The Richest Man in Babylon

Recently I realized so many of the places I've lived in are depicted in movies and written about in books, and I wonder how much the literature/media I consume influences my choices about where to live, or at least my perceptions and expectations of the places I've chosen to place. I've always had this idea of New York City in my hand, whether it's from the old Spiderman cartoons I watched, to watching the romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally," set in New York (still one of my favorite movies, to Home Alone 2's depiction of Home Alone 2, I've heard so much about New York City through watching TV and reading books without experiencing it for myself. And don't get me started on Los Angeles! Watching the HBO television series "Entourage" right before law school made me want to be Ari Gold the talent agent, and partly drove my decision go to USC.

It's always interesting to experience a place firsthand after seeing it in fiction. Recently my co-worker tipped me off to a book called "Primates of Park Avenue" by Wednesday Martin and it depicts the life of a mother and family living in New York's Upper East Side, a place I frequent often after work and just went today to see the Met. (If the Met qualifies as being there, even though it's really in Central Park). The Upper East Side itself is a pretty nice place and away from some of the "grimier" places of the Five Burroughs that I've visited, and the easy access to Central Park is definitely a perk, as are nice views of Roosevelt Island and Randall Island, 2 gems on my running path. Did I mention that runners in New York City are fast? They run past me, especially in NYC, and

I also saw a movie today called "The Farewell," about a Chinese American 30-year-old whose favorite grandmother is dying of cancer but the family has decided not to tell her about her diagnosis (a difficult premise, certainly, for the patient not to know her own condition, but in China apparently it's common to not let the patient herself know about cancer because it's the awareness of the sickness that kills, not the sickness itself). That cultural clash between Western values and Chinese values is central to the movie, but so is the mindset of the main character, who's the opposite of a "Crazy Rich Asian," she's a "Crazy Broke Asian" who is 30 and unmarried and can't get her career on track, living paycheck to paycheck in New York City, not a place (as understood from Primates of Park Avenue) that you want to be living paycheck to paycheck. It's so refreshing to see basically someone like me represented, and not in the glitzy glamor of lavish weddings and extravagant lifestyles, there's a lot of Asian people who have to grind out a living too, who don't have wealthy parents who made it rich in China or can buy wealthy houses in America at the drop of a hat (I was once asked by a Chinese interviewer for a legal job why my parents weren't helping me buy a house, and I was like, "Is that normal?") And not all Chinese Americans know Chinese fluently, which makes understanding their own culture more difficult and speaking to native Chinese speaker relatives and preserving their Chinese culture more difficult, exactly the reasons why I try to maintain Chinese fluency as well as encourage my sister to keep it up. (Awkwafina's Mandarin Chinese in the movie is..........not great). A very revealing look into Chinese American culture, but not 99% good like Rotten Tomatoes gave it.

Speaking of not being a Crazy Rich Asian, a very useful book to accumulate wealth is called "The Richest Man in Babylon," basically the Bible of Personal Finance descibing what it takes to accumulate wealth, even in writings in ancient Babylon they describe such things as "savings" (MJ says some of the people she has "have no savings," which seems pretty financially irresponsible to me depending on how much they're making). I understand people who can't make much to begin with and therefore have no savings, but a big problem in America IMO is that people don't priortize their spending and don't have any savings, and as Democratic candidate for President Andrew Yang is quick to point out, many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, thus not having enough to pay for any unexpected events that come up. It's a sad state, and The Richest Man in Babylon details steps to keep "one's purse fat" and describes money as the medium of which success is measure and makes possible the enjoyment of the best the earth affords. I would like MJ and I and our family to enjoy the best the Earth provides! Which is why I'm cheap. Forget all those required reading like the Great Gatsby, the Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, those are great books, sure, but The Richest Man in Babylon is critical reading for high school students and adults entering into into society. Must read!