Patience is a Virtue (忍耐は美徳, 耐心是一种美德, 인내심은 미덕이다)

Patience is a Virtue-
We're taught this at a young age, but more and more patience seems to be an overlooked quality, or maybe even outdated quality. Nowadays with smartphones carrying the internet with us, there's really no need to wait anymore. If I'm stuck on the elevator, I'll just look at my phone. If I'm waiting for my friend, I'll look at my phone. If I'm sitting on the toilet with nothing to do, I'll just look at my phone. The whole idea of patience kind of goes out the window; it's not a question of how much time I have to wait, just how many YouTube videos I can look at in that span, or news articles, or Facebook feeds.
Looking at it economically, we're not getting rewarded for patience anymore. There's no incentives for patience. Amazon specifically started a 1-day shipping program into which it invested a lot of cash (and throttled the growth of its share price in the last year, to my chagrin) just to placate the "Right now!" needs of consumers. If we wait to develop an idea, someone else might have come up with it already- like Uber, I'd hate to be the guy who thought of carsharing services but got beat to the market by Uber.


Personally, I think it's a shame, because I grew up a pretty impatient person, but because I was impatient and often punished for that, I saw the values of being impatient. Being patient to move a chess piece after I had thought it all the way through, for example, or waiting to buy a stock not at the all-time high but waiting a bit until it pulls back a little, or staying with learning Chinese even though I didn't see any value in it, until it actually pays off in the end. People of my generation, me included, are too focused on the instant gratification and not the long-term investment of things, which is why millennials don't buy houses (well, also they can't afford them) or have extra savings, or invest in the stock market. Higher education is doing well, but that's more of the perception of college as a necessity (and parents paying for it) as well as college being pretty fun, but I wonder if education eventually will be bypassed due to impatience.


And finally I wonder sadly if Kobe had been more patient, would he have passed away so tragically? It's unfair to ask what ifs after the fact, and the full investigation of the helicopter crash will take months, but the whole idea of a helicopter is to get somewhere faster without hassle, but along with that expedited trip there's added risk, especially on a cloudy day in Los Angeles where the lack of visibility caused the LAPD to suspend its helicopter routes. So one wonders if someone made the decision to go with the helicopter anyway. I've done it many times, knowing something is probably riskier given the conditions but doing it anyway, like crossing a double yellow line on a road if I'm running late. And there's inherent risks in driving too, even if Kobe had decided not take a helicopter and just taken a limo or something. Sometimes our fates are just out of our hands, unfortunately.




脚踏实地
There was another idiom I was going to write about, loosely translated to "feet touching solid ground," or work hard on the fundamentals and make steady progress. Very underestimated in today's society of instant stardom and taking shortcuts to get to where you need to be. One Youtube video or Instagram post can make you famous overnight, so why struggle for months and years to achieve success? But like Warren Buffet with stock returns (invest in stocks, don't just trade them!) Kobe worked on his craft day after day, year after year, going into the gym every summer even after the season was over to work on new parts of the game. "First in the gym, last one to leave"- wasn't a phrase that Kobe invented, but he's the one I most associate with. You have to have a lot of patience for that hard work and practice to pay off, and Kobe did it enough to become one of the all time greats.

I'm a big "steadily making progress" stocks too, and truly appreciate the long-term solid fundamental companies whose charts just look like a solid line going straight up, not much parabolic activity going up nor a sharp downturn that could cause a lot of stress. HD (Home Depot) and MCD (McDonald's) come to mind as just great all-American companies that I own with a dividend. Don't really get bothered by business cycles ("cyclicality"). That's kind of the human being I want to be too......slow, steady progress.


Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Unexpected Death (予期せぬ死, 예기치 않은 죽음, 意外死亡)

The English language has an unfortunate term reserved for breaking ties and resolving athletic competitions called "sudden death," usually meaning that the next point or the next event in a game will decide the outcome of the game, thus one team will experience "sudden death" or at least "sudden loss" and the game will be immediately over. The term really should be changed to "sudden loss" or "sudden victory" or "immediate decision" or something catchy like "the Bobby rule," anything but what it's called now. 

The reason being that it becomes intertwined or confused with something like Kobe Bryant's unexpected and sudden death occurs like today, one of the saddest days in sports history I've ever been a part of. Kobe Bryant was a hero of my generation, and I always remember growing up watching him and him being a part of my life all the time, from him debuting in 1996 (I was just 9 years old) and retiring less than 4 years ago! in 2016. My sister was born in 1996, so Kobe's been a part of my life as long as my sister has. It's obviously terrible that people have to die (and it's even sadder that Kobe's 13-year-old daughter also died, as well as 3 others on the helicopter with them) but dying in such a sudden and shocking and unexpected way is really one of the worst one to go. No chance to say goodbye to one's family, no change to brace for it, to achieve some sort of closure, to put all one's affairs in order. It's probably one of the worst parts of death: not knowing (for the most part) when it's going to come. If someone told me when the exact date I was going to die, I wouldn't necessarily be happy with it, I would try to negotiate for a little longer time, but ultimately after a while I'd probably come to terms with it, and even be able to plan for it.......how much money I could spend, how I spend the rest of my time, etc. Kobe and the others on the plane were not able to experience that at all, and he had a lot of good to do for the world. Which is why I don't agree with the term "if it's your time, it's your time." People say that to indicate a lack of control, that one has to accept one's fate, but it kind of diminishes how terrible a sudden and unexpected death is, in my opinion. It really wasn't Kobe's daughter (just 13 years old) time to die, so she really should not have died. I know it's a religious thing to say "God has a plan," not really trying to offend anyone with religious beliefs if I misunderstood that quote, but how can it be a plan to have the people who died so unexpectedly? It seems cruel and unusual to me, so I chalk incidents like this up to some cruel and unfortunate twist of fate. Something went wrong. 

The coronavirus that originated from Wuhan, China is another twist of fate that does damage to our worldview: global epidemics that cause pain and suffering around the world, with 4 cases now in the U.S., and many deaths in China. Humans have so much to worry about already in terms of threats to their safety like car accidents, natural disasters, criminals, depression, suicidal thoughts (themselves), drug addiction, it seems cruel to add another to that list: a virus that isn't as deadly as SARS or Ebola but more contagious and passes easily from one human to another, which is particularly dangerous in a congested country like China with the largest population in the world. Ironically, the virus is reported to have originated from someone in China eating raw bats which carried the disease, which is exactly the premise of the movie "Contagion" about a world-wide epidemic. 

Enough with sudden death! I support sudden life! (have people come back to life- not in a zombie way) in unexpected but completely magical ways! 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Radio Silence- No response (응답 없음, 応答なし, 没有反应)

Lots of things happening in the world to start off 2020: an Iran crisis that already resolved itself after a scary standoff, wildfires ravaging most of Australia, the Houston Astros cheating scandal, a new flu virus throwing the world into a panic, the Corona virus originating from Wuhan, China, is already drawing comparisons to previous deadly strains like SARS and Ebola. TSLA stock is up around 60% JUST THIS YEAR and we're not even 3 weeks into the new year, carried over from year end 2019. The consensus is that this is just a lot of short covering, no fundamental movement, thus the rally is short-lived and it's not wise to buy TSLA at daily all-time highs. But it sure doesn't feel good waking up to TSLA being up double-digit percentages every day feeling the opposite of buyer's remorse (maybe FOMO?- fear of missing out) just like other stocks I hesitated on getting like AAPL, ROKU, BYND (Beyond Meat), and Luckin' Coffee. I considered all of them and don't have a substantial position in any of them. Sigh.
The news is coming in fast and furious, like it's catching up on lost time. For some reason January usually seems to be a pretty news-driven month from my anecdotal memory, whether it be winter storms or new beginnings (presidential inauguration, movie awards season, etc., etc.) This year's been no different.

Trump's senate impeachment hearing kicked off this week and if anything it made me sympathize with some of the senators who were caught playing word puzzles, checking out their Apple Watch, or sleeping. They all had to put their cell phones away in a locker, so they were trapped in the deliberation room for hours and hours (even through dinner break) without internet access, one of the worst things that can happen to someone in today's society. I've worked on jobs where there was no cell phone access or internet access on my work computer, and it actually.........made me concentrate on my job, which the Senators should be doing, but I also can understand falling asleep during a boring meeting.......it happens.

Maybe I sound like a grouchy old man recently, but I have..... surprise! Another gripe, or "Chansori" in Korean, about modern customs. The lack of responses to emails, texts, phone calls, and any other types of messages makes everyone seem a bit callous. Sure, I do it too, like not picking up the phone for spam calls, not responding to emails and promotional offers I have no interest in, but there should be exceptions made for marketing contacts. I'm talking about messages from acquaintances, friends, even immediate family. My sister RARELY answers texts I send her, only when I ask her a direct question will she respond. And when she's on a group chain with my mom and wife MJ, she'll let somebody else respond. But her style seems to be the prevailing trend among most adults: only respond when you feel like it or have something to say. It's the lack of commitment we have in our society today, or better put, the fear of commitment. If we respond back with anything at all, it shows that we are engaged, we're putting ourselves out there, we're enthusiastic about whatever it is that's being discussed, and it's not reflecting the courtesy of just replying something back.

MJ has these issues too at her school, where a classmate sent her a Facebook message that was a kind of urgent message, even though that classmate had MJ's phone number. The prevailing standard seems to be 1.) calling on the phone is almost NEVER acceptable, 2.) texting is OK but feels like you're encroaching a bit and desperate, and 3.) email and/or Facebook message is a little less clingy and appropriate. Luckily, MJ and I call each other and even use Google Facetime to see each other, and she always 100% responds to my texts. But it is pretty frustrating to contact people and have to wait hours, even days, for a response, wondering if they got the text, did I offend them, are they on vacation, etc. I don't think they're doing it intentionally (maybe I'm just someone no one wants to talk to?), it's just the culture nowadays, no strict requirement in courtesy to just give a reply right back.

Weirdly, I blame it on online dating. Dating has all these rules about how long you have to wait to reply to someone without looking too desperate, keeping the responses to a minimum to not give away too much, all these rules that make communicating online really shallow and not a real conversation, and somehow those rules carried over to interaction with EVERYONE. I, for one, pledge to try to be as diligent as possible to give some response as quickly as possible. (but even I sometimes totally forget to respond to something if I read it and think I'll get to it later, then forget about it after doing 18 other random tasks).

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Pretending to Know (아는 척, 假装知道, 知っているふりをする)

Lately I've developed a lot of pet peeves in other human beings: people who ride their skateboard or scooter on the sidewalk, waiters who call me "boss" or "buddy" disrespectfully, co-workers who snitch on each other's bad behaviors to bosses, causing everyone to lose privileges. Most pet peeves are specific to a certain physical location or circle of people, but one pet peeve The one pet peeve I see prevalent in almost every arena is people pretending to know everything about everything and have unyielding opinions about it.

With the advent of the internet and smartphones that have the whole breadth of human knowledge accessible with the touch of a finger, people seem to think they have all the answers. I would much rather


Politicians: they claim to know everything about how the country works and what's wrong with it and how to fix it, but none of them really know how the next 4 years are going to play out; they probably won't even know if it will be driven by foreign policy or domestic policy, who we'd be fighting if war was to break out, what national emergencies like storms or earthquakes or global warming we have to fight. The worst type of egregious behavior by people in power is holding this whole "swearing in" ceremony aired on CNN that lasts the whole day just to get sworn into the trial of President Trump. What are they really doing? Wasting citizens' tax dollars on a sham trial where the outcome is already fixed, and no one from either party will vote outside of their party, so arguments and other discoveries are all for naught, amounting to a whole charade for the public motivated by partisan politics. And the whole thing financed by the American taxpayer while the national debt grows, poverty is at an all-time high and there are thousands of other issues that need to be tackled by the U.S. Senate. Yes, these are the people telling you what's good for the country and why he or she is the one to get it done.

It's not just politicians. Online forums: everybody has an opinion on everything. Scroll down to any YouTube video comment or reddit comment thread and you'll see people yelling at each other with facts and arguments to support their own side, all for the need to be right on a issue. Rarely do you see comments like "that might be right, let me consider that" or "I concede that you have a good point."

If I listened to so-called "experts" on investing no CNBC, I'd have shorted Tesla through its latest awesome price hike higher, been completely out of Chinese stocks, and the stock market would have went down much lower. The truth is, the market does what it wants and a lot of it is not controlled or predicted by people.......we have to adapt according to what the market does, not try to guess every single move it makes and try to be right about it. Sports analysts are some of the worst at analyzing games and saying obvious things to cater to the casual fan........meanwhile, much more analytical computer programs and statistic models and betting markets predict the outcome of games much better than a supposed "expert" can

Do people even listen anymore? Most people seem to already have their mind made up, thinking they know everything about the world.

I tell my sister (recently turned 23) this all the time: It's much more dangerous than not knowing things to THINK you know everything but actually not know everything. Forming erroneous opinions about topics and refusing to listen to other people....a recipe for disaster, that again, most of us learned as children through fairy tales like the Emperor's New Clothes, etc. My sister recently said I was "mansplaining" things to her, using catchy terms that her friends use even though she doesn't fully understand

"Ammosexuals" (named thus because they love their ammo) marched to the Virginia capitol today on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, protesting gun control laws and asserting their 2nd Amendment rights. Strongly opinionated people who believe they are correct and won't accept the other side while brandishing assault rifles outside to get what they want.

伸手不见五指 (Unable to see in the darkness)

Today I did something I don't normally go: leave for work while it's still dark outside. It's not a great feeling walking out into that lonely cold, leaving the comfort of your own home into the world without the sun even being out yet. It was indeed pretty dark still, and Chinese people call this "reach out your hand, and can't see your 5 fingers." It was that dark outside at 5:55AM today, but only in the winters are the night so long: there are times in the summer that it's already light outside. I always feel like the winters are too gloomy and the days are too short, so I'm not motivated. But the summer days are too long and everything feels stagnant; brains slow down and life gets slow. The most productive times are probably spring and autumn: spring feels like the real beginning of the year with everything coming back to life and hope "springs" eternal, whereas autumn feels like the year is ending soon and I better get things done, I slacked off too much in the summer.

Chinese people also lament sometimes that "I haven't seen the sun in a long time!" describing work schedules that are really long causing the worker to get to the office before the sun rises and leave after the sun sets. Really tough times which probably don't fit within the 8-hour standard work schedule in the U.S. and definitely wouldn't be acceptable under California's more stringent and worker-friendly labor laws. I like to think when I'm working long hours that I can be like the hard worker back in the day that lacked the strength of the sun, but I love the light and outdoors too much; even at work I have to walk outside at least once during the work day or my body misses it.



 가려운 곳을 긁어 주다- Korean idiom for "scratching where it itches," or a friend or even closer friend (like a significant other!) does something without having been asked, and it satisfies my needs. MJ is good about this! She cleans when it's too messy, brings me a meal to go when she picks me up from the airport, even packed my lunches when I was going to work. (She also buys things that may or may not satisfies my needs, but at least she's thoughtful about it!) I try to be the same but something always slips my mind, whether it's cleaning up the toilet or sweeping the floor. 


Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Cheating (컨 닝, カンニング, 作弊)

Both the Japanese and Koreans use a word for cheating that derives from the English word "cunning," describing cheating as doing something cunning, like a fox. It's used most appropriately for cheating on a test, by looking up the answers or looking off your seat neighbor's answer sheet. The first time I ever witnessed someone cheat on a test was oddly during Chinese school, where the teacher caught a student in the back of class cheating by going back and seeing that he had an answer sheet hidden somewhere. The Chinese teacher then announced to the class that this particular student had cheated and would be receiving zero points on this particular test. I don't know if it was effective or not, but I certainly didn't want to get caught cheating like that, and the added shame of being outed in front of class was an added deterrent. Contrast that experience to a college class, where the professor told us before administering a test that he was adhering by the "honor system" and he walked out of the room to let the students take the test unsupervised, relying on our sense of honor to complete the test without cheating. I'm not sure it was honor more than just the grade wasn't that important, and no student could trust other students from snitching, but it was an interesting experiment as the motivations behind cheating.

The Houston Astros recently were caught cheating by Major League Baseball for using cameras in center field to catch the catcher's signals (whether the next pitch would be fastball, curveball, etc.) and rely it to the dugout where they would bang on a trash can to inform the batter what the next pitch would be. Blatant cheating, and the MLB suspended their manager and several other team staff members and levied severe fines. However, I'm not sure if the system was correct to punish just the Astros; other teams had tried to use various ways to get the catcher's signals before too, just not using technology like the Astros did, sparking a debate about what really constitutes cheating.  America, and probably the world, seems to have a consensus of "you can cheat, but just don't get caught." You can speed on the highway up to a certain point, but just don't get caught. I work on investigations of companies where there was small bits of noncompliance and suspicious behavior that goes unchecked, then finally there's the one big event that causes a full investigation to occur. Human beings will take more and more liberties until we are punished for it, skirting ever closer to the line of cheating until we are caught. And some may never be caught; there's plenty of cheating on tests, insider trading deals, marital infidelity, fraud of the elderly, tax evasion, and other types of cheating that happen without anyone knowing. It's only the ones that get caught that we know about. The only world I can prove cheating is through dodgeball and video evidence; and that's indeed how the MLB caught the Astros: through indisputable visual evidence. Law firms I work with also try to find the most damaging and blatant document evidence, but it's not always there and the case has to rely on the dreaded circumstantial evidence.

A couple billionaires in the Democratic race for President seem to be doing a form of cheating by buying up votes in various states. Billionaire Tom Steyer is way back in the polls nationally but has been spending (literally) millions of his own money buying up ads in South Carolina and Nevada, as he's spent $15 out of the $18 million dollars total by all the candidates in South Carolina and 2nd in the polls, and 3rd in Nevada. It's staggering what money can do, essentially buying an election. But Michael Bloomberg, the even bigger fish worth $60 billion, might do the even bigger cheating by spending a full billion dollars of his own money to obtain the Democratic nomination. Is that cheating? There's no law against it (the only thing close is campaign finance reform), but do we as a society want presidential elections to be the latest thing to fall victim to the powers of money? We're not deciding based on qualification, likeability, ideas, or promises in office. Just money. Sure seems a lot like cheating to me.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Innocence of a Child (孩子的純真, 아이의 무죄, 子供の無実)

When I was a child, all I ever wanted was to grow up as soon as possible, to make my own decisions, not to have to listen to my parents, start my own life. In contrast, now as an adult I miss the innocent times of being a kid, when there wasn't so much to worry about like making a decent salary, being nice to people, planning out schedules, so much responsibility. And I had always put adults on a pedestal when I was a kid, thinking adults were so cool, they had a mystic air about them like they knew something I didn't, which was mainly why I wanted to become an adult as soon as possible! (Also, I had a lot of things working against me as a kid: acne, wearing glasses, considered a nerd, chubbiness, inability to talk to girls, etc., etc.) But it turns out, the adult world is not all that it's cracked up to be! Adults are actually.....pretty disappointing people. It's like that

For example, the big thing that happened was the Iran conflict with the U.S., where the U.S. ordered a drone missile strike on Iran's top general, Soleimani, killing him, and Iran pledged vengeance. Never mind the killing of a man, there's arguments about him needing to be killed for his ruthlessness, but the 170+ people who died when an Iran missile strike accidentally hit a plane traveling to Ukraine is a real tragedy with lots of innocent victims and no clear culprits; just powerful adults playing chess against each other, their own political power plays, and the side effect is a missile slamming into a plane full of innocent people. It's really just incredible to take a step back and go from kids trying to work out a solution between each other, and then what adults can turn into: deadly games. I guess I was shielded from some of the worst parts living in a nice safe bubble, but the number of cases of fraud, assault, DUI's, kidnappings, and outright murder and violence is just incredible, across all demographics of adults. You know which demographic isn't committing all of those things? Kids: it's like we get born with a clean slate and assume everything is clean but then gradually foul it up with garbage, kind of like how humans have polluted what had been a clean Earth.

I realized from writing this that I sound a lot like Greta Thurnberg, 2019's Time of the Year, for her attack on governments and adults around the world for causing global warming, climate change, and endangering the planet. Whatever happened to all those values we were taught as children through stories and social interactions and media, it's like all those lessons were just put in a file cabinet somewhere when we turned 18 or became adults, not to be seen again. It's probably why Greta has so many followers: unlike corporate executives, presidential candidates, government figures, and almost any other adult making speeches and exerting their sphere of influence, we can be pretty sure Greta doesn't have an ulterior motive other than trying to help the planet: she's still got the best thing about children: innocence. Not encumbered by such things as financial interests, greed, social pressures, etc. etc. She still hasn't been corrupted; I can't really watch or listen to any TV shows or read any newspaper articles anymore and wonder "what's their angle on this, what's their incentive, other than what they're saying?"

It's really a shame, too, that children are influenced by adults and older people: they want to look good, speak like adults, act like adults, be accepted into the adult world. It's really kind of heartbreaking when I talked and worked with kids around age 9 or 10 who still have haven't had the world exposed to them, who are still happy and listen to other people because they still think they the whole world has their best interests in mind for them. It really should be the other way around: adults should learn from kids, try to be more like kids and remind themselves of the simple truths they were taught as kids (treat others the way you want to be treated, don't throw sand in the sandbox, etc.). They can still work today! It's like adults get some alcohol in their system with some bad experiences and years under the belt and suddenly just don't care about any of that stuff anymore! Even like financial spending, it's bizarre to me how children know from a young age how to take care of money to save and not spend more than you have (I distinctly remember counting money in 2nd grade math class and knowing how much to spend) but then going into debt, spending willy-nilly as adults and not caring about consequences. Maybe adults are closer to death than kids are, so they throw in the towel and just give up on this life more easily?

Even just some of the social norms for adults, how did we come up with them? I remember when I was a kid, it was just easier to talk to people, I called my friends when I wanted to play? Now there's so many rules and etiquettes and not wanting to be judged and not appearing too desperate, not wanting to offend anyone, it's rather tiring.

As we enter a new year and decade with adults really stretching the limits of what's acceptable (mass shootings, cyberbullying, reckless spending on timeshares comes to mind), it might be useful to take a step back and when teaching a child about how the world works, maybe learn from the child about how the world works: we might learn something, or at least re-learn it.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Double Happiness (囍)

I have so many guilty pleasures in my life, but one healthy guilty pleasure is to read Young Adult fiction or even Children's fiction, especially Newbury Award-winning books meant for a younger audience. I feel like children's books are a lot simpler to digest and understand the themes of innocence, growth, success, fairness; the stories are very relatable because kids usually have experienced some of the same things, like going to school or being at home with their parents; once we become adults we branch off in thousands of different ways that make it difficult to relate to adult books like "the future of AI," or stock market investing books, or MJ's newest craze, self-help books. Oh and children's books are SO much faster to get through and finish; I often dread starting an adult book for fear it will not be good and I will have wasted my time. I especially like Newbury Award-winning children's books and make an effort to read all of them, including 2016's "The Girl Who Drank the Moon" by Kelly Barnhill. I also think children's books can get to a point quicker and more efficiently, which is the art of writing: requiring less deep dives into character development and long story arcs to get to a point- children's book authors can express their ideas and themes in less words, sometimes even pictures to go along with their chapters.

If there's something I like even more than young adult fiction, it's young adult fiction about Asian Americans, especially Chinese Americans who grew up like me: which is the theme of the book series "Year of the Dog" and "Year of the Rat." We all relate to people who are like us, and the author, Grace Lin, grew up just like me: in a predominantly Caucasian neighborhood with native Chinese speakers for parents and the need to adapt to American society. There's lots of things that other Americans can't really relate to from their childhood, like 1.) going to Chinese school on Saturdays, and it's ALL of Saturday to mostly learn Chinese but also to be in a community of other Chinese Americans and a chance for parents to interact. I just remember I wasn't very athletic in gym class normally but when I went to Chinese school, I was actually relatively tall and played well enough for the coach to call my parents to ask if I was coming to basketball class. I also learned how to play Go during Chinese school, so plenty of good memories. 2.) weird-smelling food: Chinese people refer to themselves as having "soy sauce stomachs" if they eat a lot of Chinese food and have that type of palate. 3.) Reading a lot. I think other cultures emphasize reading at a young age too, especially when I was growing up in the 1990's at the tale end of the pre-Internet generation, but Chinese people seem to have a culture emphasizing reading books, where scholars are said to have read so and so many books to hone their wisdom. I remember being a voracious reader as a kid and my parents having to interrupt my reading for dinner. 4.) We take Chinese New Year (MJ likes for me to call it Lunar New Year since Korea also use the lunar calendar, not just the Chinese) very seriously, preparing for days, maybe even weeks, for the big day and lots of different food and red envelopes. I remember gathering around to make dumplings from scratch by folding the meat-and-chives-based filling into the dumpling skins, a truly family activity. 5.) the awkwardness of not knowing if you're an American, or a Chinese, or somewhere in between, a Chinese American. The author of "Year of the Rat," Grace Lin, actually has an added complexity of being Taiwanese and having to distinguish that with people from mainland China, but for me I felt conflicted what to tell people: I am not American enough for Caucasian people as I have a Chinese face and Chinese customs and Chinese parents, but for Chinese people I grew up in America and didn't understand China, didn't go through the same things Chinese people do. I still experience that now, where native Chinese people I work with often tease me for not knowing certain Chinese words or phrases (I secretly strongly dislike this type of flaunting but don't openly tell off the Chinese person telling me this). It's difficult being in the middle of these 2 cultures, but also I probably don't realize how much of a blessing it is, to understand both cultures and being able to relate to values both cultures embrace, and taking the best parts of each and incorporating it into my own daily life habits, or at least try to.

Finally, the "Year of the Rat" alerted me to the presence of a Chinese character I'd never given much thought to before: the Double Happiness character. 囍 It's not really a word, I've never seen it in a sentence before. It's just the symbol for happiness, placed side by side to each other, often at weddings to symbolize happiness in both bride and groom. An original idea by Chinese scholars to emphasize the pursuit of happiness, I guess, but predictably it's been commercialized and different companies are using it as part of their brand. If only I had both AAPL stock and TSLA stock in the last 3 or 4 months, I would have had double happiness while my portfolio value also doubled.

Speaking of the Year of the Rat, Chinese New Year comes early this year (in January!) and it will be the Year of the Rat and the beginning of a new cycle of the zodiac, as the rat was the first animal to finish the race in zodiac lore. Apparently with the beginning of a new zodiac cycle there should be many new changes.
Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Fighting aggresively both in the light and in the dark (明争案斗)

Over the holiday season I started watching a Chinese TV show that my mom got addicted to called "精英律师," or "Elite Lawyer," but somehow the English translation of the show is "The Best Partner." Huh? It happens both with English shows translated to Chinese and Chinese shows translated to English, where the selected translation is not an exact translation but fits more according to what the show is about, like 权力的游戏 for Game of Thrones, which replaces "Thrones" with "Power." I always thought Game of Thrones was a bit of an awkward title for such an iconic show.

Anyway, the show is about a Chinese lawyer at a top Chinese law firm who "has never lost a case," and there's a lot of politics at his law firm among the partners as well as dealing with pesky clients and various other matters. It somewhat glorifies the legal profession as the cases go really quickly and the lawyer just talks strategy about the cases and meets with clients plus opposing counsel, rarely ever being seen doing any real work, and the cases themselves just fall into place so he just conveniently "wins" them when he finds some sort of quirk in the case or unexpected compromise that can be reached. He also has a rivalry with other partners at his law firm as part of a contentious relationship, where he fights them to their face (confrontations, arguments and debates in the office) as well as behind the scenes (scrambling for position and rank within the firm, etc.) through office politics. That's more of a realistic look at how law firms handle themselves: Not only does a lawyer have to deal with rancorous clients, demanding judges, unpleasant opposing counsel, he or she also has to deal with the internal office politics of who's getting promoted to partner, which partner to work under in order to get fast-tracked to a promotion, which lawyers to take cases away from, etc., etc. The battle for position becomes similar to Game of Thrones, where you have to demonstrate power and strength constantly but also worry about how others will perceive your work and work on teams with other attorneys; friends become enemies and enemies become friends, depending on whether it's advantageous or not. I'm sure other industries have the same sort of competition among colleagues and people in the same field, but attorneys in a law firm have a special brand of high-stakes battle (being promoted to partner at a big law firm can be life changing for some and set one up for life).

International affairs can also be fought both in the light and the dark. Up until a few days ago the U.S. was always negotiating with Iran to discontinue their nuclear weapons program without openly engaging in hostile action, but President Trump's order to kill top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani. Not sure what Iran will do to retaliate, but now it's become very obvious that there is a conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

The U.S. and China are often at odds regarding issues such as human rights, form of government, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and over the last year, the ongoing trade war, and it reminds me of two partners of a law firm struggling to take over the role as managing partner of the law firm known as Earth; U.S. is obviously known as the current leader of the world, but China's vying for that spot and openly (imposing sanctions on U.S. goods, encouraging its citizens not to buy U.S. goods, etc.)  and less obviously (making investments in lesser known areas of the world like Africa) trying to take over that spot. It's something to watch for in the next decade and beyond.

Taking (and Talking) Stock in 2020

I'm a very reflective person, especially dwelling on decisions I've made in the past and trying to justify them, 1.) blaming myself if things didn't go right and 2.) wishing I could go back in time and do over my life. It's funny when I look back at the last 10 years, since everybody did a decade-reflection recently since the calendar flipped to 2020, and the main things I cared about in 2010, like fantasy sports and NFL picks ( I used to have a running segment with a law school classmate Brother Mouzone, whom I don't talk to anymore) are way off in the back burner while tiny, small mentions are now big things like comments on the stock market (I apparently wrote multiple blog entries called "BUY CHIPOTLE STOCK!" which actually would have worked out. For example, on February 11, 2011, I wrote the following paragraph on my blog, which means I genuinely thought it:

"Wanna know what I think about the stock market, after we had a 10-day winning streak (in the green) the past 2 weeks? I think this year's gonna be a good year......there may be a bit of a correction coming after this huge upswing, so wait for the market to go down a couple ticks (possibly Monday-Tuesday of this week), and then go in and buy premium stocks, (AAPL, AMZN, GOOG come to mind) or even just buy the Dow itself. This stock market's in recovery and it's making up for lost time (from Aug. 2008- 2009). The only worry is a bubble, but that's a bit premature: as long as we're still in "recovery" mode it'll gain steadily, and then in 2012 or 2013 we may want to be careful of the next "bubble burst."

(Bangs head against wall multiple times). WHY DID I NOT JUST DO THIS??? I did not have much money back then and actually owed Fannie Mae quite a lot of dough, but still I had an Etrade account already. AAPL was at $50 (now $300!),  Goog eventually would become Alphabet (still with stock symbol GOOG) but was about $200 at the time (now $1,300!) and the worst one, AMZN was a $170 stock in February 2011 (not exactly the $3 it started trading at in 1997, but still) and is now $1850. Oh and the Dow was at about 12000, whereas it's 28000+ now, in probably the best decades ever of the stock market, 10 years running of a strong bull market. And I wasn't invested very heavily in it until the beginning of 2018 (for some reason, I lost interest in this weird fad called MAKING MONEY). Sure there were some losers for the decade like RIMM (I once criticized my parents for buying RIMM, and it indeed went to zero, as did the whole Blackberry product) and PTR, PetroChina, which my parents invested in and has halved its overall value, but the no-brainer stocks of companies you and I and the world has heard of has gone up and gone up substantially, sometimes exponentially, sometimes parabolically in the case of Netflix, which went from like $10 stock to $300+ nowadays.

That's probably the Number 1 thing I learned from my finance classes at the University of Illinois: the time value of money, or "the power of compound interest," as Jim Cramer puts it on his show. Stay invested, and your money will eventually grow. Instead of always trying to find the next get-rich-quick scheme, the stock market is the best get-rich slowly scheme. Sure, I wouldn't have bought Netflix in 2010 because I thought it was just this movie business that sent a movie to you every week that you had to send back to get the new one (my dad used to do this, and boy has that business model changed). But it's not like I didn't know about McDonald's ten years ago ( $60 back then, now $200) or Boeing ($70 back then, now $330), Home Depot, (28 back then, now $220). Hindsight's always 20/20, and past performance does not guarantee future results, but man it would have been nice to get those last 10 years back. Where does the market go from here? Well it seems like the overall market is booming and will ride momentum from the 2019 gains (after we got a pretty big correction at the end of 2018) and with the Federal Reserve as a tailwind and Trump being a stock market president, a trade war with China progressing, it seems like the market is in good shape despite having run a lot recently. Should continue to do pretty well in 2020 until the Presidential election; the minor bumps in the world like U.S.'s air strike against Iran will cause pullbacks but nothing too alarming long-term. Just putting in a marker here so I look like a genius/idiot in 10 years. I always believed experts when they said the next recession is close, but it's hard to time the market, and we've been saying that for a few years now......it might not come for awhile. Back in 2011 I was writing about a 9.5% unemployment rate.........now there's a 4% unemployment rate, and we're almost always at historic lows......meaning Americans will continue to spend money (even if they shouldn't be spending money). Still a lot of money can be made in regular index funds and just buying some household names (stock market's easy, I tell you) like old tech like MSFT, Aapl, etc., but for possibility of huge returns (we're talking NFLX, AMZN, 1000% gains in 10 years) I'd say people have to be more adventurous with next-level things we don't even know about yet, Nividia's AI technology might be it, or a China company (Alibaba's best in breed) or I hate to say it because it's so divisive, but TSLA could be a visionary company leading the way in the new world. But then again, these companies also don't have the safety of reliable earnings like the old tech does and could just go down a lot, so therein lies the rub... and the risk. Gotta risk a lot to make a lot. I've taken my lumps with IPO's......Uber, Lyft, Chinese IPO's Nio, IQ, etc.... I don't touch those things anymore. In fact I don't know why some investors wade into sectors that have proven to be duds......energy, "transports," marijuana, even bitcoin and cryptocurrency.....how bout just going with the leading sector called technology (so much included in there like semiconductors, cloud stocks, streaming services) ...and maybe sprinkle in some financial stocks, consumer staples like TGT, HD, WMT, COST, and just make sure you're always getting the best companies instead of trying to catch a lucky diamond in the rough with a hot IPO or a buyout candidate (if those miss, they miss hard to the downside).  I'm excited for what the next 10 years will bring, but I just can't shake the feeling and regret that I missed one of the best buying opportunities of a lifetime in the big 2010's stretch......I'm just here to get a little action on the tail end before we go into tougher times.


The thing about looking back at 2010 and seeing how differently things have changed, is then you have to thing back 20 years to when Tom Brady and Bill Belichek built their legacy of dominance in the NFL, and it's an amazing feat. They've been around as long as Survivor TV series, throughout my whole growing up process from teen to married man, through the 2 Bush and Obama regimes and deep into Trump's first term, the world has changed so much since 2001 (they were pre-9/11 terror attacks) and I have changed so much, but finally, finally, the Patriots grasp on the NFL as the Evil Empire may have ended tonight when they lost to the Tennessee Titans in the first round of the playoffs. It's probably similar to watching a band break up or a long-time neighbor move away to a different state: I'm not sure what I'll do without the New England Patriots anymore.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Stuffy nose (鼻が詰まる, 鼻塞, 코막힘 코)

Being sick is difficult, especially during the New Year's holiday when everyone is in such a festive mood.......but my whole family got sick at home this week and I breathe the same air they breathe, so I became sick. Getting on top of a rooftop in downtown LA and watching the New Year's fireworks didn't help neither as the wind blew into my face, but it's better than having the flu and/or a cold. I've learned some natural remedies for stuffed noses! Drink lots of hot water from time to time, but also to get some fresh air outside! (if it's sunny and warm like in SoCal, I know not everyone has that luxury) Incredibly, as if my noses had survivor's guilt, sometimes one of my stuffy noses will clear up but the other nose will get stuffy, and they alternate back and forth, and after clearing up will have a hot tingling feeling like I ate something really spicy. It's a frustrating feeling of having something not quite right all the time but being unable to fix it.
A stuffy nose has a similar feeling to witnessing police activity ramp up at the end of the year to catch minor traffic violations as the month of December and the entire year winds down; I have no official confirmation of this but many more patrol cars and police on motorbikes seem to be patrolling highways and city roads during the week leading up to New Year's. They try all sorts of tactics like hiding under bridges, waiting in alleys. I find it to be rather hypocritical that officers commit minor traffic violations themselves to catch those committing minor traffic violations, like crossing double yellow lines, not making a complete stop at a red light before turning right, etc. I understand urgency is needed in certain situations like an ongoing chase or rushing someone to a hospital, but the pre-New Year "catch-up" police activity (police are catching up on their numbers) is mainly just doing "gotcha" police work by finding rule violations that aren't normally enforced but are violations based on the letter of the law. Perhaps I'm still traumatized by a pedestrian walk ticket I got (arbitrarily, in my opinion) but if police look past certain activities most of the time (police drive past without worrying about it or do it themselves), they shouldn't be allowed to enforce it for just a few days of the year to catch people. It's an inconsistent standard and alters the expectations of what's acceptable driving/walking for common citizens just trying to get by (not blatant criminals) and also harbors distrust of police officers in citizens. I'm sure not all police officers engage in the behavior I'm describing, but enough do that makes them all look bad as a class. I saw an officer on a motorbike waiting on a corner the other day waiting to bust someone for a violation, while another officer drove by in the same kind of motorbike for what seemed like the same purpose. Really excellent police work, like shooting fish in a barrel. No wonder cases like the Sandra Bland (read about it in Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers book)

A stuffy nose is similar to the feeling of listening to Ali Wong's comedy. There is no doubt that Ali Wong is a talented comic who made me laugh profusely in her comedy specials and did great work writing for Fresh Off the Boat and starring in "Always Be My Maybe," but her comedy includes jokes that enforce Asian stereotypes, both positive and negative. Racist jokes are not OK, even if the person that's making the joke is of the same ethnicity as the group they're making fun of. I understand being "edgy" is sometimes necessary for a comic and to say provocative things to get the audience's attention, I sometimes exaggerate too when trying to get others to laugh, but Ali Wong uses blatantly demeaning jokes to get laughs and support her living, which I can't agree with. For example, categorizing Filipinos and Vietnamese as "jungle Asians" and Chinese and Japanese as "fancy Asians" is offensive, implying that certain groups are less fancy or of a lower class than other Asians. Jungle itself conjures images of primitive beings and uncivilized people. Even if she's not saying it's true and just using it for comedic material, the audience will have that image implanted in their head next time they speak to any Asian person and wonder if they are "jungle Asian" or "fancy Asian," and that's not helpful in trying to understand someone and who they are.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan