after a big meal? That's also a pretty good sign there was too much of something, like cheese.

Oh and to avoid afternoon naps at the office, a big problem for me (I tend to nod off sometimes uncontrollably), heavy meals do not help. Anything with a lot of salt, grease, oil, etc., puts me to sleep a lot easier. I don't think I've ever felt sleepy after a salad/ non-meat meal, partially because I'm not full enough to feel sleepy.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Selfie (셀카)(自拍)

Selfies in the world became all the rage in 2013, when it was introduced as a new word in the Oxford English Dictionary. Since then, selfie sticks were made, Justin Timberlake took selfies with other celebs at the Oscars, and millions of people take them on vacations and at other picture-worthy destinations.

2013 was also the year a well-known artist named David Hockney began to draw portraits of his friends and family members at his Los Angeles studio in an action against the selfie phenomenon, painting portraits and showing the essence of human beings other than just through selfies. He took 84 portraits and 1 still-life beginning in 2013 and ending in 2016, and MJ and I went to look at the exhibit today at LACMA. Really awesome! I appreciate when art museums take measures to allow non-artsy people to understand art through easily understandable exhibitions. Although a selfie can take less a second to snap whereas a portrait takes much longer (Hockney took an average of 3 days for each self portrait), a portrait shows the strength of the human spirit, a victory for the imagination and expression of the human race rather than just a machine-based action that spits out only what is in front of it. A selfie captures that moment in time; a portrait captures the artistic value of that person a that time forever. A true timeless collection that's worthy of being shown in an art museum. Portraits are not just for Rembrandt and other European painters who didn't have access to cameras! Portraits are just as important as ever in today's modern society, I hope to have my own portrait or MJ's portrait done somebody too!

On a different note, I attended a blood donation today and drew some blood again! This time it was in a Red Cross truck, so conditions were a little cramped and claustrophobic, it felt like I was in someone's trailer. Not recommended for first-time blood donors who want to get a good feel for the experience. I realized while doing the questionnaire before giving blood how lucky I am to be healthy. There were so many medical conditions and requirements listed before giving blood that one needed to meet! Do I have STDs, do I have cancer, do I have Crohn's disease, do I have this and this disease, so many different names, all kind of scary-sounding but somebody in the world must have these problems, right? And these are just the ones that have to do with blood. In that sense, a blood donation isn't just to give blood hoping that it'll actually benefit people (I've never actually seen my blood be used for anything, although the Red Cross sends me messages about what the blood was used for and what kind of patient received the donation), but if anything it allows me to reflect on others who are less fortunate than I am. I sometimes feel a sense of pride and arrogance almost that I'm giving blood and I'm doing some good in the world (I try not to be stuck-up about it like I'm some kind of big-shot) but more importantly I'm aware of how fortunate I am. In doing so, I did make sure to take a Red Cross water with me and give it to a homeless person on the street as I walked back to my office.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan