At the End of the Day

 I consider myself somewhat of a word snob, where I nitpick about words that other people use and relentlessly hound MJ for certain words she pronounces wrong or adds an extra "s" to an expression when it doesn't belong. When I was in high school my English teacher told us to avoid using fillers and throat-clearing words as much as possible like "er," "um," and "like." This lesson awakened me to how much I used filler words, so I tried to avoid them as much as possible afterwards, but also made me conscious about how often other people used them. It's not that big a deal if it's used once or twice in a conversation between friends, but for long dialogues like a job interview or if someone is making a speech, it's definitely noticeable and becomes a distraction. That same English teacher told us that he once started counting how many "um's" that a speaker would use during his speech because the speaker used it so often, to the point where he forgot what the speaker was saying and only concentrated on the um's! This rubbed off on me, and I do feel that those speakers (definitely radio hosts, people on televsion, public figures) who can continue with a sentence without fillers have a very useful skill, and it does take some honing to get there. 

(Btw, differnet languages have different filler words; Japanese people use "eto" or "ano" before starting their main sentence, Korean people have "geulsse," and they look at you funny if you use the English er, um, uh's, so even more incenvtive to get rid of those fillers). 

Other pet peeves I have about the use of English are "Yea, no......" to start a sentence (I may be guilty of this too). It's a natural reaction to be agreeable and start with "Yea," but then also differentiate your new thought with what the speaker just said, thus "no," and all of a sudden both agreement and contradicting words are coming out together and starting the sentence off on a confusing foot. 

Oh yea, it's "regardless," for anyone who erroneously uses the word "irregardless," and I would like to be addressed as "sir" instead of the flippant uses of "buddy,"chief," "boss." 

I'm also conscious that too many conversations are just the brief "Thank you" now as a result of everyone understanding what needs to be done.......nothing really needs to be said other than "Thank you." At the grocery store, they ring up your items, you insert the credit card, they finish and say "thank you," and the only thing you say is "thank you" for their service. It's frustrating for me that our conversation skills are reduced to such a basic level without any nuance or sophistication. 

One of the more annoying phrases that I hear used (too) frequently nowadays is "at the end of the day." (Fitting that today is the end of the month of February). The phrase has innocent beginnings as a way to summarize everything and come to a conclusion after evaluating both the pros and cons of a situation and to put all the more detailed circumstance into perspective, (for example, "I worked hard to get a good grade on the test and was disappointed to get a B as my grade, but at the end of the day I'm happy with the effort I put into studying.") but the phrase has become abused to the point where every opinion is prefaced wth "at the end of the day" without any information about the situation. What happened to the morning, afternoon, and other times of the day in that calculus? You can't just skip to the conclusion of an essay without examining intro, body, and counterarguments! It also probably bothers me on another level where people follow the hip trends of the current mood, like virtue signaling or piling in on bitcoin or meme stocks like GME, without even thinking about it or assessing what the phrase actually means. 

I may have forgotten other word pet peeves that have agitated me over the years, ("What the actual fuck" comes to mind as nonsensical, profane, and unnecessary all at the same time) but it's not used nearly as often as the word "literally" in sentences where it's not supposed to be. Literally should not be used to provide emphasis of how extreme something or someone is, like "That dude is literally the worst person in the world" or "I literally just finished my homework." We need a new word for those situations, but literally should only be reserved for situations where words normally have a figurative meaning like "Finding a needle in a haystack." Literally should only be used if you are going to a barn or field with haystacks in them and you have to find a needle in them. The good news is that doesn't happen very often, the bad news is people use "literally" there all the time. I blame the internet, the new generation's loose standard for nventing new usage of words, and the emphasis on making everything extreme in society. It's (not literally) seriously driving me crazy! 

