This Town's Not Big Enough for the Both of Us (一山不容二虎)

I love Chinese idioms; just when I think I'm getting tired of them, I get reminded of one with an interesting story, like this: "one mountain doesn't allow for two tigers." So true of many organizations, teams, families, Facebook message boards, etc. Tigers are viewed as symbols of strength and power in Chinese, and the idiom reflects that 2 of these strong leaders can't co-exist; they will battle each other tooth and nail until one is eliminated somehow, whether by retreating voluntarily or being forced (whether through death, injury, whatever) involuntarily to give up.


My dynamic with my Mom often can be compared to a "2 tigers" sort of situation: she has her own way of running the family as the boss, and I sometimes challenge that notion, which gets us into plenty of arguments. At the end of the day it's her house, she's the elder, and she's my mom after all, so it's certainly natural that I give in as the younger and lesser "tiger" in the situation. I honestly don't think I'm trying to be a second tiger, but she has a weird notion that we're battling to be the "most successful" in the family with her career as a research scientist and my career as a lawyer, that somehow I get jealous of her success, when in reality I root for her all the time to do the best she can in her career because I benefit from it, and her work as a scientist trying to produce drug-related solutions for various ailments in health is much more productive on a societal level than my work as advocating for clients to right perceived wrongs and clogging up the court system with more cases.

When MJ and I fight (rarely, but hopefully more rarely in the future! A wish for 2020 and beyond) it often stems from a culture clash between her Korean heritage and my Chinese-American heritage. Those are 2 very big Asian tigers dueling in their philosophies, from my loudness representing what she dislikes about Chinese tourists who talk very loudly in other countries to my displeasure of her fondness for cleanliness derived from her Korean background. (I've learned about so many cleaning techniques and tools after meeting MJ! One is using lint everywhere on couches, beds, carpets, and anywhere I may have dropped "dead skin" particles or loose hairs, we've recently considered carrying a roll of lint with us along with our keys and wallets. But one thing I LOVE about Korean culture is their style of serving food: it always comes with side dishes, or ban chan. It's just a nice touch for the waiter to bring bean sprouts, kimchi, radishes, sesame rice, and whatever else before the main dish even arrives. Makes me actually want to give a tip and want to go to a sit-down restaurant that requires me to tip! Often I go to a restaurant and wonder if the wait staff has justified their 18% minimum tip (standard in LA now is at least 18% now, crazy!). Korean food is often also pretty healthy, unless you're going for a home run with all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ, but even then at least the side dishes have some sort of vegetables. So Korean restaurants, you've earned the Robert Yan "Fichelin" star!

I think in human relationships where there are 2 tigers, there might be a different solution than 1 tiger finding a different mountain or the 2 tigers battling it out to the death: perhaps 1 of the tigers just needs to be less of a tiger, maybe a domesticated cat, or lose a claw and sue for peace, call an armistice, instead of pounding one's chest and needing to be the dominant voice of authority on the mountain, especially when the tigers have similar goals and hopes and dreams (and plenty of enemies on other mountains to deal with!)

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Year End (年终, 年末, 연말)

We've reached the end of 2019, and along with the expected holiday activities (I try not to say Christmas now because certain religious groups get offended if you say "Have a nice Christmas," just like "supremacy" is not a fancied word even in scientific names like "quantum supremacy." Gotta be politically correct to the extreme nowadays) comes a transformation in Los Angeles from a working metropolis city to a bustling tourist destination. MJ asked me today whether I think LA has more people during the winter holidays than normal or less people, considering that many people might have gone to their original home for the holidays....but my guess has to be more because of the foreign tourists flocking like migratory birds to a warm destination.....LA definitely fits the bill, although at night it's gotten cold enough to see your own breath. 

On one hand, the daily commute times are reduced due to less people going to work and school, but on the other hand attractions in LA become traps; don't even think about going to Hollywood Studios, Griffith Observatory, Disneyland, Santa Monica Pier without having to wait and/or encounter more people than you were hoping for. I thought New York was difficult to navigate this summer; at least they're usually equipped already for dense populations, LA normally is spread out enough and has enough going on that people are disbursed rather evenly through different areas of town like downtown, Malibu, the beaches, etc., but once the tourists show up and all their guidebooks have the same Top 5 things to do in LA telling them what to do, those top 5 places can't handle all those cars coming through their entrances, all the traffic getting out at the same highway exit. It's a nightmare, or as some would call it, a sh*tshow. 

Speaking of "all the space" LA has, that's one of the major themes of the movie "Marriage Story" that MJ and I watched on Christmas Eve night.......not exactly a heartwarming tale for the whole family to gather around, in fact "Divorce Story" might have been a more spot-on title, but it certainly gave a very real depiction of divorce and how attorneys complicate matters and suck up a ton of money if you get bogged down (the couple getting divorced at first agrees not to involve lawyers and to have an amicable break-up, but predictably they disagree on this, hire aggressive attorneys and suddenly bills pile up quickly along with the angry tirades and personal attacks). People in the movie keep praising LA for "having so much space" to the dad character who prefers living in New York City and cringes each time he's told about the space, a very real sentiment I can relate to....that space can be just as much a detriment as it is a benefit. 

MJ and I went to Getty Center (I've lost count of how many times I've been there, but I now appreciate it much more than just the nice views!) and it took almost an hour to drive into the parking lot area! Foreign tourists abounded, with Korean and Chinese being the top 2 languages we heard, more than maybe English. A wonderful Manet exhibit, part of the Getty's rotating program, was almost ruined by tourists trampling through, filling the meager hall to max capacity and making it difficult for me to guide MJ around in a wheelchair. I wondered what the comic Ali Wong would do in the situation, and I imagined silently farting in front of the most popular Manet work there (Le Printemps, depicting a girl wearing a bonnet and carrying an umbrella) where there was a mass of tourists and see if people eventually gave in to the remnants of my mom's famous mapo tofu recipe. One by one I could see those tourists dropping out to go to different paintings, not knowing where the foul smell was coming from, until only MJ and I were left to take a selfie, surrounded by a circle of protection of my own making. Maybe one way to fight off throngs of tourists.

Many fellow museumgoers were nice to open doors for us when the automatic door button wasn't functioning, but the sheer mass of people meant a few oblivious people cutting us despite our wheelchair. The sunset was colorful and dramatic today, enhanced by the mountains and ocean in the background, in fact MJ compared it to being air brushed, the way the light reflected off our faces when taking a picture, but it was slightly marred by all the people gathering on the west pavilions crowding around to get a video of the exact moment the sun disappeared below the horizon. Apparently that's a big thing. Super fun to wheel MJ down the hill from the top of the Getty instead of taking the tram, though, another unexpected benefit of having a temporarily disabled member of our party (but hopefully she will recover soon so we don't need to take advantage anymore!) And apparently California has a rule for out-of-state disabled parking placard holders to get a temporary 90-day disability pass. Out of all the states only California has this; all other states accept ones from other states. Go figure. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Mystery Thrillers (神秘驚悚片, 미스터리, 謎)

In today's age of attention deficit and lack of commitment to any activities over an hour long, the surest way to get me to sit down and watch a movie is the tried-and-true mystery thriller, a genius genre of work that keeps me turning the page (if it's in book form) or prevents me from turning the channel (if it's TV/movie). Which is exactly what happened last night at a white elephant Christmas party I went to, where the festivities eventually turned to watching a recently released movie, "Knives Out," a critically acclaimed work. I was going to go home soon before the movie started, but was trapped after the first scene of the victim being found dead.......and just couldn't take my eyes off of the screen. I have to imagine that it is quite tedious and arduous to write a mystery thriller and having to write backwards, knowing what the ending is but then dropping enough clues for the audience to keep them intrigued and gradually progress the story without giving too much away for them to be able to guess the ending, while dropping major plot twists along the way. The best mystery novels appeal to our senses of being in suspense and the young detectives in all of us trying to solve a mystery with the little information that's given to us.....I found myself often going over the events in my head during the movie, something I don't usually do for romantic novels, family dramas, blockbuster hits, or almost any other movie where I just sit and sort of absorb. It also appeals to my love of magic shows, where the magician does something seemingly impossible (similar to locked-room murders or some other seemingly impossible way of killing someone) and keeping the audience guessing, except luckily in mystery thrillers you get the assurance of knowing you'll see how the magician did it at the end.

My progression of mystery thrillers has progressed steadily and always stayed with me throughout my life, starting with "Nate the Great" books as a kid, progressing to Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown to getting into Agatha Christie novels in high school, as well as the board game "Clue" and the novels that the game was based on, with the iconic phrases like "Colonel Mustard in the Billiard Room with the Candlestick." There are even mystery societies that dedicate themselves to watching murder-mysteries and certain patterns like 1.) the victim often dies in the beginning and we learn about them through flashbacks, 2.) there's a quirky, eccentric famous detective who takes the case, 3.) there's a network of likely suspects who all have some sort of motive for the victim to die, 4.) red herrings that throw the audience off the scent to mask some other trivial clue that becomes very significant later. These typical elements were all satisfied in "Knives Out," but it didn't come off as contrived or unoriginal because the story was able to carve out its own characteristics and even thrown in elements of current society like "Instagram influencers" and the immigration backlash in the US. I guess I've missed these type of pure murder-mysteries as opposed to the hybrid horror/mystery or drama/mysteries that have other elements to their movie other than mystery, like "Parasite" or "The Minority Report."

Merry Christmas to all!

Master (達人, 마스터)

The North Carolina Mint Museum in Charlotte. The Atlanta Botanical Garden (next to Piedmont Park). The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA. These are just some of the great places MJ and I recently had the pleasure of visiting, and at each one we were pleasantly surprised by a work done by the master glass sculptor Dale Chihuly. I say master because Chihuly is truly one of a kind and the best at his craft of making elaborate art pieces from glass; ever since MJ took me to a Chihuly exhibit in Seattle 2 winters ago, I was hooked and impressed by the distinctive style of Chihuly's works. If you've never seen it, they're defined by their distinctive colors, brilliant shades of yellow, green, red, orange, etc., but also by the shape of the designs in wavy, fanciful imaginative ways that remind me sometimes of snakes growing out of Medusa's head. Except really artful. I guess the glass makes it easier to shape them that way, but it's what I imagine viewing ice sculptures would be, it looks like Chihuly carefully crafted them himself and took really intricate care.

The Chihuly works that we saw were in unexpected but very scenic spots: surrounded by a pond, in a garden by itself, and hanging from a ceiling. They are magnificent works that is an attraction in itself. I imagine Chihuly to be kind of the sports equivalent of Kyrie Irving, not necessarily regarded as the best artist ever, but so distinctive in his style and dazzling with his ball handling skills (and for Chihuly, his glass handling skills) that it's a joy to see them perform, and really seeing it live and able to view it from all different angles and being in the presence of greatness is quite the experience, not fully able to be duplicated just by viewing them from pictures. I just hope to continue running into these Chihuly works as pleasant surprises when MJ and I do a world tour of all the art museums in the world; maybe we'll see one in France! Chihuly's works certainly have made it all over the world, although there are only a few places he has permanent exhibits, like the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Not sure when we would get there, but I've added touring various art museums in different cities to my list of categories to visit like baseball stadiums, college campuses, and now art museums.

The world in general loves masters of what they do. There's a sort of mystique about being the best at doing something, that there's only one person in the world that does what that person does. I've definitely personally spent many hours on Wikipedia reading about masters of different areas, whether it's Chihuly with his glass works, Lee Sedol with the board game Go, Bong Jong-ho with the masterful movie Parasite, even martial arts masters in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) that I've recently taken an appreciation in, have to train in so many disciplines of combat sports like jiu jitsu, wrestling, karate, Muy Thai, boxing, etc., etc. to become a master and a world champion. (This weekend, Chan Sung Jung nicknamed the Korean Zombie, Korea's closest thing to an MMA master, fights in Busan). Going to art displays around the world has allowed me to realize how masterful some individual people in the world are and how their ideas can inspire others, whereas before I just focused on sports score outcomes, my own life and ideals, etc. Greta Thurnberg is now a master in her own right at uniting people for climate change and urging action by political leaders, and now she's been named Time Person of the Year. At 16 years old! (on Jan. 3 she won't be able to say she's still 16, but still!) All these masters have in common that they weren't just born with incredible gifts capable of becoming masters, they were blessed with certain skills, but so are a lot of others! The masters are the ones who combine natural gifts with dedication and craft to pull themselves up from the crowd and work on their craft for so long and so much dedication as to become masters. I wish to become a master one day too.......at something. Biting my nails? Blackjack strategy? Obscure Japanese TV shows? Who knows.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Things will work out (車到山前必有路，船到橋頭自然直)

I learned a tidy Chinese phrase today about one way to live life: everything will work out in the work, kind of the "Hakuna Matata" for Chinese people, literally meaning, when the car gets to the mountain there will always be a road, and when the boat gets to the pier, it will run straight with the current. Basically saying that even if things don't look so clear now, it'll all work out somehow or another in the future. 

So far in my life, that "it will all work out" phrase has worked out. Just like the stock market, there have been ups and downs and sharp pullbacks and scary occurrences and massive setbacks, but overall whenever I've come to an obstacle, there has indeed been a hidden road I didn't foresee or a fallback plan. That doesn't always work out for everyone; a lot of people get to a mountain and then just get stuck at that mountain forever; sometimes it's a proverbial mountain of debt (student debt or mortgage debt, you choose), so it's not something that one can just rely on all the time. I often hear the phrase "it'll all be OK" thrown around a little too whimsically by overcomplacent college students or people who haven't had any adversity in their life; it's too naïve to think that everything will just work out magically, there should be a caveat to the phrase with conditions like "if you bring a shovel and dig a little bit, then there will always be a road." It's not just a road that's just lying there waiting for you to take it and ride off into the sunset, sometimes you have to strive for it and actively search for it. 

I bring this all up because MJ is dealing with a lot right now with her knee injury, and for the first time since it happened I've been able to start seeing the injury from her perspective: she's already dealt with a lot of obstacles in her life, and she keeps falling into these pitfalls, and when are the pitfalls going to stop appearing on the road? For her, it hasn't always worked out in the end, and she's still trying to find her way through. Then again, some roads are windy and take longer to navigate through than others; perhaps her path through the mountains is just taking a little more time and with more setbacks than others; but it would be nice if the mountains were a little nicer to her and didn't rain down pebbles or make her fall! 

I may take the "there will be a road" when I get there a little too literally; I wait too long sometimes to get into the lane I need to go to when driving and leads to us going off in the wrong direction and missing an exit or two. MJ has gotten so used to it that she just calmly lets it happen when I suddenly realize I haven't gotten in the exit lane with about 0.2 miles to go (very little time to adjust before I miss it). I guess most of us think we are above average drivers; I think so too and my mom and I get into a little non-threatening verbal tussle over this several days ago on who the better driver is; I would say I am better as I notice some of the things other drivers do that I would get annoyed about and try to develop that into my own driving, but waiting until the last moment is definitely an Achilles's Heel of mine. I also value not having to drive more than I do now; with unlimited wireless internet, I can do almost anything online anywhere, so it pays to be sit on a train or something and leave all the driving and paying attention to someone else. It'll all work out in the end when I get to my destination. 

Frida Karlo

Quick, name a famous female artist, and not like a "recording artist"/ singer songwriter like Madonna, Lady Gaga, etc. Not many people come to mind, right? Maybe Georgia O'Keefe if you're into Southwest American murals and female anatomy-looking figures, but the 2 most prominent female artists that come to mind for most of my circle of friends are Frida Karlo and Yayoi Kusama. Both of theme have exhibits at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, which is quickly becoming one of MJ and I's favorite spots to go to.

I guess all famous people have to have a calling card, something that they're famous for, and for Kusama I guess it's gonna be for the pink polka dots. Which is fine! (and better than the other thing she's known for, checking herself into a mental hospital). It's amazing how artists can rise in popularity later in life, usually do to a popular piece of work that gets universal approval, like the Infinity Room in downtown LA. It's a shame that I hadn't even heard of Kusama (or Frida, for that matter!) until like 3 years ago, and come to think of it all the art history I'd ever known before that were done by men like Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Monet, Picasso, etc., etc. Even Chinese artists were mostly men, and the most memorable are poets. Art, like most other things, has been dominated by men throughout history, which is why the Frida Karlo exhibition MJ and I went to is so important: it highlights the work of women artists and makes them our heroes, and somewhere a young aspiring woman artist can dream of becoming like her or becoming the best artist they can be. It's a little shallow to just be inspired based on someone's race or someone's gender, but I do admit that seeing Andrew Yang and Crazy Rich Asians does make me have hope to make it in American society, just as Obama gives hope to a generation of young black people.

The Frida Karlo exhibit was simple but very informative about Frida's life, from having a debilitating disease at a young age to getting run over by a bus in a nearly fatal accident, she seemed to have a tumultuous life and died early. The pictures that really delved into her personality, though, was Frieda in a wheelchair painting and her husband, Diego Rivera, himself a famous artist, standing behind her, wheeling around. A bit of comic irony that MJ and I viewed the exhibit with me wheeling MJ around looking at Diego wheeling Frida around. MJ then informed me, though, that Diego wasn't a great husband to Frida, and that seemed to be confirmed by their divorcing before remarrying about a year later. Seemed like there was a lot of marital stress, but I feel like that might have had something to do with him being 20 years older than her. Overall, I wasn't necessarily impressed by the quality of Frieda's pieces necessarily from a technical perspective (they weren't exactly dazzling masterpieces), but they have a type of unmatched spiritual quality like "Frida with 4 monkeys" or "Frida with Diego on Her Mind," a self-portrait of Frida with a portrait of Diego on her forehead. Really goes to show how powerful one's message can be even unexpectedly and have a profound impact on the rest of the world. Even Disney depicted Frida in its hit animated movie "Coco," so even they acknowledge the impact that she's made not just in the art world but transcended into mainstream consciousness. Me? I just liked going through her special exhibit for an hour and diving into the story of her life.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Using a butcher's knife to kill a chicken (杀鸡焉用牛刀)

There's an idiom in Chinese that will somewhat gross out MJ, but it's basically translated to, "don't use a knife for killing cows to kill a chicken." A very brutal image to describe a much more palatable concept: don't use too much effort to handle a trivial matter, or in some cases, don't use an overpriced, partner-level attorney to do basic legal work. That is essentially what my uncle in China is dealing with now, where he has hired an attorney at a big law firm to handle his trademark infringement litigation case, but the case has gone longer than expected without the other side caving in or asking for any settlement, thus the case continues with large legal fees (partner's fees at bigger law firms can easily be more than $400/hour, I've even heard of $700/800 an hour for the biggest white collar firms! An astronomical sum for an hour's work, especially considering that a lawyer bills multiple hours of work for their time. As one can imagine, those legal bills can pile up quick, so you don't want an overqualified partner doing some basic legal work that only requires mundane tasks, as a client you want them to do the real heavy lifting, provide extra value to the case in terms of strategy or experience. A regular associate probably bills around half that, and sometimes the tasks can be done by paralegals and other legal staff. Having worked at various law firms in my life, I can say that there's nothing "magical" about lawyers do to justify being paid so much; it's just that the market is set so high!

Overbilling is very common in the legal profession, since the client doesn't really know exactly how much is being done or how useful certain things are. Appearing in court in front of a judge may seem super important for the ordinary citizen as that is the culturally accepted image of an attorney, but that's often a routine scheduling for a trial; often the judge has already decided what he will decide from the submitted arguments on both sides. What is important is actually the writing that's done by attorneys behind the scenes, or at least behind their computers, at their desk where no one's watching; that's where the research and legal writing comes in that's at the heart of the value.

I feel bad for my uncle that he is being overcharged (in my opinion) by his attorney, almost like it's my money (even though it's not, thankfully) that's used to pay the attorney. The most sinking feeling about being a client for an attorney is that the case keeps going on without any end date, and the attorney continues charging all the time for it. At least if you buy a car or house, they're expensive items but there's a finite end to the price, but a legal matter is like the worst Netflix subscription that you ever got sucked in, you just pay and pay every month considerable amounts until you run out of money and see how far in the case you've gotten. I've always been aware of this fact while working as an attorney myself, but often I work for multinational conglomerates where the legal fees become a drop in the bucket and get passed off to the customers; I feel but a twinge of guilt. But when flipped on its head and I'm on the client side, suddenly I'm aware of just how much of a money drain attorneys are. No wonder people hate us.


And I don't like the image of killing cows or chickens neither.........I wish we didn't need to do it. I feel guilty nowadays about eating too much meat, as I'm in the camp of feeling empathy for all living creatures....and the pain they suffer when we kill them. I knew a guy back in high school who adhered to Jainism...... they believe that no living creatures should be harmed.

Go (囲碁,바둑 , 围棋)

Many may think that the predominant strategy game in Asian cultures is Chinese chess, or mahjong, based on popular culture and what's depicted in Crazy Rich Asians when Nick's mother challenges Rachel to a game of mahjong. Sure, mahjong is big in China, but there's one game that the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans all respect as a traditional board game: Go. 

Go in Chinese literally means "surround chess," and that's always what I thought of it as: use your pieces to surround the territory of the opponent's pieces. You get more territory, you win. Turns out, it's not that simple for high-level players and Go is so complicated because the board is so large fitting more than 300 spots, so the possibilities are endless, more than even chess. It's considered a high art form by some, and was even considered the fourth art form akin to craftsmanship, aesthetic art, etc. Among its 46 million plus players around the world who know how to play are me and my father-in-law (MJ's dad) who takes it more seriously than I do. 

I was first introduced to Go at Chinese school when I was in like the 5th grade, and it was pretty exciting and fast-paced, rapidly firing these stones onto a board and trying to outthink one's opponent. It looks monotonous with only black and white pebbles, but there's a lot going on. A move can be either defensive or offensive or both, and it can be a short-term decision disguised as a tactic for the long-term. I wish I had dedicated more time to it as a kid, but I gravitated more towards chess and Chinese chess for strategy games later but enjoyed them thoroughly. There's something about sitting down in a chair to play chess or another strategy game for hours on end that's appealing nowadays in our digital world where nothing lasts more than a few minutes or even seconds.......the peak of my chess playing days was all about concentration and using all of my brain power to achieve victory......of all the times in my life I wish I could go back, reliving my high school chess days ranks near the top. Something about chess appealed to my senses of strategy and competitiveness, and just like MJ likes art in art museums and the way artists express themselves through their art, I really was able to express myself in chess by winning through being careful, precise, and sometimes daring by taking risks. It was some of the best parts of me expressed through a game. 

Similarly, many people associate Go with art and expressions of humanity, that the more one plays go the more one learns about humanity, and life. It supposedly opens up a whole different way of thinking and delivers truths about how things work, just from that square wooden board with pebbles on it. Amazing, and yet in 2016 a Google program called "AlphaGo" with able to master the humanity of what Go offers and beat the consensus best player in the world, South Korea's Lee Sedol, 4-1. It was a devastating setback for mankind and humans playing Go because for a long time many had thought humans would still keep beating AI at go, a spectacularly complicated game, but AlphaGo did it 10 years ahead of time. If AI can do that, than truly they're better than human beings. Is the thought. I watched a documentary called "AlphaGo" about this, but my takeaway was actually the 1 game that Lee Sedol won, after he had already lost 3 straight games and looked beaten spiritually. He was losing in the 4th game, though, but somehow pulled out what some called a "miracle move," a genius wedge maneuver that confused AlphaGo and made it make numerous mistakes afterwards, leading it to eventually resign. Lee Sedol showed a lot of human spirit there, continuing to battle despite insurmountable odds and holding hope, and thousands of years later in the war against humans and AI I think that victory may go down in history as something the human race can look back on and show as proof of humanity. Go is truly a fascinating and representative game in that way. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Greed (욕심, 欲, 贪心)

I'm a pretty greedy person, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

I am very greedy about certain facets of life. Money, for example, my mom says I take after my dad: always counting my money like it's monopoly money or poker chips, feeling good when the pile of cash grows but empty when it starts to become depleted. I admit to this: I check my bank accounts semi-daily and my stocks multiple times a day to see if I gained or lost, even getting excited just by seeing the green sign next to the stock showing gains and depressed if I see red. It's a natural instinct of human beings: if I have something that I like, I want more of it. The Japanese have an expression for this: 欲に目がくらむ, when means rough, "to be blinded by greed." I guess I've been so blinded by greed that I haven't ever characterized myself as greedy, but I guess I am.

I am terribly greedy about sleep: I want as much as of it as I can, and will fight off anyone or anything that is getting in the way of it, even if that person was myself, several hours ago setting an alarm to go off at a certain time that I regret as soon as I get awoken by that alarm. Is it actually good to be greedy about sleep? I think so, if you're not getting enough of it and your body is thirsty for more.........I tend to listen to my body, but there's definitely times when I've gotten 10 or more hours of sleep and STILL wanted more or to take a nap mid-day (oh hey there, college-years Robert!), and that's driven by greed of wanting sleep, which you don't need. A huge distinction between needing and wanting, which is the barrier holding greed back.

I am greedy about how I spend my time: I want to multitask and fit everything into my schedule, when it can't really be done. Just today I tried to get my Mom to pick me up from work in downtown LA, but then also wanted to get a run and a little bit of dodgeball in, so I asked her to pick me up 10 miles away near University Citywalk……….even though it's Friday night and there's a ton of traffic.

On a related note, I'm greedy about how many tasks I can handle at one time: Now with smartphones and instant messages and high speed wifi and unlimited data plans for everyone's phone, we try to do so many things at once and always have at least 2 things going on at once, whether it's eating and checking our phone, driving and calling someone on our phone, or just walking and listening to something on our phone (most of the multi-tasking has to do with one's phone). In that way, technology has made us greedy and crave more stimulus and information, which can make us less greedy for knowledge and real pursuits...…

I'm greedy about food too...…...although I've been able to suppress some desires since I've becom an adult, and food is no longer a huge source of greed, although I do eat too much from time to time, especially at all-you-can-eat buffets (stay away from Korean BBQ's and Chinese buffets if you're like me).

I'm greedy about dodgeball: I say to myself I'll for an hour, but then when the hour comes I haven't gotten my fill yet or am still "in the zone" and just need a little more time, the adrenaline is pumping....

MJ is really greedy about TV shows, especially Korean TV shows that she knows have cliffhanger endings all the time that keep people watching but she gets hooked in anyway...that's why I've suggested movies most of the time when we watch together but I can only hold back the greed for so long.

I think what most "greeds" (I group them together like they're evil minions or 7 dwarves, or 7 sins) have in common is that once I get something that I wanted, I'm not satisfied by it anymore, that thing I just wanted 5 seconds ago is now attained and no longer desirable, and now I want something else. That could be like a piece of chocolate, where I just had the Reese's Cup and indulged myself, but now I want that chocolate cake over there, but more insidious is this greed we have to the next new thing we want to think about. Like during the workday there are so many times I'm thinking about "where do I need to go tonight. Oh Santa Monica. How long has Santa Monica been around anyway? What's the weather like in Santa Monica like today? Oh Ok, well now that I know that, I need to know this other thing." It becomes this neverending cycle of needing the next thing that I want and my brain's in overdrive trying to satisfy all these wants, that I really didn't even need in the first place. That's the worst kind of greed I have right now, and it's the one that most people are getting because of how our culture is and our technology is now.

What I NEED to be more greedy about is getting knowledge and discovering meanings of life. MJ is currently reading one of the most famous books of American literary history, "Man's Search for Meaning" with great quotes like "our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude." So profound, yet so simple. I like when I'm greedy about reading newspapers, reading thoughts by great humans, being curious about an issue and pursuing it. Those bouts of greed and inspiration, don't come that often and are often overwhelmed by wanting of something else.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Letter to Myself Ten Years Ago

Recently there's been a Facebook fad of posting one's picture from ten years ago and compare it with one's current picture; I wonder if it's a way of Facebook getting even more information on you. This was preceded by the angry woman and cat meme, and various memes and gifs that one needs a dictionary or handbook just to keep track of. That's one thing that hasn't changed in the past 10 years: Facebook is addicting but also a time drain, colossal waste of time that's like junk food for one's brain: feeding tons of useless information about other people's lives and the latest internet trends and perverting the English language into memes and gifs. And yet I continue to hit the blue button with a white "f" on it every so often instinctively as "brain candy." Sigh. 

As an alternative to the past picture, I'll write a letter to myself in 2009, hoping somehow that in the various time-space continuums that that letter would somehow make it back to myself during that time. 

Hi 2009 Robert, 

What's up! It's 2019 Robert. It's been quite a 10 years since, but you survived! Laser eye surgery worked out quite well, forget about all the adjusting of glasses, prescription changes, you will live glasses-free for the next 10 years and eventually forget you even wore glasses! Which is convenient because you will play a new game called dodgeball that's gonna get you hooked for the entire decade, and you'll be surprisingly good at it and enjoy indulging that competitive edge that you haven't done so since your high school chess days. 

Enjoy the rest of your law school days! Even though it will be a long 3 years, you should enjoy as much as you can, even if you're worried about getting a job. Sometimes, life doesn't work out like you expect but still rewards you for hard work and perseverance: trying to improve yourself is never a bad thing, even if it doesn't necessarily have immediate results. Sometimes, (this applies to the other facets of your life too) it pays to take risks when you're still young and barely in your 20's, as you'll still have the rest of your life to make up for the mistakes. (Just don't do anything too stupid like violating laws or anything- on that note, try not to get too many parking tickets, they kind of add up over time). 

BUY STOCKS! I cannot emphasize this enough. Some stocks will have gone up 3x, 5x, 7x, even 10x by now in what is one of the most glorious bull runs in modern history. Investing early will set you up for the rest of your life; take care of your personal finances. 

Finally, regarding your love life... you will eventually meet the love of your life and marry her, but it might not be right away, and there's this whole awkward online dating phase that you have to get through first. Try not to get too caught up on rejection and let it ruin your chances; if you have anything to say to a girl, gather up your courage and say it directly, so that you won't regret it in the future and wonder what if your whole life. Say how you feel to people you like, and especially people you love like your parents, or eventually your partner in life. It'll make you feel better and them feel better. (Unless you're being super creepy or shady in stalking someone, then just kind of let it go- Let it go, let it go). 

I suppose I should write a letter to myself in 10 years, too, right? (This is turning out to be like the post I wanted to write to celebrate the 1000th post of this blog, but it's happening now I guess). 

Hey Robert of 2029, 

How'd the 2020's go? So many questions, so little time. Hopefully you haven't messed everything up, the world hasn't collapsed on itself due to climate change, and Facebook isn't as important in your life anymore? Maybe all that language learning of East Asian languages finally paid off and you have a nice stable job somewhere utilizing the skills that you've developed over the years? I know by age 42 you'll maybe hit a mid-life crisis or something, but your 2019 self is trying to cherish as many memories as possible while still relatively young before it gets too late! I've also sacrificed some good experiences and slogged through late nights at work just to set you up for good financial health (and relationship health with your wife) so appreciate it! I hope the family is still going strong, and it's probably time for you to start or already have taken over taking care of your parents?  I know that in 2019 at least your ultimate hope, after doing the whole touring the world and seeing everything thing, is to settle down with MJ and live a long and meaningful life with the family, so I really hope that future somehow resembles your present, even if it's not exactly how I envision it now. Most importantly, I hope you wake up every day with the same positive outlook and can share that with the people around you and can still make MJ laugh and make yourself laugh, as well as make your (future son/daughter) laugh? And you named the cat Paddington after you and MJ's favorite movie, right? . 

And please tell me at least one of my stocks tripled in the ten years and made it all worth it. Is it Nividia? Please tell me it's Nividia. I went out like a champion in dodgeball, right? They retired my number, got in the Dodgeball Hall of Fame, right? Whatever happens, at least I know I'll have 10 years of blog posts to catch up on and indulge in the selected stories that I choose to write. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Mental Heath (정신 건강, 精神健康, メンタルヘルス)

I've always prided myself on great physical health, which is a great thing indeed to have in America (it's very expensive to get sick or injured in America!), and I'm lucky to have it, but I realized recently that health does not mean just physical health. There are various other types of health, like financial health (MONEY!), social health (relationships, friends, etc.), but more importantly, mental heath. A lesser known but underrated health, I'm super lucky to also have great mental health, never getting too depressed, not having suicidal thoughts, being able to have a positive outlook on life mainly because I'm surrounded by good people and a good environment. Others are not as lucky, suffering often "disease of the mind" in not thinking clearly or thinking deeply about the sadness around them, often driving themselves to attempt suicide. Mental health is as it sounds, a condition of the brain, and you have to feed the brain once in a while, or give it some medicine....it's an issue that cannot be ignored in this day and age.

I read a bunch of seemingly unrelated things this weekend and they all (tellingly) included something about suicides. In the US, about 47,000 people die each other from suicides. JUST suicides! I was taken aback by that number, but it's true, and I can begrudgingly understand why. Just today a Korean pop singer was found in her room dead of an apparent suicide.. another Korean woman was convicted of manslaughter of her boyfriend who committed suicide apparently after she told him to go kill himself. That would be an example of making it worse for an already sick person.Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole chapter in his book about the poet Sylvia Plath's suicide and how suicides occur partly because the victim associates certain things with taking their own life and would not do it if the situation/ environment were altered. Finally, I watched a video of a man who survived falling off the Golden Gate Bridge, apparently one of the most popular places to commit suicide in the United States. For a guy like me who has it all it's mind-bogging why people would take their own life, even people who have it even better than I do, as I'd thought of it as people making poor decisions and not being strong enough to tough it out on their own. but it becomes more clear after reading more and hearing survivors' stories that it does have to do with combating their own inner thoughts and blaming themselves.

I don't know directly of any people in my circle who committed suicide, a further sign that I'm stuck in my own little bubble blind to other people's problems, but I did go to college once with a girl who eventually committed suicide a few years later. It's really sad to see her Facebook page now, where people still wish her well several years after the event and wish her a happy birthday, as well as some messages like "I would you would have talked to me more about it" or "you didn't have to deal with all on your own." That seems to be a common thread among suicide victims, they blame themselves and keep it all in to themselves, finding themselves worthless or so at blame that they have to take responsibility by killing themselves, or at least ending the pain for themselves. In Japan at least many people take their own life after doing something that damages other people like putting other people into debt if their business went bankrupt, so they feel they have to make the ultimate sacrifice as an apology. There also often is some sort of triggering event that causes someone at risk of suicides to go over the edge, like the famous Sandra Bland case in Texas who was pulled over by an overzealous cop who dragged her out of her car for smoking a cigarette and not obeying the officer's orders. Bland was sent to jail for doing nothing illegal and killed herself on her third day in jail. I think the common thread for this is to improve one's mental health, to train the brain that even when they are beseiged by negative thoughts to overcome and hang on, so improving mental health truly is a lifesaving medical field and endeavor to help someone combat a disease, just as important as finding a cure for cancer and other maladies.

I still think my suggestions of making an at-risk suicidal person laugh constantly or allow them to go on an adventure would work, but it's clearly not that simple, especially when it's hard to even identify who is most at-risk of committing suicide and who needs it. No one's a mind-reader, but one possible clue to identify at-risk suicide candidates is to see who has committed suicide before.......unfortunately those who have the predilection to do it before or at higher risk of doing it again.

Adventue (모험, 冒険)

After doing thorough self-analysis and reflection, I've found that I am primarily motivated by 2 things: competition and adventure. The former is easily demonstrated through dodgeball, where I get visibly upset if I think someone is better than me and inspires me to pound my chest like a gorilla and try to go get that person out. Fantasy sports, chess, tennis, all are fueled by a competitive drive. However, the motivator that's a close second is adventure: I'm actually a fan of the unknown. Sometimes I'll just go to new cities and ride one of the subway lines to a spot for no particular reason, just because I've never been to that particular spot. As a kid, I played 2 types of video games: sports games (baseball, hockey) and adventure games (Mario, Pokemon, Star Fox) where the story would play out in an epic quest. Learning new languages can be an adventure: I start at virtually zero of a language and then a whole world opens up to me of culture, ways of expressing oneself, different TV shows in the foreign language that I use to learn. Recently, I've applied the adventurous spirit to art museums. Art and aesthetics doesn't inherently motivate me as much as it does some other people like my wife, I see a nice painting and admire how much work was put into it, the level of detail, but my short attention span prods me into moving on quickly onto the next one. For places like the National Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., though, where MJ and I went this past weekend, I've developed a new technique: each room of an art gallery is an adventure room of different worlds where I can move to different themed rooms and feel that I've gone to a new dimension, a new reality of different art. I especially like old European paintings/ murals of the countryside or splendid scenery where I can transport myself into that perspective and imagine going to that place. It's really helped my viewing of art, I think. It's helped that recently due to MJ's leg injury I've had to wheel her around, so it's like I'm pushing (more like guiding her) into each room of new worlds, like leaping together into a portal that transports us to Paris in the 1800's, or Spain, rural U.S., each painting tells its own story. Adventurous Bobby is satisfied, and it doesn't hurt that usually art museums are designed in a pleasant manner to appeal to the patron's senses, like I wonder what crossing through the next doorway will bring, or what the sound of the fountain is coming from. And I realize that I don't need to go too far to discover adventure; I can get a little bit of Paris without actually having to go to Paris.

I think people in today's society get a little bogged down and lose their sense of adventure. Sure you can take an adventure on your smart phone and go through all the new videos Youtube is recommending, but people don't step out of their comfort zone as much as when they were a kid. I find things like, for example, running to the Hollywood sign for the first time such an exhilarating experience, or going through all the different levels of Powell's Bookstore in Portland, or exploring the various paths and buildings on the campus of Duke University. Whenever I hear of people committing suicide or losing the will to live I wish that they would watch something funny that makes them laugh 30 times, like a kid laughing uncontrollably, or engage in an adventure (small adventures, doesn't have to be some epic 30-country world tour), like we used to do as kids: laugh a lot and go on adventures. People often talk about what the meaning of life is, like love and reproduction, which are noble meanings, but shouldn't the quest for joy (i.e. laughing) and the quest for adventure be a strong candidate for the meaning of life? They are for me.


What other things motivate me? Well, recently love has played a part in my decision making, whereas previously I hadn't really known what it was. Compassion, thirst for knowledge, morality all rank up there, but I have to admit that the biggest thing out of the rest is probably money. Yes, money does motivate me. The Chinese have a saying for it is like one's heart races faster when money is put on the table. But money is not the meaning of life, it's just a means to life.

Cutting Out the Middle Man

Over the weekend I was bestowed one of the most important distinctions in my life: more important than becoming a licensed member of the State Bar of California, more important than officially being wed to my wife MJ, this was much more important than those, I became.....a Silver Medallion member on Delta Airlines. It turns out that if you spend a lot of money buying flights from an airline and rack up a ton of miles, they you back as a customer to encourage continued spending of money on those flights, and to do that they make you have "status" so you can feel superior over others and get more privileges over others and get a comfort seat or even better, maybe one day, one day make it all the way to the front of the cabin. Subtly capitalizing on class welfare, it reminds me a lot of the movie Parasite which is still reverberating around in my brain. There are clear distinctions between the way the poor and the rich live in Parasite, but also our society uses the class discrepancies to play off of each other, parading the rich's luxuries to the poor and making the poor work and spend money to become the rich and be better than the other poor. "You can become one of us! You're a Silver Medallion now." Delta literally points these privileged folk out on some flights by thanking flight members with status while the masses (me up to this weekend) watch and envy.

But I'm a Silver Medallion now! Talk about instant gratification, I immediately went from getting all middle seats in the past to getting a window seat on this week's flight and then, lo and behold, the middle person, who would have been me normally, didn't show up to the flight, and the middle seat was MINE.....to share with the aisle passenger, but still, leg room! And I enjoyed every bit of it, sleeping 4 hours out of a possible 5 to get ready for the day. Luxury does have its advantages, especially on flights when you can literally cut out the middle man (passenger). Not the way the phrase is typically used, but most businesses and jobs in America are driven by being the middle man, so I can't really imagine how the economy would function by cutting them out. Heck, I'm a middle man, I work for law firms to provide legal services to companies and take a share of the cut of the wealth. The retailer I buy clothes for is a middle man, the stock trading website I use is a middle man for accepting trades, the apartment complex I pay my rent to is a middle man for the owner of the complex.

On a personal note, I need to cut out the angry man inside me that hibernates most days but when I'm really pressured, comes out at the most inopportune times during the height of an argument. The movie "Anger Management" actually describes very accurately and in memorable fashion how my anger works: I have a lot of repressed anger, which means I don't express my anger/ how upset I am most of the time and just hold it back, letting it build up under the surface and slowly boil into a range that gets uncoiled when it reaches a tipping point that triggers everything to blow up. Hence why Adam Sandler's character in the movie is nice to everyone even when being treated rudely on flights and other areas, but when he is forced to confront a childhood nemesis, all of the emotion comes exploding out as he tackles someone and uses physical violence. I feel a lot like that and it makes everyday situations a little easier where I hold back what I want to say to people who cut me in line (don't cut people in line nowadays, btw, especially at Popeyes) or make an inaccurate statement or TSA treats me unfairly and just get over it, but I suffer a harsh penalty (and MJ does too) when I become uncontrollably angry during an argument with m wife, who gets very surprised and shocked when I act out in rage and start yelling......part of how I've been (wrongly) taught by myself to cope with highly stressful situations. My arguments as a child with my parents would often end with yelling and screaming after a week's worth of being made fun of by classmates or suffering stress from being in high school and my parents would get the brunt of the anger, and it became a negative ritual of sorts of me finally releasing all my repressed anger out on my loved ones, and it's continued into now. I need to learn a bit from MJ who usually speaks out about everything that makes her upset then and there, so she can get it off her chest and at least know that someone has acknowledged the issue she's having (that someone is usually me). I just need to find someone to bounce my complaints and comments off of........MJ is a bit, shall we say, unresponsive to complaints that I have about her, so maybe I can have some sort of euphemism machine translate what I want to say into a nicer, better consumable package of an issue and send it

Anger isn't the only emotion that coils up like a spring inside me: apparently I cry during romantic movies or highly sentimental situations, such as watching "Modern Love" on Amazon Prime the past weekend and seeing stories of love depicted in them. I guess in my old age I get emotional when people have sad stories or stories about loving conquering all or a single mother making it on her own while raising a little girl.

The Ten People You Meet at the Airport/ On the Airplane

I've been spending a lot of time in airports and airplanes a lot recently (making round trips every weekend) and I encounter a lot of people on those trips, as well as being on Amtrak trains which have approximately the same kind of people. I used to fantasize about being a business traveler, being in different parts of the world and being busy all the time, those adults always seemed so professional and driven when I was a child. Now.......not so much. I usually want to just get in and out of the plane and the airport as soon as possible. But I usually have to encounter some of these people while doing so.


1.) Candy Crush Guy: this is not exclusively for airplane travelers, but I've noticed it on various modes of transportation.....what is so great about this game? From what I've gathered of watching people's screens while they mindlessly swipe their phones to get the colorful balls to shift the rows and "crush the candy" I can't help but think how mindless the human species has become with these no-thinking games. Candy Crush doesn't involve any outside knowledge, not much logical thinking, no benefit to society......it is just purely a time-waster that leaves you worse off and your mind number than you did when you started it. (I guess I also do fantasy sports, so maybe I'm being hypocritical?) There will be people I sit next to who play the game for all 4 hours I'm on a flight with them. No breaks.

2.) Armrest Hog, aka Aisle/Window Seat guy who encroaches on the middle seat. I'm a middle seat person, not by choice but by necessity: I book last-minute and don't care where I sit because I can sleep anywhere, so I resign myself to the middle seat (usually, sometimes a plane isn't totally full or I just get randomly assigned something else). Middle seaters don't have much rights, but if there's one golden rule middle seaters fight for, it's the right to the 2 armrest spaces. Those are NOT for you, people on the side! So don't be jutting your elbows in there or crossing the line.

3.) Mountain of Luggage Guy/Girl: I'm lucky enough that I have places to stay on both coasts in the U.S., so I travel light (see previous post), but I'd like to have an intervention for the people who seem to bring their entire life as a carry-on onto the flight with them. It's a pain and you're holding up the line. Airplanes can actually get to a destination faster if people take less time to put up luggage at the beginning so that everybody can get seated quickly and the plane can pull out of the gate faster..... doubly true for getting to the destination and getting out of the plane......if everyone can take 10 less seconds to get all their stuff and get out, we could save 10 minutes or so to get out of the airport ASAP and on with our lives (always a top priority), but conversely if Mountain of Luggage Guy/Girl is fumbling with the overhead compartment, need help pulling down their oversized luggage, almost knock someone out swinging their luggage around to the ground, get caught in the aisle while trying to navigate their way off the plane, then it becomes a traffic jam with just one lane available, and everyone is delayed.

4.) Need to Pee Guy/Girl: I have been this person one or twice, but I usually am fine for a flight of five hours or less. It's common sense: use the restroom before taking off. I got on a flight a few weeks ago ready to sleep and drifted off as soon as the plane got into the air but then was rudely and horribly awakened by Neighbor Guy in Window Seat who tapped me on the shoulder to wake me up so he could go pee. Like an hour into the flight. Seriously man, you can't wait to see if I would wake up on my own a little later to go pee? I had a hard time sleeping after that.

5.) Feet on the Footprints Martinet- A strict observer of the rules, the TSA person (like rising from the dead, they appear again in my blog) who tells me my feet are not perfectly on the set of footprints on the ground. Even though I've gone through so many airports with so many sets of footprints and never got yelled at about it before and the metal detector works fine........still.

6.) Bad Gas Passenger: An unidentified culprit, but you know it and dread it if you sit near him or her: they just let out silent bombs the whole flight and my nose is permeated with what they had for dinner last night in the form of heavy gas attacks.......but I can't accuse any one directly because there's so many other people around. Hiding in plain sight, a cowardly but effective strategy

7.) Squeeze-through Bandit: guy who jumps out of his seat when the fasten seat belt sign is turned off upon landing to try to get off the plane sooner. I've never seen this work for anybody to gain more than 3 rows before being stopped by the blockage of people. So basically you just cut like 15 people, gained like 2 minutes........but you're still stuck behind everyone else who all just watched you do this and are now upset at you. I know the back of the plane sucks but unless you have a pregnant spouse or similar emergency, just stay where you are and wait your turn.

8.) The Talker- insists on spilling his entire story to their neighbors and letting the entire plane hear them.

9.) Premature reclining seat guy: I personally never recline my seat (push it back) because I just don't want to shove my whole body at the passenger behind me...but I get why people do it. Just don't do it before the flight takes off. Slow your roll. Closely related: Guy tapping his TV screen (which also happens to be connected to the back of my seat) so hard that I can feel it thumping into my skull. Please recognize that there's a whole live human being sitting in front of you who has to bear the brunt of your browsing of all the available movies the flight has to offer.

10.) The guy pushing your stuff away at the security check to get to his own stuff. I usually take my laptop with me, and it is NOT OK for someone to push away my stuff to get to their stuff; it might damage my laptop or other things. And while you're at it, pick up the empty luggage cartons off the conveyor belt....it's not like the TSA agents are going to do it like it's their job or anything. TSA Agents who are just sitting around chatting with other TSA Agents acting like passengers aren't there or yelling at passengers.........while luggage cartons are causing a traffic jam in the conveyor belt. C'mon guys.

-Robert Yan

Psychology (心理学, 심리학)

Recently on my way home from work I've started reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Talking to Strangers." Gladwell's books are interesting in themselves but also help me understand current events and some news stories or historical events that I didn't really delve into or care about. This particular book looked into the Jerry Sandusky (and Larry Nassar) child molestation cases, Bernie Madoff, and even episodes of Friends. It delves into human beings' interactions with strangers, and takes a fascinating look into the psychology of lying as well as trusting strangers and why people get deceived so easily by strangers like Madoff (hint: it has to do with our default settings of trusting others implicitly and thinking that we can judge people based on their facial expressions like we're conditioned to when watching Friends). The psychology using real-life examples is so well articulated that it kept me turning the pages faster than any mystery novel or sports autobiography (some of my favorite genres) ever could.

My first exposure to psychology was in high school, when I was trying desperately to get into the best college I could and take as many AP classes as possible, so I took AP Psychology in senior year hearing it was a relatively easy class, only to surprisingly actually like the class. Psychology was about human stories, about how one thinks and feels and interacts with others, and I liked all the theories and experiments in how practical they could be: someone does this to someone else, they react this way. It was a cross between science and social skills, and I being the nerdy kid at school but with aspirations of becoming popular and being friends with people, loved the class as a way to understand how most people think.

In college at University of Illinois, there were these experiments I signed up for to get extra credit or some very low monetary value......but I thought they were fun and was willing to be a test subject (after reading about the Stanley Milgram experiment of test subjects inflicting pain on others by supposedly sending electric shock waves, what could go wrong?) and signed up for various studies around campus. (Secretly it was kind of like signing up for blood donations, I went to a different place each time and was an excuse to go into buildings I'd never been in and have a new experience). I specifically remember in one experiment, I was asked to join a group of other test subjects in a room to discuss how to solve some problems around campus, like a student wanted to quit smoking, or a student wanted to avoid getting the freshman fifteen but didn't know how, and the 3 other students in my group and I were supposed to debate. The discussion was fine and we actually came up with some ideas, but at some point I did notice that one or more of the other test subjects seemed to dismiss my ideas the 2nd time around, or reject my idea just because it was my idea. I didn't think about it at the time, but now that I've read "Talking to Strangers" I suspect that one or more of the other participants were planted as part of the experiment to see how I would react to being shot down. As Gladwell notes, this often happens in psychology experiments where the objective of the study is not what is stated, but actually testing something else that isn't revealed until later, or never at all. Now I'm really curious about those experiments I participated in but also psychology in general.

Lying, according to Gladwell, is all about the psychology of the person being lied to, and their willingness to believe someone UNTIL there's a lot of factors that lead to a conclusion of this person's lying and going over the threshold of doubt. We want to believe other people, life is easier when things turn out to be true. But everybody lies at some point. And it's actually hard to tell lies, even for veteran police officers or counterintelligence officers trained to do this stuff. If someone's really good at lying, they can get away with it and prepare an answer for everything. On the flip side, for me at least lying is kind of hard. I'm always worried about if the interrogator will ask more questions, I feel like I will make a mistake........and honestly, it's hard to remember and keep track of all one's lies. It is really just easier to tell the truth.....if the truth isn't that bad. Anyway, if one wants to learn more about actual cases of lying, read the book, and the one piece of actionable advice I got from it was.......society should as a whole believe things to be true as a default, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to verify if something isn't a lie, and don't be fooled by a stranger who doesn't seem to be lying.........you can't really tell.


By the way, if you really want to see if someone's lying, you can tell a lot about someone by where they are and tracking their location. The FindFriends app on your smartphone lets you do that, and that certainly cuts down on a large portion of lying, which is lying about where you are or what you are doing at the moment. Since MJ is almost always at home nowadays recovering from injury, I don't get any information about her whereabouts and what she is doing, but she gains all the information about me like where exactly in the world I am as well as if I'm "on the move. 'It's a tracking device that I can turn off if I turn off my phone, but that would raise even more suspicion. You really need to trust someone to share your location with them on FindFriends, and I wonder what would happen if that got into the wrong hands, and even what Apple is doing with knowing my location at all times........kind of scary. No lying to the machine I guess about where you are, it knows EVERYTHING.

Timing (时机, 타이밍, タイミング)

It's a unique word, "timing," an -ing word in English that's not a verb derived from time but not exactly meaning time, more about opportunity and chances. Or it can be about a musical piece and being on the beat (not rushing or dragging- I was never very good at it in the orchestra as I would often get too excited or get lazy and not keep the beat). Timing is such an important concept that the Asian languages also have the term, so if you just say "timing" in Korean and Japanese they're sure to know what you mean and the nuance of it. Most philosophers, economists, stock traders, etc., all agree: Timing is everything. 

Timing matters in almost every facet of how we live: just the mere fact I am alive today writing this on an online blog is a matter of timing: no chance I would have this opportunity if I was even born 30 years before. Had I been born in any other time of human civilization my life would be completely different, I might have suffered from so many uncured diseases by now, and who knows how many years mankind has left in the future. Being born in 1987 and living the life I do now might be the best, fortuitous timing I could have asked for. 

But timing can be controlled: you just have to know when the opportunity is the best. You can choose to travel on a trip on Monday morning when all business travelers are traveling from their real homes to their work homes, or you can choose to go against the grain a bit and travel on Tuesday, where Tuesday and Wednesday on normal weeks are the slowest travel days and you can get the best deal. It's kind of an amazing magic trick that the world can turn something into gold at one time (maybe a packed Olympic stadium for the Rio Olympics) where you can't even buy your way in for thousands of dollars, but fast forward one month and it's an empty shell of itself where no one wants to even go. 

Timing is everything in investments: the time value of money. Owning Amazon stock at $3 in 1997 is quite different than owning Amazon stock at $2000 in 2008, or even in the short term, owning ROKU stock at $26 11 months ago versus $150 around this time. (That's a 6x, sextupling of the stock if you're keeping track at home). 

Recently I was having a discussion with my co-workers about what's really important in achieving success, and most agreed it was knowledge. Reading about business trends, knowing the market, knowing what customers want, knowing what the next big thing is going to be. True, for sure, but I would counter knowledge with timing.......being at the right place at the right time to use that knowledge, to be able to act when you are ready......that's something that's priceless.......but often you can't just obtain like knowledge. Timing is a mix of luck, external factors, but also a little of your own doing.....If you can put oneself in position and be ready when the moment is right, timing can work in your favor to lead to success. 

Timing also works with romance and finding the love of your life: finding each other when both people were looking for someone to fall in love with, who were emotionally ready, who needed one another. That can be a beautiful thing, timing, when two people at the right time in their lives (both single, both within proximate location of one another) whereas in other situations they might not find each other attractive or not even notice one another or be seeing other people. The right timing can overcome everything else and catapult the connection into epic heights. That's really how MJ and I found each other: The universe aligned at the right time and placed us into the right place at the right time for both of us, where our paths wouldn't have even crossed. Or we met each other 5 years earlier, when I was certainly not emotionally ready and MJ might not have been attracted to me, or I was still in law school, or this and that. All I know is that at the particular time of when we met, the timing was right and we were able to love each other. 

Fantasize on and Happy Veteran's Day and Chinese Single's Day! (It's weird timing that these 2 special days are forever intertwined with each other now, as both are on 11/11). Always be stuck with each other on the same day.......because you know, timing. 

Stormy Stock Market of Emotions

It's amazing how much practical knowledge can be gained over 2 years: I feel like that looking back at where I was 2 years ago, I knew nothing about relationships and the stock market, and now I feel like I can write a little playbook about each of them with tips and tendencies about each. It takes a lot of self-reflection and assessing who I am as a person, how I react to certain things, tendencies I do, and what works and doesn't work.

I've found that one of the many weaknesses I have (in addition to loud voice, heavy steps, not properly washing things the right way, etc.) is that I tend to let emotions control my actions, not in a very obvious way where I'm screaming and yelling (although, that does happen in extreme cases, I admit) but it definitely shapes my mood and how I act and affect others. When the stock market tumbles, I feel lost, confused, betrayed, disappointed, disheartened, not to mention less wealthy, so many negative emotions all bundled into one that it makes me lose faith in myself and press the sell button, when really that's the time to fight my emotions and buy low, where a much more reasoned and practical approach is to realize that it's still the same company that I bought the stock at at a higher level, and I'm actually getting a price now so I should be buying into this lowered price. But all my scrambled emotions gets me riled up and makes me miss this very important point.

MJ, my wife, is a lot like the stock market! She has her ups and downs, she has very high days, and also very low days when she dips, but over time the stock market has always been going up, just like our mutual love has always been going up steadily. Not in a straight line; we have many fights that often feel like taking one step forward but 2 steps back, but somewhere along the way we manage to build up some love equity and get dividends of nice moments with each other along the way (She's a dividend AND growth stock!) But the one thing I have to remember is that when MJ gets really down and depressed and complains to me about things (often things involving ME) I can't get wrapped up in my emotion of getting upset......I have to act like the stock market's having a down day or week and actually buy low by comforting her, make her feel loved because that's the time when she needs to feel loved the most, and the returns can be so much higher of getting her back to her normal lovely self or maybe even pushing past those previous highs. I usually am too bitter and self-absorbed about my own happiness being disturbed in that moment by MJ's complaining that I also start getting cranky and edge on towards a fight, in essence selling low (which can actually start a panic in socks too which push stocks lower) and causing both of us to get more upset. Many times I've tried to tell a joke or something to change the mood, but it sometimes backfires; I think the important thing is to make MJ feel loved during her times of weakness and not contribute to that bad feeling, not pour more fuel onto the fire.

Does it work the other way, when we're at the highest in our relationship, sell high? Not really......we just let it run and enjoy the ride as long as we can! The only thing maybe is to create some guidelines for how to avoid future large dips in the future by talking out how to deal with those situations when we're both happy, but that doesn't really prevent the dips; they will come and we need to be ready, both in the stock market and in a relationship.

Indonesian (印度尼西亚, インドネシア, 인도네시아)

This may be a surprising observation, but the No. 1 easiest language for native English speakers to learn as a second language may not be Spanish, or French (normally considered similar to English due to their romance language roots), but many consider that distinction to go to Indonesian, a language with the exact same alphabet and a much more simplified grammatical structure. The one thing that has always been a roadblock for learning language for me and I'm sure others, is the conjugation of verbs.... so many different tenses, so many different ways to express a similar meaning: future, present, present participle, present progressive, etc., etc., it can make one's head numb learning all the rules, especially when you realize native speakers don't even need to figure it all out, it's intuitive. Chinese doesn't have so many tenses as just putting extra words around verbs to indicate their tense, and Indonesian follows a similar principle: just keep the verb as it is, and add dressing around it to indicate which tense it is. I think all languages should do that instead of the Japanese-Korean-Spanish-French way. Anyway, Indonesian is pretty cool, and it uses the word "guru" for teacher, which makes a lot of sense and which I appreciate as the namesake for this blog.

I don't have any particular interest in Indonesia and didn't know much about it before I started delving into the language a little bit, I knew its capital was Jakarta and that its language is actually spoken by quite a few people (it's like the 5th most used language in the world), and I vaguely heard about a dictator named Suharto that ruled the nation with an iron fist. I actually had to look up where Indonesia was on a map. I feel like a pretty ignorant American. I can count all the non-American countries I've ever been to on 2 hands, which is not a lot considering I was born in a different country. I've been pretty isolated I guess, and didn't do any study abroad programs in college, and haven't been to 2 prominent continents that many do go to: South America and Africa. It's been pretty educational and engaging to learn about other cultures while learning their language: If I get anything out of all of the language learning I've been doing in the last several years, at least I have that broadening of horizons to fall back on.

As the old Chinese proverb goes, A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and the journey of learning a thousand (more like tens of thousands of words) of a language begins with a single word. I remember first picking up a Japanese dictionary or looking at a page of all Korean Hangul and just being completely overwhelmed, but it really is laying brick by brick, like a wall (unfortunately for President Trump, his wall apparently is not made out of brick and can be drilled through easily).

Similarly, a blog of a thousand posts begins with a single word! This blog's 1000th entry is coming up! (Blog anniversary!) But more importantly, I inspired my wife MJ to start a blog as well! Maybe that's the magic of writing, it's contagious! It's a stress relief, a recording of feelings, and an exercise in grammar all in one! I can look at a picture of past events and it can say a thousand words, but I don't necessarily remember exactly how I felt during the day without a blog. I hope MJ gets as much value out of her own blog as I do this one.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Horoscopes (星占い, 별자리, 星座运势)

As a new month arrives and there's only 2 months left in 2019 (The Year of the Pig! Great fortunes in Chinese culture!), I'm reminded of how many people still rely on horoscopes, palm reading, fortune-telling, or other mystical, scientifically-unproven techniques for predicting one's future. I get the allure of it, that somehow which month you where born in has something to do with how you should approach your love life or confess to your secret crush, or whether a line on your hand means you will be lucky in business and finances, when the idea of months and years was an artificial construct created by humans anyway. I personally think each year should be more than 365 days as the summers seem to drag on longer and longer into August and September (it's FINALLY getting cold here on the East Coast). I just watched an episode of Shinya Shokudo (or Midnight Diner), a Japanese TV show, where a guy who writes horoscopes under a fictitious name uses his horoscope writing to manipulate a girl he likes. It's amazing that in 2019 there are still people gullible enough to believe in such things, or they just want to believe in something. Then again, I'm writing in this blog shortly after reading a fortune cookie line that said, "There are 4 fundamental necessities in writing: Simplicity, brevity, creativity, and humanity." Which caused me to write. And darn if I don't open a fortune cookie sometimes hoping beyond to hope to read "new riches are coming your way" or "a new business opportunity is just on the horizon" or something generic like that.

I don't like to admit having problems, which is a big cause of fights between my mom and my wife MJ because neither of THEM like to admit their faults neither, causing friction and drama, but I will admit to a problem I've noticed recently: I fall asleep too easily even when I don't want to. When I was younger I would feel sleepy and start to have my eyes close but would always be able to fight the Sandman and somehow stay awake through a boring class, a boring movie, but I guess as an adult my body has changed, and sometimes at work I do fall asleep just for a quick minute or two. I know because I wake up and time has elapsed. I feel a whole lot better after that brief minute or two and it actually helps my productivity later in the day as I don't feel that sleepy anymore like my brain just "restarted," but for that minute or two I'm actually asleep, which is very bad if a coworker, or worse, my boss were to walk in. I call it Yan Disease (as my dad and sister both suffer from varying levels of needing to sleep right away, so it might be in the genes). On the flip side, because I fall asleep so easily, I can get on a plane right away or any other moving vehicle and like succumbing to the waves of the ocean, I will drift off.

Yan Disease, though, is particularly dangerous when I'm the one driving that moving vehicle, and it's soon after I just had a meal, or I'm particularly tired from not getting great sleep on previous nights. Especially on a long road trip, Yan Disease has made it difficult for me to drive on the highway because there's a lack of moves I have to make: my body doesn't think it needs to think and can just draft along like an airplane at the same unchanging speed. Which makes me think I probably avoided a risky proposition by not driving my car all the way from LA to the East Coast this summer. Luckily, there are medically proven cures to Yan Disease with limited side effects: it's this wonderful thing called coffee. Use in moderation because I don't have much of a tolerance to anything like coffee or alcohol, so it can keep me up all night if I use too much of it.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

The Joys of Traveling Light

Sitting in the Queen City of Charlotte, North Carolina, I’m reminded of my personal philosophy on traveling: Traveling light, eating light (don’t eat at the airport). My best experiences when traveling when I just have my laptop with me, nothing else (luckily, I have 2 homes with 2 sets of cloth between my own place with MJ and my parents’ place). I often wince watching people with their carry-on bag and a second “personal item” trying to cram in through the center aisle of the airplane and then trying to defy the laws of physics by cramming them all into the holders. There’s a 100%, without fail, announcement of every single flight I get on where the airline representative asks people to volunteer to check their bag……there’s just literally not enough space on flights. Walking through the airport is also so much more liberating with just a laptop bag: you don’t have to roll a bag and carry the other, don’t have to figure out where to put your luggage when using the restroom, don’ have to take up extra space in the waiting area taking up seats.

Speaking of Halloween, I’m considering dressing up as the scariest things I can think of this year: TSA Agents. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with TSA agents and it’s never like a friendly relationship with them, most times I just try to keep my head down, do as they say and get through as quickly as possible without altercation, but this year has seen a particularly tumultuous relationship between Robert and TSA Agents of America. Just this morning I had gotten through the long line to get to the ticket check (apparently the busiest times at airports are around 4:30AM-5:30AM Monday mornings, while the rest of the world sleeps travelers have to get started early, I guess), I had safely put my hands up and swiped through, and the only thing keeping me from daylight was getting my bags…. And then like a slow motion horror movie (emphasis on slow), a friendly neighborhood TSA agent stopped for a “random check” of my bag despite me having the same contents every single time I fly through, twice a week, through airports. When I mentioned I had to get to my flight which closed its doors in 5 minutes, there was no apology, no sympathy shown, just a curt, “Don’t give me that, it’s not our fault you were late.” Thanks, TSA, for your concern. The position strikes me as one that appeals to the same demographic as police officers: those who seek to be in a position of authority for even just a brief moment (this is where the backstory of the villain and how they turned into a villain would like start, much like “Breaking Bad” or “Joker.”) and they struggled with authority issues when younger. No accountability, no need to go through any customer service training, no competition to worry about customers going through a different transit authority, they’re just there to be a check between you and bad guys getting on the flight (but, in many more cases, a check between you and getting through security quickly and easily). I’ve often gotten scolded, reprimanded, badgered, ordered, rebuked, and other choice verbs by a security officer who seems befuddled as to why people aren’t already doing what he/she is instructing, even though different airports have different policies as to shoes off/ belts off, etc. It’s gotten to the point where I get tense just going approaching an airport knowing I need to be greeted by a TSA officer, like going to the dentist or going into my boss’s office knowing they have some criticism or harsh order to give me. Why do I subject myself to living through this horror movie over and again? This Halloween, hats off to the very villainous and very scary TSA agents of America.

Handicap Accessible (ハンディキャップアクセシブル, 残障可用)

side effects of MJ's scooter injury and subsequent broken leg: I've had to do a lot more chores around the house that MJ usually did before (so I gained appreciation for her usual diligence but also gained a little annoyance over her OCD meticulousness- she's the first person I've met who picks up every single hair that drops onto the floor from my body- if only we could sell each hair for money- we'd get rich from picking them all up!) I've gained much more appreciation for handicap accessible public facilities and places that allow for handicap spaces.

Normally when I scour a parking lot for parking spots, I get a little agitated when I can't find a spot right away and then I see the open handicapped spot in a cushy location that's open but I can't use and think, "man I wish I could use that." Other thoughts that popped into my mind include "do they really need that many handicap spots?" and "maybe I should get handicapped to use that spot." All invalid thoughts......there are actually quite a few people who need it, and what you don't want is to have a dearth of spots for those who really need to get out near the door. It's an ordeal to get MJ out of the car into a wheelchair or onto crutches every time we go somewhere, and then back into the car, much more of a hassle than just someone walking out of a car. And MJ's just temporarily disabled and can use the rest of her body, I can imagine how much more difficult it is for people with less physical ability than her. Nowadays, even with the "handicap" parking pass displayed on the back of our rear view mirror, allowing us access to any parking space, I still feel a little guilty about using it sometimes, especially if MJ is not in the car.......are there people who need it more than us? Am I taking up a spot that could have went to another person with a disability? But glad that they are there.

Many museums and shopping facilities have wheelchairs to borrow! MJ and I "went out on the town" yesterday after she lived like a vampire/ hermit of not stepping outside of the home for many weeks, and we were pleasantly surprised at art museums that allowed patrons to borrow a wheelchair to wheel them around the facility, as well as Costco and Trader Joe's! Anything to get customers to buy things more easily I guess. The shopping malls have a go-cart like device where the shopper sits in a shopping cart and can drive themselves throughout the store, a little dangerous for cramped spaces like Trader Joe's but convenient for MJ to pick and grab as she's sitting .I think she thoroughly enjoyed that more than just regular shopping.

Having never got injured in my life (again, thankful for my circle of protection) I didn't put any thought into reasonable accommodations that stores and other places put for setting up ramps, elevators, etc. for allowing freedom of access for people with disabilities. There's apparently an evaluation of these places by people with disabilities as how "accessible" a place is, like if my apartment doesn't have elevators, it's not "easily accessible." It's like a Yelp review for facilities to treat people with disabilities, each place gets a grade of how "accessible" it is, and many people with disabilities will use this information to decide whether they go somewhere or not. I'm glad I got the experience to see the world from their perspective, and MJ apparently did so too........She got to appreciate art while sitting in a wheelchair being pushed around to different exhibits in an art museum, so she saw works of art at a different eye level than she would normally: It's amazing what can happen when you view a work of art, an idea, a person, or anything in a new light!

Scooter Infestation (스쿠터) (摩托车)

In the city of Los Angeles, there are a lot of hazards: too much traffic, the occasional earthquake, overeager officers policing the crosswalks for unsuspecting pedestrians who get stuck with a ticket for not knowing the jaywalking rules, dog poop on the sidewalks, and up until now, the biggest annoyance was the presence of homeless people in the alleys and just off the sidewalk, often getting in the way of ordinary citizens trying to get to work. There'd be plenty of times I had to step over a homeless guy lying on top of a heating vent because it got a little too chilly in the winter.

Now, though, a new menace has threatened Los Angeles and many cities throughout America: the presence of scooters. I don't say this just because MJ got into a scooter accident and now we both have a vendetta against scooters, although that certainly doesn't help its cause. It's the fact that when stationary, these steel beasts are just sitting in the sidewalk, taking up space and getting in people's way, and there's usually a bunch of them together, crowding the much-needed space like a conglomeration of Asian tourists except these beasts don't move away after a while; they stay permanently until someone rents them. And when they are on the move, these scooters are driven recklessly by drivers either in the bike lane, where actual bikers are trying to maneuver, or for more ignorant scooter drivers, on the sidewalk, where they are forbidden to be ridden.

During law school, our first semester legal writing class had everyone write a brief about a hypothetical fact pattern, and ours happened to be about an attractive nuisance case about a kid who got hurt biking on top of a sand dune. I didn't know anything about attractive nuisances before law school, but the hypothetical taught me about what constitutes an attractive nuisance, mainly that it makes a landowner liable if the injury is caused by an object on the land that is likely to attract children. The scooter is like an attractive nuisance for adults.......it's just sitting there tempting adults to get on it and go somewhere quicker.........not mentioning that it's very dangerous, it can cause more accidents, it doesn't tell you to wear a helmet.......pretty unsafe and pretty nuisance-like, if you ask me. I propose that the city of LA and other cities (I've seen people riding scooters in NYC, too, which is much more dangerous especially on the sidewalk with a much heavier density of pedestrians) reject the new business they get from allowing scooters on their streets and relegate them to the suburbs or safer areas. 

Today after talking to a co-worker I also made the revelation why I struggled to get better at playing the violin: I didn't like playing music by myself. It's a social activity: playing music with friends and creating music together is much more fun than trying to creak out something on my violin in my own room or basement, or on the piano. I was much more willing to sit through 2 hours of orchestra and band practice because we actually played the music together and I could have a sense of belonging, not just forcing myself to go through the motions of getting through an hour of violin practice at home. It just didn't agree me, and I finally made that realization half a lifetime later as my co-worker who plays drums described how every week he looks forward to meeting with his band. Of course he does! I would too if it was with my friends and we were doing fun things together! Like playing dodgeball, I don't really even like dodgeball that much throwing a ball against a wall by myself, but in a room full of sweaty bodies who are doing the same thing, I love it. - Note to remember for if and when we have kids.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Health Insurance (건강 보험, 健康保险)

Here I am, on a Saturday night in October, the epitome of entertainment and relaxing time in America, every able-bodied person is out and about doing something they love and making the most of their lives; just here in Durham, NC there were group outings in downtown and Halloween parties for Duke undergrad students; I saw one guy on the street walking around in a pretzel costume. Concerts are going on back in LA, it's a big college football day, the Yankees and Astros are playing Game 6 of the ALCS, and here I am writing about health insurance in my own home because I'm worried about renewing my health insurance now: my old Kaiser Permanente plan is increasing its rates by $90 a month ($90 whole dollars! That's like 7 Netflix subscriptions!) from $267 to $350.


And shame on me for not knowing this, but apparently health insurance doesn't cover you out of state, the only thing it does cover is emergency costs when being out of state. So as a frequent traveler to other states for work, it's recommended that I get "supplemental" health insurance or catastrophe insurance, whatever that means. A nd Kaiser, which is big in California, does not have locations in North Carolina or New York, two of the states I frequently find myself in. So I guess I'll be changing my health insurance next year.

Makes me wonder: what's better protection, the circle of protection I've been blessed with since birth that magically protects me against most illnesses and all injuries, or this flimsy health insurance I pay upwards of $3,000 per year for?

And $3,000 is just for me, it's not even mentioning MJ, who recently had to use her health insurance after suffering her injury.......luckily for us, we recently switched to her college insurance, which is much more comprehensive and covers more things than our old health insurance (the college took one look at our old health insurance and spat it out like an used car auto dealer rejecting a lemon). And even then we're still getting hospital bills for surgery, hospital stay, rehab, etc.........much less and definitely not catastrophic costs that we may have incurred had we had old flimsy insurance, but still costs.

Apparently, though, I'm not even paying that much for health insurance......the average individual healthcare costs $400+! This average is probably skewed by older people and non-healthy people, but still, $400! I'm already wincing and biting my nails (not a good practice, by the way, if you want to stay out of the hospital) over the move from the $200 region to the $300, but $400+ per month, do they at least throw in like a subscription to the Wall St. Journal or Amazon Prime membership or something? It is one of the main reasons I don't scoff at the idea when MJ proposes (as she often does) for us to move to Korea or some other country when we get older. Who knows what healthcare will be like in 30 years when we retire (if we can retire), especially with Trump taking years and plenty of political capital trying to repeal Obamacare, which itself took so much political capital and years to shove through the legislative branch. The congresspeople themselves don't have much personal incentive to pass healthcare legislation when they can choose a gold-level Obamacare policy and receive federal subsidies that cover 72 percent of the cost of the premiums; so they don't pay nothing but they definitely get good coverage for low cost. Meanwhile, here I am at the lowest tier bronze begging for scraps but paying for other people's gold plans. Congresspeople would probably work more efficiently if their healthcare premiums were making them drown as they do to many average Americans......$400 per month is like a huge percentage of one's net income.......(figuring maybe $4000 per month or $5000 month for the average America worker's salary?) it's like a 10% tax added to what's already being taxed. 

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have single payer health care reform plans, a noble cause, but a seeming pipe dream if it's going to cost "an eye-popping amount" in taxes ($34 trillion apparently) that would probably be more dead on arrival than an impeachment vote to convict President Trump in the Senate. After finally getting MJ back from the hospital and being able to reflect on her experience (as well as just now receiving some of the bills), it's just crazy how much healthcare costs are, how doctors and hospitals and insurance companies can get away with charging exorbitant rates. Two big no-nos in life apparently: Don't get involved in a lawsuit and don't get sick/injured. It will cost you. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan