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!
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