The Ten People You Meet During the Pandemic

 1.) No one. This is the obvious answer as everyone is locked down in their own homes. Normally in a given year, I estimate that I meet at least 20 to 30 new people, if not more. This year, after March, I have met ZERO new people, no new Facebook friends, no new names and phone numbers added to my phone, no new faces to add to my internal facial recognition system. I think I've lost social skills as well: I went to an apartment-sponsored NFL viewing event the last couple weeks (I went primarily for the free pizza and wings) and tried to strike up a conversation: no dice. Even the apartment representative, whose primary job is to make me feel comfortable and continue paying rent to the apartment and renew my lease, gave me one-word answers that did not allow for furthering of the conversation. And it was about football! One of the easiest topics to talk about without politics or awkwardness clouding the discussion. It was either a reflection on him or me. But I actually do miss meeting new people: now I have to count hosts of new podcasts I listen to as "people I met," like Kyle Kulinski who hosts the Secular Talk show, good show for politics. 

2.) Everyone on a Zoom call. Zoom stock recently broke 500! (after being under 100 in February before the pandemic) but there are severe, severe limitations on Zoom. The conversations just seem so artificial, difficult to have an intimate conversation without considering that there are 10, 20, 100 other people on the Zoom call. It's a particularly inefficient way to conduct conversation: the more people join the call, the more inefficient it is for everyone having to listen to one person. It's VERY important in these situations for the leader of the Zoom call (usually the boss or host of the party) to guide the conversation and address specific people to speak and not cut off others, as opposed to sticking to a one-one conversation. 

3.) The standoff- one running path that's only wide enough for 1 person, you are running in one direction when you see another running coming in the opposite direction. Who gives way? Who plods ahead relentlessly? It's a classic game of chicken, who will not give up their right of way and just keep moving. I personally think it's a matter of courtesy to try to cross the street or move off the path far enough to maintain the 6 foot social distancing, but in the worst case scenario, I hold my breath, turn my head the other way, and not breathe at the same time the other person is exhaling. 

4.) The restaurant server who is wearing his or her mask under the nose: get out of the restaurant right away, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Zero tolerance policy for restaurants that do not enforce a strict mask-wearing policy especially when there is food lying around. 

5.) Elevator guy not wearing a mask: when getting in an elevator it's like the scene of a horror movie: first with waiting for the elevator to arrive at my floor wondering if someone will be in it, the gradual sliding open of the doors (to the tune of the Jaws music) to reveal.......no one, most of the time. Phew. But when there is someone, it's a bit of a shock, and I have to assess the situation whether to get in that elevator and put my life on the line or not. Luckily some people make it easy by having a mask on already and looking away, hiding into the corner of the compact elevator. (It's like a scene from the horror movie "Devil" with 5 people in an elevator, one of them is the devil) Once in awhile, though, it's a man who seems to have been sweating, not wearing a mask, and looking at me when the elevator door opens almost welcoming me into a Covid sauna room..... no thanks. I'll take the next one. 

6.) The social activist. Despite being in a pandemic, as the school year has started, I was approached by a student while I was running on campus to answer some questions about "Defund the Police" and "Black Lives Matter." He was wearing a mask and adhering to the 6 feet guidelines, but I was still a little taken aback by his upfront nature during Covid, further reminding me that election years are a crazy time anyway, and some people prioritize winning an election over almost everything, even social distancing. 

7.) Department of Motors Vehicle......here in NC every driver's license office requires an appointment made online....and there are no spots available same day, the appointments have to be set weeks in advance like scheduling a doctor or dentist visit (and almost as painful). Outside the DMV there's a security officer who goes through the initial intake questions of whether I have had a fever or feeling sick....but there's really no follow-up to see if I'm lying, although I guess I was wearing a mask which made it OK. When I finally did get to a DMV representative, she was surprisingly....nice. Very different from every other DMV visit I have ever had, responded to my questions calmly and respectfully, did everything efficiently and even guided me through a rougher than expected road signs test (they just gave me a yellow pentagon sign without any words on it......usually road signs are pretty obvious on their face so that I would know that yellow pentagon means pedestrian crossing or school zone, and I wouldn't have been able to articulate "divided highway" as the name for a sign if I had 5 or 6 guesses. Sounds like a jeopardy term. 

8.) homeless people outside of Chipotle, off the highway, where the rich people are. At least they are wearing masks, I guess. I feel much less guilty about ignoring these folks and passing by as a.) I realize I can pass off as a non-English speaker, and b.) I can just blame the pandemic for being anti-social. Safety first, guys. 

Mildew (곰팡이, カビ, 霉菌)

 Mold. Mildew. Fungus. Decay. Just the sounds of these words seem insidious and bad for one's health. Turns out, they are! I didn't know this, but MJ did: Brittany Murphy, the late actress, tragically died in 2009 partly due to prescription medication, but also due to toxic mold! Just another thing to worry about in 2020 besides racial tensions, coronavirus, election madness, hurricanes, etc., etc. Oh and now cockroaches have invaded our apartment complex! Not our unit specifically, but in the swimming pool area and around the neighborhood. Probably doesn't help that trash and dumpsters get strewn about around the edges of the property. Beat back the cockroaches! Stop their advance immediately and purge their colonies! 

Koreans pride themselves on cleanliness (not just them, btw, so do a lot of countries like Singapore), but they especially watch out for something called "gongpangi" in their homes, a type of mildew that forms in between the walls. It's a sign of something wrong in the home and should be addressed immediately. I now agree. To this point we've lived in only brand new "luxury apartments" for a year or a little more, and then we move, probably before the onset of mold or any other nefarious threats. We just crossed the 13-month mark living in our current apartment, and....voila! We've started noticing more mold and mildew in humid and wet places, especially our shower room, which is constantly wet on the ground and has a lot of corners and edges where mildew and mold sets in. Gives me a creepy feeling even talking about it. I've noticed that there are a LOT of things related to cleanliness that I have neglected and let build for many years at my old apartments, which probably did some undetected damage to my health. I blame it on living with other men who are just as dirty and nonchalant about overall conditions as I was. Sure, once in awhile I would clean the toilet or scrub something or vacuum if one was available, but very seldom would there be a big, knockdown spring cleaning to cover all parts of the house, even ones we didn't think about. A couple roommates did pay cleaners for cleaning services, but that just made me less cognizant of cleaning, and who knows how thorough the cleaners were; especially if they have various other jobs to rush to and only getting paid a flat fee for each home they go to and no incentive to do an extra careful job, I suspect the quality wasn't great. 

Now that I think about it, one of the apartments I lived in during law school was SUPER moldy and mildew-filled, and neither my (guy) roommate nor I cared about it at the time. It was just super dark there, near water sources, cool..... perfect for mold to form, and my acne got pretty bad during the time I lived there too. I sense some correlation or even causation. If we want to talk about "microaggressions" that people perpetuate towards each other nowadays causing angst or dischord, we should definitely look at "microbiological aggressions" that cause us harm little by little, without us even knowing it, and affecting our health and our mood. 

Another thing I'd like to complain about is also food that suffers mold in the refrigerator.....another microaggression that causes stress, usually some not-so-tasty food that is left in the back of the fridge that gets forgotten and then one day you reach back there and it's totally changed color or taken over by mold.....exceptionally shudder-inducing. Happens with a bag of grapes or oranges too.....a sign of bad mold and mildew going on in the home. 

So everyone, if you don't want these things that I'm describing to happen to you, take the Korean approach and watch out for mold and mildew and scrub them out at the source (I was scrubbing my shower room floor today to do exactly that). 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Disappointment ( 失望, 실망, 失望,しつぼう)

 I was disappointed tonight by my fantasy baseball team. I had been waiting all week to get to the weekend to watch the Friday-Saturday-Sunday games as those are typically the most important games during a fantasy baseball matchup, the deciding ones that determine who is eliminated and who advances to the next round, but my team totally blew it today. Mike Clevinger, one of my "stud" pitchers, was scratched an hour before the game due to a minor injury, so I didn't get to see his start (adding to the injury-marred start by 2-time defending NL Cy Young Jacob Degrom earlier this week), and my hitters combined to go like 4-for-35 with no HR's, no RBI's, and 2 runs. Not good at all and not exciting at all, just watching a bunch of swings and misses, pop ups, and walks. It reminds me of how disappointing fantasy baseball inherently is: everyone in our league goes into the season with high hopes, this is the year, I researched so much, I know who all the good players are, etc., etc., but by the end of the season everyone but one team will be disappointed without a championship. That's the nature of sports in general too: don't get your hopes up that your team will win; it's why I am against the whole "choking" label placed on teams/ players that are accused of choking just because they lose: they're only called chokers because people had too high of expectations of them; without the expectations they'd just be another one of the many losers. 

I find in general that it's important not to go into anything with too high of expectations; Disappointment is actually harmful and can bring me down into a bad mood (I already got upset last week at MJ partially due to less than stellar fantasy baseball results). It's the same with any TV show or movie or social gathering or food item: it's better to be pleasantly surprised than to be bitterly disappointed. So many times I've heard a lot of good reviews about a movie and get amped up before watching....only to feel like I wasted 2 hour I'll never get back (these happen especially with Academy-Award winning movies or movies with high Rotten Tomatoes scores, putting a numerical value on the false hope of the movie. In fact, the most memorable things I've done or experienced are the ones where I didn't have much of an expectation going in, that I got so surprisingly good results that I got an adrenaline rush and my brain triggered endorphins that gave me a natural high. Meeting MJ was a very pleasant surprise: I moved into a new apartment not expecting anything, I met my future soulmate! I went into dodgeball as a fun way to relieve stress during law school: turned into a lifelong sport. 

It's kind of like what they say about life; it's what happens when people are waiting for moments to never come, or life is what happens when you're making plans....and once in awhile during that down period that really gives a strong positive feeling. I think to that extent the way we digest news is somewhat set up for disappointment: we're just going about our day like nothing in the world is happening except what's going on in front of us, and then there's this huge news story that breaks on twitter, or someone posts on Facebook, or that one of your friends sends you, and it sends shockwaves: this weekend it was the news of RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg)'s untimely passing on Friday night, sparking the fear that the Republicans will push through a Supreme Court seat through the Senate and get confirmed before the election, or before (the Democrats hope) a new president is elected. Of course this is bad news, but should we be disappointed by it, to the extent of posting "2020 is the worst year ever!" "I'm leaving the country!" and "The world is ending!" I think news is usually going to be bad, otherwise people wouldn't care that much about it and digest it, so we need to set our expectations pretty low to begin with. Not to trivialize Ginsburg's death, it is really a loss for the world as well as a bad time for the world as it is with the pandemic and racial tensions, but people passing away isn't a revolutionary event (unfortunately). 

Speaking of disappointment, I opened a fortune cookie today and found inside.....nothing. No fortune. A fortune cookie without a fortune in it: does this mean I have no future? I hope not; hopefully this is not my last blog post ever. 

Also, so stock market....the last several months caused most new investors' expectations to be raised sky high to the level of "stocks only go up" which is just a huge fallacy. If you can only be happy if the sports team you root for wins or only be happy if the stock market goes up, then disappointment is sure to follow. 

The Asian languages I study are all unified on "disappointment," it's a kanji-based word meaning "loss" and "hope," loss of hope. I guess it's telling that there's no real antonym (word with opposite meaning) for "disappointment" in the English language. "Satisfaction" and "happiness" are the best Oxford dictionary could come up with, and the term I can think of is "pleasant surprise." Maybe that's a reflection on the fact we focus less on pleasant surprises than we dwell on the disappointments? The disappointments definitely stand out a lot and we tend to express them as complaints and feel strongly about them, meanwhile taking the pleasant surprises as naturally expected and a result of our own effort ("I somehow wound up in a high-paying job where I don't have to do that much work, it must have been all a product of my hard work!" whereas it should just be taken more as a pleasant surprise where good luck struck. 

Clinical

 MJ is working on something called "clinical" in her nursing program, and now with the pandemic somewhat progressing, she's going to the hospital again to participate in the program. Each nursing program is a little different in how they handle clinical, or the "hands-on" practical curriculum where they simulate real working conditions. When I snuck into the NYU Nursing School Admitted Students day to tour the school in MJ's place last year when we were deciding on schools (MJ to her credit got into all 3 of the top nursing programs she applied to), I toured their clinical program which was a separate floor they had built in the building for simulating real patients, with mannequins and dolls lying on hospital beds, hooking up heart monitors and other medical devices inside a room, and students during their clinical program would take turns practicing their craft. I'm not sure if they also were allowed to work at the NYU Langone Hospital as well during their time as a nursing student, but that would have been a fun experience. Which makes me wonder, what would a law school clinical program feel like? 

Well, during a pandemic, a clinical program would not have been practical, but in good times it's sort of up to the student himself/ herself to acquire a position to work at a law firm, court clerk's office (judge's office), at the legal department of a company, or pro bono legal aid organization. There's probably other types of real-life work experience that you could get as a law student, but that's where I benefited heavily when I attended USC: living in a large center and going to one of the best law schools in that city, I have to admit that the value of a USC education allowed me to easily get into one of those programs as a law student, and I was able to experience almost everything during the 3 years I was there as a law student (and several years after that as a practicing attorney). And the great thing, some of these positions can be paid: working for a judge, probably not, legal aid pro bono, probably not, but law firm definitely (if you're lucky enough to get into one of the summer associate programs, that's $$$) and even when I worked in a company's general counsel office I was paid. My 2L summer was pretty interesting looking back on it, I made the drive from Culver City to Irvine to work for a sales and marketing company in their in-house department. The drive down the I-405 was brutal to commute every day, but the experience was interesting, I could go to Angels baseball games easily, and I gained on-the-job experience. 

So in summary, law school doesn't have a mandatory or prepackaged clinical program per se (there was the small business legal clinic and the immigration clinic at our school, but it was conducted on campus and didn't offer that same thrill of going in to your first day at the job), and the job of attorney and nurse are different in how much hands-on tasks you do. Nurse = almost all hands on, Lawyer = a lot done on paper, could be done from home, remotely, etc. 

Also, another hands-on experience MJ has started is giving out flu shots! And I was a good enough guinea pig that she used her experience sticking the practice syringe (no actual piercing of my skin) to give flu shots to some 30 unsuspecting undergrad students on campus. As a lawyer sometimes I will attend a free legal clinic to give out some free legal advice, but no guarantee that advice amounts to anything, unlike the relieving feeling of being immunized from the flu in anticipation of flu season! 

Today's facts of the day: (MJ got this one): a flower- This species are not birds at all, but flowers of the genus Strelitzia, native to South Africa, where one of its species is featured on the 50 cent coin.  The answer: Birds of paradise! Didn't know of this species of flower, but do now. 

Wanderlust (旅行癖, 放浪癖, 방랑벽)

 I learn plenty of new words on Jeopardy nowadays, and while most of them are words related to specific fields like name of hand tools or types of gardens, sometimes a more commonly used term pops up that I am ashamed I didn't know before but excited to get to know (like making a new friend): wanderlust, which means a strong desire to travel. I guess I have that, as I often diverge off the beaten path when going for a run, delving into new areas just to see what's there, or drag MJ on long road trips to places she's hesitant about going to even when I myself don't really know what lays in store. 

My working life, unfortunately, has somewhat mirrored my travel life: I've worked for various law firms now as a contract attorney in various cities (and now I work remotely due to the pandemic so I can be in any city or suburb or remote location that I want as long as I have WiFi). It's not ideal not to settle down with a law firm and be on the natural associate path, but that was the hand I dealt in 2008 when I first entered law school during a global financial crisis that hit the legal industry hard as well because many clients were big businesses that had to cut their costs, thus cutting their legal budget that went to law firms, who in turn had to reduce their hiring of new legal associates, and as I'm too familiar now I was at the bottom of the food chain and was part of the collateral damage. Probably not unlike the current state of the legal industry, where law firms have had to cut some hiring and reduce their summer associate classes. 

Working for various law firms, though, does have some advantages: I get to work on different cases, most of which are pretty interesting and make headlines, maybe not on the front page of the New York Times but could be like a section in the "legal" section of the Wall Street Journal. When I get depressed about how certain industries are shrinking, businesses are being consolidated into mega corporations and technology firms like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc. are taking over the world (Nividia is acquiring Arm Holdings from Softbank which goes to show the strength behind FAANG MAN, the new acronym on Wall Street adding Microsoft, Adobe, and Nivida to the traditional FAANG acronym stocks), I remind myself how many companies I've worked for that are NOT those companies and there are still big players in banks, real estate, telecommunications, automobile, pharmaceutical companies, may of whom I'd never heard of before working for them but have enough money to pay big-time law firms a lot of money to represent them in litigation or maybe a merger. I'm reminded how different a lawyer's job is, than say, a doctor or nurse or teacher, all very significant and reputable professions but professions that work on a personal level of addressing the patient's problem right then and there. Lawyers do work with personal clients like an individual employee who was wrongfully terminated or injured in an auto accident, but that's not where the big money is and not where most of my law school classmates and friends in the legal industry went on to represent: it's often the big companies that can afford multiple big law attorneys to represent them. Lawyers therefore represent the big companies and often have to be on meetings with leaders at those companies, or at least meetings with law firm partners and associates who are relaying the wishes of the clients. The patient who's suffering is not a patient with a beating heart, it's a company with a class action lawsuit on its hands, or needs to get approval of a merger to another company to survive. I have to admit it's somewhat exciting sometimes to know I'm part of something, and I'm getting paid for it; it is what I thought I would be doing as a child being asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I am a professional that is hired for a specific purpose, and I do my best to accomplish that purpose that I have been trained to do (in law school and in self-studying various languages) and submit my work to the client, and hope it's sufficient, or adjust my work based on the client's feedback. I hope to be able to continue working and that demand for my services will continue, as I have, in my opinion, one of the better jobs in the world. Not the best job, like being a $20 million per film actor/actress, or professional athlete paid to play a sport, but for a mediocre talent like myself who's OK at most things but not exceptional at anything and representative of the most common type of demographic on planet Earth (an Asian man), I'll take it. 

I wrote this article after getting an update about a case that I had worked on this summer in light of Covid-19; the client's legal problems arose specifically because of the pandemic and because the demand for its services collapsed due to Covid-19; it really is a tough situation, and I feel bad for both sides of the litigation for trying to salvage something from a terrible situation, but it goes to show that I maybe in the right industry: litigation continues despite a global pandemic, and some cases business is even enhanced because of it. One of the quirks of being a lawyer. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Solitude (孤独, 고독 )

 The original title of the post was "Isolation," but I kept getting translations to Chinese and Korean that interpreted the meaning of isolation more as "quarantine" and physically separating one away from someone; what I wanted to express is the spiritual emptiness and loneliness accompanying the state of being blocked off from social contact, and "solitude" emerged as a much better term. Solitude is a major cause of depression even in normal times, but especially during a pandemic not being able to have contact with the outside world enhances the depression and loneliness, possibly even causing more serious actions like suicide. It's not going to make the Covid death toll numbers or new infection rate statistics, swept under the rug as one of the hidden downsides in all of this. 

In a sense, I am very luckily not to be dealing with Covid during my twenties, when I was mostly alone stuck in a dorm room or apartment room away from my friends or other people. My sister is going through the pandemic during her twenties, and she couldn't stand being in a lonely apartment all by herself in Washington D.C., so she took a break from the isolation and flew back to L.A. to be with my parents. I don't blame her (it's much easier to score free food and goodies at parents' home) but also the powerful feeling of loneliness is a powerful motivator to seek company. 

MJ and I recently wanted the Korean movie "Alive" (my Netflix account recommended it after I had binge watched a couple Korean TV dramas "Let's Eat" and Oh My Ghost), but this is much more of a international movie than any of the TV shows we watched that cater to Korean sense of humor and culture. Alive is about a man who lives through a zombie epidemic trapped alone in his apartment without any human contact, zombies prowling just outside the door but unable to get in. There are obvious zombie apocalypse problems like lack of food, lack of water, constant threat of danger of zombies busting in and trying to eat him, but the even more potent threat is that of solitude: he's unable to contact his family during this whole time and when he does, he (spoiler) finds out that they have succumbed to the zombies. Eventually, he becomes so depressed and lonely that he tries to commit suicide.....unsuccessfully. The movie goes on after that (after he realizes there is another non-zombie human being that knows of his existence), but that horrible feeling of being trapped and thought of maybe you are the last person on earth left and there's no one ever to interact with, most people can sympathize with that feeling, even if they can't sympathize with threats of zombies. The movie came out at a great time too, 5 or 6 months into a pandemic where so many people have been forced into their homes by an infectious virus that seems, at least for now, humans don't have a cure for. I thought it was "Wow! A wonderful examination of the human condition!" MJ was like, "Meh." And she doesn't like the Korean actor who plays the main character. 

A lot of people are taking anti-solitude into their own hands, by setting up biking journeys, hiking trips, meetings outside, etc., which makes it worse for people who don't want to risk doing those activities but also are seeing other people "escaping to the outside" and breathing the fresh air (although not sure how fresh it is right now in most of California because of the wildfires). It must be how some inmates at a prison feel when they see fellow inmates be released into the free world, except inmates don't have social media to remind them all the time how much fun and social interaction other people are having. The "solitary confinement" punishment seems like even worse than being in normal conditions at a prison, where at least you know there are other people in there doing time with you, horrible as the circumstances might be; solitary can be a form of torture, and understandably causes some inmates to crack and attempt suicide. But just as the end of the "Alive" movie said, keep hope alive, eventually we'll get through it. #alive. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Robert Yan 

THIS IS......Jeopardy! (豆知識,まめちしき, 퀴즈 게임, 琐事游戏)

 MJ and I have found yet another new pandemic pastime: watching Jeopardy episodes. Yup, Jeopardy the trivia game show hosted by Alec Trebek is still airing and still giving out prizes (since 1964, wow!) and available on Netflix (albeit only an assortment of episodes). When I grew up watching Jeopardy I always entertained the thought of knowing enough to get on the show, but then fancier follies like getting on Survivor and Amazing Race (with really no prior qualifications necessary) outweighed the pure meritocracy that is Jeopardy: you just have to know trivial facts about the world, primarily based in US and the Western World. 

Watching Jeopardy as a 33-year-old is definitely different than as a 13-year-old or even an 18-year-old: I feel like I know slightly more of the answers, but not even close to being able to compete on the show. The broad knowledge required for the show seemed impossible to digest back in the 2000's and early Internet times, but now it seems completely doable with all the resources we have available. In fact, people apparently "take time off" to study for the show, some citing one year of study, without having to hold a job. It's kind of like studying for the SAT or LSAT: it's not necessarily testing you on everything you know (that's undeniably a part of it) but how well you studied for these trivial facts and looked through the most common answers, memorized enough world capitals, seas of the world, medical terms, 18th century poets, engineering tools, Academy Award winning movies, etc. and be able to apply them quickly. It's a lot like taking a test that you can study your whole life for. 

Or compete in the College Jeopardy Championships!- I was actually fascinated by that particular show because students around the country aged 18-22 competed and were pretty skilled at knocking out categories that I wouldn't have dreamed of in college. What a great thing to have studied for in college instead of squandering the time playing online poker or going to play live poker or writing papers that likely didn't get read for classes like "Diaspora in Africa?" (a real class I took in undergrad). I guess though studying various foreign languages I've adopted an admiration for long odyssey adventures that require years of training and dedication, goals that seem difficult but attainable given a strong work ethic and stamina. And getting on the show must be sweet justification for all that hard work they went through. And the College Championship winner wins $100,000? That's like a 4-year (well, nowadays, like a 2.5-year scholarship!) 

As an adult I still don't know a lot of things about the world around me, but Jeopardy's a great way to connect ideas and concepts (ah, that's what a vichyssoise desert looks like! Oh the Chinese had a Hui Hai Initiative led by Chiang Kai-shek!) that either I've never known before or knew in the back of my mind but wouldn't be able to name outright just from even the artful clues Jeopardy gives about it. It's one thing to have soaked in some knowledge, but it's another to be able to produce it when the time is nigh. I now have more appreciation for those people who do well at bar trivia nights or quiz show games.....they might just be smart, but chances are they did a lot of work to arrive at all those trivial facts. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Flu Shot (독감 예방 주사, 予防接種, 流感疫苗)

 The most talked about vaccine nowadays is for Covid-19, but another vaccine going under the radar: flu shots. MJ is adding to her training as a nurse by learning how to perform flu shots with a program called Flu Fighters, an interesting exercise where she insists on performing a faux flu shot on me (without the needle). So far my guinea pig experiences (taking my heartbeat, getting flu shot) haven't been painful, but I fear one day I will wake up with some kind of imminent pain about to be imposed on my body. Hmmmm......

I've never been one who enjoyed shots. I remember as a kid they scared me, and I always looked away when the nurses did it, whether it was for the chicken pox, mumps, hepatitis, etc. Just the sharp nature of the needle made me wince and imagine the pain (I don't think the actual sensation is that bad, but the anticipation of it is what makes me nervous, kind of like waiting in line to get on a scary roller coaster or the night before having to give a big presentation or something, I overthink it). I'm not sure what compelled me to start giving blood in 2015, but I do remember the first time being scare of the needle as well but not wanting to back out and look like a wimp in front of the friendly female nurse, so I stayed even through the finger prick, and didn't look when she inserted the needle (there are definitely times I never even see the needle through the whole process, just feel it, like an unknown and unseen assailant). Perhaps my case is something nurses can learn a bit about because most nurses have seen so many people everything just seems normal to them like brushing their teeth or taking out the garbage, but for weaklings like me we have a lot of distress built up before we even see the needle because it's so different from our normal routine, so just bear with us through the anxiety and closing of our eyes. 

The stock market dip definitely felt like needle pain today, Dow dipping 800+ points, Nasdaq dipping almost 600 points and almost 5% in a day. That's.....a lot of money for a lot of people. There's solace in the fact I participated in the stock run-up over the last few months and still solidly in the black, but it's never fun on days like today because you always think about where you were just yesterday and if you could have gotten out at the perfect time, which is almost never going to happen of course but the market definitely does punish greed pretty swiftly, slamming a huge losing day on your hands like a piano cover on your fingers, with the discordant music and everything. 

Luckily there's not a big controversy over flu shots in the US like there is with treatments against Covid-19 and mask-wearing,  but MJ is currently ambivalent about getting the Covid vaccine if and when it is available to the public, due to concerns about vaccines/ immunizations and how they affect one's health, or pregnant women's health (should she at some point become pregnant). There are a group of anti-vacc-ers out there with concerns like mistrust of science or whether it causes autism, something MJ is already worried about for our potential child. I personally got a flu shot once and I actually got kind of sick afterwards, although getting mild headaches/ symptoms afterwards is common. I just.....don't get sick, so maybe our potential child will be able to inherit that part of me and never get sick? Let's hope so.

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Wake Me up When September Ends (九月 - The Long Month)

 A crazy series of events happened in August, or 葉落ち月, the Month of Falling Leaves, in Japan. Not sure why it's called that in Japan (Autumn comes really early there) but it certainly wasn't a month for falling temperatures in California, falling stock prices, falling real estate prices, or falling Covid infection rates across the U.S. There was a huge breakout around college campuses as college students moved into their dorms, and as one would expect with college students being eager and giddy to meet their future friends-for-life (FFL) or members of the opposite gender, Covid naturally ran rampant, especially at UNC-Chapel Hill. The stock market had a historic August (something it's done before in my 3 years of investing experience) followed by a bad September historically, but that gets kind of skewed by nature of being an election year, the theory being stocks run up into a November election then sell off, and maybe different this time due to historically low interest rates and a Federal Reserve that seems totally behind the stock market. 

September figures to be a long month (長月) too, as with October, essentially 2 long months of election coverage and buildup before the election, which might be a protracted process this year and not the "Election Night" determination we're used to due to mail-in votes. 2016 was a pretty bleak night for Hilary supporters and anti-Trump America, but it was a fascinating exhibition on how the swing states determine the election and how the votes shake out, and in that sense it was similar to a football game/ sports contest (we don't want the country to treat arguing politics like a sports game, but electoral college math is interesting) where the guaranteed blue states came in early on the East Coast, those states were decided easily lifting the Democrats to an early lead, but then states like Virginia and North Carolina that were presumed to be going blue were locked in a close contest as Hilary supporters started getting nervous but not necessary worried as they were the favorite; I remember a group text where some friends stated that Hilary just needed to "hold on to Virginia" and then take the Midwestern states and she would be OK........then the big hammer was Hilary losing Ohio, one of the bellweather states of any election, then Florida fell, and.......it was only a matter of time after that (as the Chinese saying goes, the water fell and the rocks showed themselves), the result was obvious, and only a matter of time until Clinton had to make a concession speech to Donald Trump. 

September and October is normally a great time to travel as MJ and I did on our honeymoon 3 years ago especially this year to escape the political divisions and election coverage (every single ad on Youtube either is strongly opposed to or strongly in favor of Biden/ Trump) but also because kids are in school and it's low tide for vacations and travel destinations, and the weather cools down from the dog days of summer. This year is an obvious no-no because of Covid and the fact that MJ is one of the "kids in school" (we hope to travel in November/ December during the break if at all possible!) but one of the factors making time progress so weirdly this year (March seems like forever ago but also just happened) is that we're stuck at home almost every single day of the year. Pre-pandemic when I woke up, I usually go to work, which can be a 20-minute commute or a 5-hour commute (if I'm traveling to a different city of the week). Nowadays for work I wake up, and within 1 minute I've used the rest room, washed my hands (important nowadays!) and logged into my computer right after to start the work day. "Sounds ideal!" My pre-pandemic self would say after years of slogging through LA traffic or hustling and scrambling to work in order to barely make it on time, no time wasted! But part of me actually misses that hustle and bustle, of walking out the door into the unknown (sounds like a Disney song) every day and facing the world head-on, that adrenaline rush of whether or not I'm going to make it in time or not, to feeling like I'm alive working in a city. I even feel a little more professional (even though it's just a facade) wearing business casual and putting on fancy shoes, and (gasp!) pants. I don't even need to wear pants nowadays at home, but I am just spending my life between 2 or 3 rooms (I've gotten really accustomed to my restroom and consider it as a stimulating experience each time I go in there). I always tell MJ I'm a dog person, and I need to be outside and breathe the fresh air (after I take off my mask that makes the outside smell bad). I'm relegated to imagining what my last months of freedom (before possibly starting a family) would be like if I could go on a wild adventure for weeks on end, without worrying about anything at home, and discovering so many possibilities and inspirations. (I realize some of this is fueled by advertising and the pyramid scheme of travel). But MJ and I do have so many plans to go to Paris, Denmark, Iceland, back to Korea, etc.....all suspended due to Covid-19. 

I'm resigned to the fact I'll still be working at home for the foreseeable future, at least until September ends. So please, wake me up from the doldrums of this pandemic when the pandemic ends.