Luckily MJ doesn't use a lot of the phrases that are on my pet peeve list, which is important since she's practically (not literally) the only person I talk to in my daily life. Your cooperation is appreciated (instead of just "Thank you!") 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Distractions (分心, 気晴らし, 정신이 흩어짐)

Fitting that the major Asian languages don't have a distinct word for "distraction" like English does; the closest concepts have to do with body concepts like the heart or the spirit, or the mind. For example, in Chinese, it's literally translated to "splitting the heart," Japanese is "spreading the air," and in Korean it could be the spreading one's attention or chaos in one's heart. 

Chaos, that's a fitting description for the distractions that surround us every day, especially with the Internet at the tip of our fingers. Every when I get up I feel like it's a race to cram as many things into my mind as possible, and I'm just jumping from one thing to another that gets my attention to another thing like a frog darting from one water lily to the next, never settling on one area long enough to digest it, make it home. No wonder so many people of my sister's generation (including my sister) have Attention deficit disorder or something related to that. Part of my job every day is to keep myself in check, focused on the task at hand, because any venture into the lands of Facebook, Youtube, or even my own email inbox can lead to 30 minutes of unscheduled unproductivity and disaster. (The secret, like smoking or other additions, is to not start in the first place and not even think about it.) 

Easier said than done on a day like this week where the market made violent moves both positively (but more importantly) and negatively. That sinking feeling of losing money is primal, something that has been passed on through generations of humans, of trying to protect what we feel like we possess. No, I would not say checking my phone every 3 minutes to check stock ticker symbols like to see how far TSLA is down (violent move down 13% on no news yesterday)  is a healthy distraction. 

Luckily, there are actually healthy distractions! For example, I made notecards for studying Korean, a tried and true method of acquiring knowledge through rote memoriation. Whenever I feel like I need a break from something I'm doing, I look at a new word in the notecards and see if I know it. Only takes about 5 seconds, and I get the distraction I need and acquire knowledge from it. The key is to let your mind free to wander but wander to a good place of learning and knowledge, not a swamp of gossip, rumor, text chains, Tiktok videos, and knowledge that doens't improve our lives but like sugar, gives us a momentary dopamine hit and makes us feel good. Instead of taking a bite of a potato chip every 3 minutes, I take a bite of a carrot every 3 minutes. Same idea. 

And really, "trivia" like the facts seen on Jeopardy are sometimes criticized as being trivial per its name, but I feel like the facts on Jeopardy and Jeopardy archive are so much more useful and non-trivial/significant than so much of the Internet, like what Zlatan Abrahamovic thinks of Lebron James (1000+, endless comments about that today because of the gossipy/high-school nature of the information, but I get much more use out of knowing that the Eerie Canal actually stretches through the whole state of New York from the Eerie Canal to the Atlantic Ocean, and people actually made that! Or that KLM Airlines is actually from the Netherlands (Royal Dutch Airlines), or that there was a real person named the Angel of Death during Nazi Germany (Joseph Mengele) who escaped justice for his war crimes to South America despite being tracked by Israel's CIA the Mossad, or that Knotts Berry Farm was named after the guy who created the boysenberry, Rudolph Boysen. Or that Amy Winehaus was compared to Janis Joplin in their impact to the music industry but their sad deaths at a young age. (MJ told me that!) 

So not all distractions are built the same, and if you really need a distraction, Dr. Bobby prescribes the heatlhy carrot types of distractions in lieu of the potato chip unhealthy ones. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

The Power of Foresight (선견지명, 先見之明, 先見性)

 I'm going through a Korean lesson with a string of 4-character Chinese idioms, and so many are applicable to my life! MJ and I hang out every day so we share all our joys and sorrows together (동고동락), and part of those sorrows are that MJ has to wake up at 5:30AM every day that she has preceptorship (similar to an internship working with a nurse at a hospital) and go through an entire 13-hour shift while half asleep and half awake. (비몽사몽) I can only imagine what it will be like when she has to do a night shift. 

The power of foresight is really important, much more than analyzing the past.....it's often what my goal is when analyzing the past, to learn and use it for the future.....but alas often times I end up dwelling on the past. I often look back at what life was like ten years ago and try to project what the next 10 years will be like for me....let's see, in 2011 I was coming out of law school and worried about employment, the economy was just beginning to recover and I was single and on my own in the big city of Los Angeles... but it often becomes a fool's errand because there's nothing to suggest the years of 2011- 2021 will look anything like 2021-2031. When I was living in my 20's, I just brushed away thoughts of what I'd be doing in my thirties; 2020 seemed like an abstract concept, like going to Mars or getting old. I've seen people on the Internet hoping for another "Roaring Twenties" like the 1920's after recovering from the World War and a raging pandemic (similar to our most recent pandemic), which seems optimistic, but pessimistically it could be what Andrew Yang was prognistcating in the 2020 Presidential campaign, the possibility of robots replacing humans' jobs like trucking, retail jobs in what amounts to a Fourth Industrial Revolution, but this one might not be one where the human labor market might recover from. Nothing in my life is astronomically different than my life in 2011: we're still driving cars on grounded roads (not in the sky), we still use the Internet, albeit at higher speeds and unlimited Wifi and smarter smartphones, and social relationships are still intact although more divisive politically than ever before. I wonder if something comes along that revolutionizes the way we live by 2031.  

Often times 선견지명 is used to describe a successful person who seems to always be one step ahead of everyone else; in many ways MJ becoming a nurse can prove to be great foresight when we look back it in 10 years, as there are more and more adults getting older who need medical care, MJ is learning a great deal about what happens at hospitals, what kind of diseases are out there, and what to watch out for. Just like in investing, it's often going into an uncertain area or taking a risky step that yields the greatest return; going with the same thing that's been working and staying the course can be a safe and winning strategy, but it usually doesn't reap the maxium rewards; often it's buying up the stocks, businesses, or investments that don't look too good right now and no one's interested in that become the wise investments that make people look like they have great foresight. I'm also wary of "false lessons," or lessons from the past that don't translate to the future, where I think I learned something but apply that lesson erroneously for the future action, or the future has changed so much that it doesn't apply anymore. 

Whatever the secret to the power of foresight is, I do know there's an aspect of luck to it as well, and anyone who says they "knew all along" is just benefiting from hindsight and/or got lucky that the version of the future they predicted actually came true. We can still change the future! It isn't set in stone yet. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Lost and Found (失物处, 遺失物取扱所, 분실물 센터)

I'm not sure if I'm more prone to losing things or less prone than the average person, but I do have a bad habit of having things fall out of my pocket. For guys, I think the pockets are very important because we don't carry handbags or purses; our entire lives are basically in our pockets at all times: phone, wallet, keys. So those pockets better be built like Fort Knox: durable, unable to be penetrated, and not allowing anything to leave its jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the pants/shorts I wear often are not like that. I actually have some pants with holes in the pocket area, which is a disaster waiting to happen. Some pockets are too lose so that when I sit down and move my legs like to cross them angle my body in a certain way, items fall out. So far I haven't been pickpocketed yet (that I know of). 

When I do inevitably drop something, I have to retrace my steps and go back to the scene of the mishap and try to recover the item, which today were my headphones (Yes, it happened again today! On a cold February day with the sun going down with the hopes of ever finding my brand new Bose headphone carrying case that MJ got me for Christmas because she's thoughtful about buying me gifts but also because there's so many things I need but don't bother to buy or try to "tough it out" and go without.) I was filled with a mixture of self-loathing, defeat, frustration, deja vu, and just feeling cold. The losing stuff is very similar to getting angry and raising my voice: everything time it happens I berate myself to make sure it doesn't happen again, and because it's fresh in mind I'm very careful not to for a few days, even weeks, but then after the routine settles in I forget and it rears its ugly head all over again unexectedly and without warning; the cycle repeats. 

America has a thoughtful system of Lost and Found that is like panacea for people like me, or at least a Get Out of Jail Free card. Usually someone who finds a discarded item will pick it up and give it to the nearest facility or building manager, but where does one turn it in when it's lost in the great outdoors, on a public road? I guess the general rule is just to let it sit out there in the event the owner comes back looking for it, especially for items that are only of value to the owner, like my headphone carrying case (only the case, I was wearing the headphones). If it's money or the actual headphones (yup, I've lost those before) they're as good as gone, as I found out at LAX one fateful weekend when I left them in the airport......(I've lost library books before on an airplane, and the lost and found system for airplanes, as you might expect, is dreadful, so don't bring library books or anything borrowed onto a plane). MJ and her friend just found a young lady's cell phone on the beach over the winter break.....they called the owner's mother and was able to return it via those means, but that's wishful thinking to expect someone to return it that easily. With all the fancy technology avaiable to humans nowadays, it seems surprisngly simple to lose tremendously important things. Perhaps adding a tracker to all of the important items can help? A cell phone can be found through Find my phone apps cuz it's already a GPS tracker, but wallet and other pocket items? Perhaps the next stage of innovention will come up with something handy, and it would save people like me a great deal of consternation, dread, steps (I walked around a lot to find it), and regret. 

Also, life hack: Just pat yourself down once in awhile when outside to make sure you have everything! Like a TSA self-imposed body check. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Pride ( 誇り, 자존심)

Most people work at a job, but not everyone works well at their job. A lot has to do with whether one likes his or her job; the more one values what she's doing, the more pride she takes in doing a good job. I look back at the various jobs I've assumed in my life, and that definitely seems to be the case: the ones where I did the best work, I didn't really think of it as work, so it came very naturally to me and I (as far as I know) did a good job.

Despite the limited amount of interactions I've had with other people, I still couldn't help but notice varying amounts of quality of work. MJ and I have lived for the last 4 years in apartment buildings and got to know the employees who work at the buildings we lived in; it's pretty noticeable which employees really seemed to care about us, and which ones just brushed us off or made it seem like a chore to deal with us. In the first apartment we lived in, there was a very bubbly African American lady who worked at the front desk, greeted us all the time and remembered our names, and gave us a smile every time we walked by. That doesn't seem like that tough a thing to do, but it's surprisingly how some people who work in the customer service/customer interaction business do not get the memo on that basic premise. They look up, see us walk by, and don't acknowledge our presence or go back to what they were doing, just getting by with the bare minimum, and not bothering to act nice. Guess what? We as the customers notice! And remember, especially during the panic when my social interactions are few but the ones that do happen stick out and stay with me. It may be a reflection of our society that the lowest paying jobs are the ones that deal with the most people and are the most visible, like restaurant workers, apartment building workers, Uber drivers, low hourly service industry workers. The higher the income of workers, the less they have to deal with the masses or at least limit their interactions to only other higher income workers or high-society people, or only need to deal with more exclusive groups. 

Which is why MJ is going to be a good nurse, one of those jobs that requires lots of human interactions.......because she is very nice. (We have a poster in our apartment that says "Be Nice" with a rainbow stripe on it. She treats all people nicely, whether it be nurses, doctors, or most importantly patients, even though she doesn't have to be, and even though not all nurses are. Yesterday I went to a blood donation and the nurse who drew my blood seemed to not want to talk to me, often talking over me to a fellow nurse as if I wasn't there. This happens frequently at many stores I go to, often in the checkout line, where a worker will continue talking to his or her colleague despite attending to me as a customer, which I don't mind as much but still a little put off with, but I'd expect a little more interactino and engagement with the nurse who is sticking a needle in my arm. MJ has a nice routine of talking through the process she will do when she's giving out flu shots (she even got some good feedback from patients) , which she practiced on me, and it did work to soothe and distract me from the inevitable prick of the needle.....this nurse didn't really seem to give a darn   (like Rhett Butler to my Scarlett O'Hara) and barely responded to my questions about donating blood during the pandemic; it was like pulling teeth, and I was the one whose proverbial teeth (blood) was getting pulled! 

The more jobs that I work and the more I see other people doing their jobs, the more I realize not everyody cares that much about whether they're doing a good job or not and just going through the motions of the process. I've been there before too, especially poring over long contracts and documents or memorandums, there's deefinitely a tendency to slack off, no one can be on 100% of the time. But I can honeslty say on jobs where I met with people most of the time (camp counselor, grocery store bagger, volunteering at an art clinic as a bartender) I was always engaged with other people, didn't treat poeple with disrespect or ignorance......that seems like the minimum I can do, and something I can take pride in. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Space Exploration (太空探索, 宇宙探査, 우주 탐사)

 Aliens. Astronauts. Black Holes. Space Shuttles. International Space Station. The Space Race. The First Man on the Moon. Halley's Comet. For my entire life society has always had a fascination about space exploraton and everything outside the Earth, yet I never really got into it: never wanted to be an astronaut (deathly scared of going at incontrollable high speeds and a little claustrophobic too) and didn't understand the allure of these other planets and galaxies that seemed so far away and devoid of anything that I liked: games, sports, food, etc. Recently, though, I've become enthralled by the private flights to Mars and the possibility of civilan transport to Mars, a concept that I didn't think was possible during my lifetime. Isn't Mars really really far away? Apparently, it now would take around 7 months to go from Earth to Mars, shorter time than it takes for most pregnancies. Especially with scientists speculating about the long-term future of the Earth due to global warming as well as natural disasters like getting hit by an asteroid, Mars seems more and more like a possbility for humans beings to inhabit at some point in the future. (I watched a recent interview between Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, now the richest man in the world due to Tesla's extremely inflated market cap.- Yes I said it, I think TSLA is overvalued, but if everyone is OK with buying it at the valuation, then maybe it's fairly valued). There's actually an intriguing stock I own directly related to space exploration, the aptly named "SPCE"- Virgin Galactic, founded by billionaire Richard Branson who likes that word Virgin apparently. It's really interesting that space travel, previously monopolized by governments during the Space Race, is now being privatized and tried out by various companies. (Jeff Bezos recently also transitioned out of CEO at Amazon to focus more on Blue Origin) It really does seem like there will be a new wave of interest in this fascinating category of human life, whereas in my childhood it seemed a little subdued after Apollo 11's landing on the moon in 1969. Perhaps getting the first person to Mars will be jet fuel for interest in the field? 

I, for one, just recently (due to Jeopardy) learned about the International Space Station and the various US space shuttle voyages, with the unfortunate fates of the Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003. One of my favorite movies is The Martian with Matt Damon featuring a ficitonal mission to mars that results in Damon having to live on Mars by himself and grow plants. Fascinating movie that shows the coordination between the main power players in space exploration (China and the US).....if only cooperation was so easy to get. MJ and I watched it at a theater after having a nice dinner at P.F. Chang's as part of one of our first dates......very memorable, especially after the most recent Valentine's Day, our 6th Valentine's Day together. MJ found a very nice card for me that suited our position perfectly: It said that I was the world's No. 1 husband, and MJ was not just my wife, she was my biggest fan. It inspired me to be an even better, and loving husband. Happy Valentine's Day! 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Needles ( 바늘, 针, 針)

 My mom often tells a story about my childhood and getting shots: I went with a family friend when we were both 6 years ago living in Chicago to get immunized for the common childhood diseases (mumps, tetanus, measles, etc.). My friend who was a little older than me went to get into the doctor's office to get his shot first, and he came out crying and screaming because the shot hurt so bad and he didn't like them. Despite seeing my friend in this dire situation, I went into get my shot as my parents watched on helplessly, expecting that I would succumb to the same fight and come out of the office very upset, but I came out after a few minutes with such a calm and expressionless face that my parents wondered if I had even gotten a shot at all. I apparently had acted nonchalant and showed aplomb in the face of the needle. (I just wanted to use big SAT Words "nonchalant" and "aplomb" in a sentence because I am usually scared of things, like roller coasters, going through airport security, and going shopping. Certainly major events cause major tension for me just thinking about it ad magnifies the actual event in my head so feels worse that it actually is (kind of like the acrophobia/fear of heights described in Alfred Hitchcock's famous movie Vertigo), so I don't know how I was able to stay so relaxed as a 6-year-old seeing those big needles going into my arm. Maybe I had a good nurse who talked me through the process (MJ has shown me the skill that nurses have to calm down their patients before doing something painful or traumatic like staritng an IV or sticking someone with a needle), maybe I just didn't know what the needle would do until it went in, and by then it was too late to react, so I just went with it. Maybe I was just having a distracted day and thinking about Transfomers back then. 

MJ got her second shot for the Covid vaccine today, so she's all done with the shots! Yay. I commend her and everyone else getting the vaccine for being brave and going through the vaccine process and not getting too psyched out about it. MJ was a little nervous leading up to it, but not at all about the shot itself, more about the aftereffects, as other vaccine receivers have reported feeling sick up to 48 hours after getting the shot. Who knows, next time she might be giving out the vaccine to me or others when more become available, reportedly as soon as May or June for the general population. As Cramer put it, "they'll have so many vaccines they'll be looking for arms to stick the vaccines in." 

In addition to the ceremonial occasion of MJ being vaccinated for Covid, it's also Happy Lunar New Year and Happy Valentine's Day weekend! And also Washington's birthday on Monday? A multicultural holiday weekend. I'm happy MJ is not that demanding when it comes to Valentine's Day gifts (Or is she just secretly holding them against me) and this year the pandemic is causing everyone to stay home instead of going out to fancy restaurants for a special dinner. And I don't even need to worry about chocolates, which I always thought was a bit of a scam anyway and should be updated for a more nutritious and health-conscious snack. I just remember in elementary school for Valentine everybody in class giving each other Valentine's day chocolates, which seemed excessive with Halloween already taking up the "give out lots of unnecessary sweet things that might eventually lead to diabetes" role, especially for little kids when our brains, appetites, and eating habits haven't been fully developed yet. Now we're trapped in the addition by the sugar, chocolate, and candy industries. Great. How bout giving an avocado for Valentine's day? A warm, tasty substance that symbolizes the richness that long-lasting relationships can engender, and contain the "good fat" healthy kind of nutritious support that a strong relationship needs, not just a sugar high of emotions on one day that fades into memory banks until the next consumer-driven Valentine's day holiday. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

A Sunday at the Art Institute of Chicago

 The pandemic has simplified my daily routine (no driving! no dress code!) but complicated other parts of life (do I tip for just getting takeout at a restaurant or not? The waiters aren't serving me at a table, but they ARE making the sandwich/burrito/other food item so they are putting in labor and risking their health to work at the restaurant, and how much do I tip to feel adequate like it's not an insulting 3% tip but also be able to live under my principle of tipping is just peer pressure imposed by the rich to subsidize service industries that they deem fit?). 

One thing I can reminisce about pre-pandemic times was working in downtown Chicago and being walking distance from the Art Institute of Chicago at all times, which didn't seem like such a luxury to me at first especially living in suburban Chicago as a child but to MJ was like inheriting prime real estate next to an urban mecca. Seeing that she gets multiple memberships to art museums in cities that she doesn't live in and are on opposite coasts of each other (I believe she's currently a member in both the San Francisco AND Atlanta Museums of Art), it wasn't suprising that the first thing she did was get enrolled at the Art Institute. "I get to use the members lounge and get free coffee there!" Which doesn't seem like such a bad deal since she was there EVERY day (seemingly) of the several months I was there. But now I'm flabbergasted by the amount of work and prestige of some of the pieces there. Georges Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" (inspired the tile of this article) Grant Wood's American Gothic, Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks are just the headliners (like a Coachella music festival) to a grand arry of great art with Rene Magritte (the cigar guy), Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock in the Modern and Contemporary wings. To put that in perspective, the first time I went to Getty somewhat recommended it as "they have a Van Gogh there." Well Chicago has at least those 4 pieces to match a Van Gogh and more! I only know maybe 10-20 famous pieces of art by name, and the ones at the AIC have some of them! How did the curators afford all this art? Did they go Vincenzo Peruggia and steal the Mona Lisa?  And why Chicago, not exactly the first place in the world you think of when you think of the great art capitals of the world (but actually, architecture is splendid in downtown Chicago). 

Right about now (middle of February) is probably the worst time ever to go to Chicago even without a pandemic as it's below freezing point and snowing, but memories of bundling up in heavy winter gear and trudging through the snow past the powder-covered Millenium Park to the lions guarding the entrance of the museum like sentinels announcing your arrival to the palace, then marching up the stairs through the entryway and stomping off all of the clustered snow while your body breathes a sigh of relief from escaping frigid temperatures and reaclimmates to a reasonable room temperature......that brings back some warm and fuzz memories that even a pandemic cannot erase. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Crying (哭, 泣く, 울다)

 One of my favorite songs I liked to listen to in college (don't laugh) was "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie. (I once introduced "My Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira as my favorite all-time song at my summer camp job when I was 18 and was confronted with a "Really?" by my co-workers confirming the lameness of my choice, but yes I had the music preferences of a 13-year-old girl at age 18. And before that "Breakaway" by Kelly Clarkson, etc., etc. Anyway, my takeaway was that adults don't cry about depressing things and should remain resilient, steadfast, and not have to express their emotions, and that crying is somehow "weak." I no longer think so. 

MJ cries pretty frequently at sad thoughts like remembering about her car accident or her grandmother dying, both very traumatic events, which I would characterize as normal. I have more "psychopathic" crying pattern. I don't react by crying when I hear about people who have passed away, even during mass shootings that are horrible tragedies, I feel dejected and sympathetic to those who lost their lives but it doesn't move me to tears. I don't cry when all my stocks go down. I don't cry if my favorite sports team wins or loses. I cry, though, often at movies, not even just sad movies, movies that have a sympathetic character who goes through a momentous journey and reflects back on that journey, or someone who I've invested a lot of time and emotional attachment to. Today I cried during the movie "Knock Down the House" about the rise of Justice Democrats and first-time candidates for political office like AOC, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. It's ironic that AOC's story is the only success story of the 4 candidates profiled, so I wasn't sad, but happy..........but also sad about the story of her losing her father and having to work through college and pay back loans and finally fighting the system. It's hard to describe what makes me cry, I guess: Perhaps it's watching others succeed and get to a critical point in their lives, as I now understand how it feels to want something so bad but not be able to obtain it, or to look back on my life with regrets and what-could-have-beens, so that when I see someone else gets to a crucial point in their lives, I reflect on that and live vicariously through their experiences. Whatever it is, it's a strong emotion for sure, because I do try to hold back audible tears and not act "weak," but suddenly my eyes well up it's uncontrollable: it's not altogether a bad feeling neither, to let some emotion out instead of having it come out in a fit of rage during an argument with someone (I've resolved to try not to get angry and have loud outbursts this year, but I already have one strike against me- I allowed myself a little bit of slack if I involuntarily slipped up). Perhaps I'm just cooped up in the house all the time and unable to express anger, joy, sorrow, or anything, so even watching a small trigger like the AOC story can become a waterfall-level tear jerker. 

I ALSO watched "Pick of the Litter," about a litter of puppies trained since birth to become guide dogs for the blind, with some making it and others dropping out of the specially adapted program, and that movie was designed to be a tearjerker with the dogs' trainers becoming attached to the dogs and the heartbreak of the dogs who couldn't "graduate" into the becoming guide dogs.........I didn't really feel anything. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

The Short Month (如月)

 If September is the "Long Month" in the Japanese calendar, then February should be the "Short Month," right? Especially in a non-leap year like this one, but alas it's called the "Month of Wearing Extra Layers of Cloth," which reluctantly I've been doing on my rare ventures outside of the apartment these days. MJ scolds me for going outside without enough clothes on, but in my defense, it is much more liberating and aerodynamic to not wear a giant sweater to slow me down while running. 

February has always felt like a transition month to me, whether it's because there's a Groundhog Day whose premise is whether to extend winter or not, or the batten-down-the-hatches weather as we await the promise of spring, or because it's always Black History month (it kind of feels like black history month every month now), nothing really memorable has really happened to me in February. 

February may be a great time to read novels, especially really long novels like "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace, a 1000+ beast that should get more fame as rivaling "War and Peace" in its length. The text definitely reads well though and in a very smart format, helping me understand why it was all the rage when it came out and critics crowned Wallace a genius. He also gripes a lot about tennis, which I can sympathize with: all the gentlemanly limitations of the sport and the frustrations of just hitting the ball back and forth. I'm probably missing some metaphor or allegory as to how tennis is related to life. It is notable, though, that unfortuantely Wallace took his own life at a young age, something I really can't fathom, but then again I'm not an award-winning writer who published a national bestseller. The more I live life, the more I realize life means so many different things to so many people (and oh are there so many people in the world, many of whom are smarter than I am, as can be seen on Jeopardy on a nightly basis). Life might feel like a cage for some who feel trapped within its walls of repetitveness, pain, suffering, and sadness, and the existentalist feelings of "why are we even here in the first place" and loss of control at being able to decide one's own fate or how long one's own life will go. So I can't say I sympathize or condone people who take their own life, but like drug use or thrill seeking I can at least begin to understand why someone might go down that path. Me personally, I'm just trying to get through each day and learn a new word or two in a different language, and a few new facts about the world. Has kept me sane and happy during this pandemic. Having a purpose helps to block out all the negativity. Maybe if Wallace was asked to write another classic like Infinite Jest? Who knows. 

One of the things I realize I missed out on through my childhood is music- my parents never had any classic American rock, jazz, or pop songs playing in the background of the Yan household, for example, only classical music and the rhythmic melody of knvies chopping, rice cooking, and oil sizzling signaling the preparation of dinner every night. While classical music has some unforgettable hits, it's like comparing apples and oranges when hearing the best generation for music in human history, the 1960's-80's: The Beatles, The Eagles (that rhymes!), Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, then bam followed up by Michael Jackson, Prince, Queen, U2! Before my recent deep dive into trivia and Jeopardy "Revolver" and "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" sounded like combat in some sort of battle. How did they fit all these great bands together at the same time? How did people have time to do anything else? 

 Holy cow, what a time to be alive for music lovers. Today's generation has been inundated too much with pop and a pension for money and a quick buck, plus a music industry that is not as robust due to the lack of profits caused by this big thing called the internet, that and at some point it's like inventions: at some point all the good stuff has been taken. In some ways, though, maybe missing out on the Golden Age of music is good for me because I can listen to them anew "Like a Virgin," touched for the very first time. 

What did I do instead of listening to those classics of music history when I was a kid? I learned Chinese and listened to Chicago Cubs baseball radio with announcers Pat Hughes and Ron Santo of course, but I remember LOVING to read books as a kid. Nothing better on a February non-school day to sit on the couch with a book and leaf through page after page and digesting, without today's distractions of marriage (just kidding, MJ), Iphones (the biggest distraction), and making money (I unfortunatley love making money more than reading books). Even so, I could never have read all the books that I wanted to, and books just keep piling up. Maybe my reading speed was not as fast as some of the brightest minds, but still I doubt that anyone has had the time to read ALL the classics of Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Truman Capote, Ellison, Morrison, etc., etc. The problem with me was that I didn't understand the books as well, I just liked a really good story with compelling characters and a good moving plot. I didn't pay attention to the themes and messages and (Bradbury, Orwell, Huxley, Golding) the comparisons to modern society. Shame; but maybe that's what kept me reading all the time; We all do our best and get motivated when we do something we enjoy. Hope everyone is able to find that purpose in their lives even in a dark and dreary month like the "Month of Wearing Extra Layers of Cloth." 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan