The Chinese and Korean languages both share may animal imagery idioms, but ones that involve tigers/cats are especially eye-catching. "Hoshidamdam" means literally "a tiger waiting for its chance to prowl" (usually to procure its next meal), but it's a fitting expression for waiting for one's opportunity to do something.
MJ is currently waitin for an opportunity at her first official nursing job, and the familiar feeling of nervous job searching has commenced. I know the finally. After so many years of education and attending classes, training, discussion groups, quizzes, exams, clinicals, it's time to cash in on that investment (or "sweat equity," a fairly new term to describe hard work) and turn it into a real job. It really is like a tiger in the great jungle that is the job market, each new job that pops up is like the sighting of a deer, rabbit, or other wild animal that the tiger identifies as its prey, seeing it as an opportunity.
I always have this fantasy that all my life has been preparation for something bigger, where all the skills I've accumulated in my life have led me to one moment that will allow me to unleash them in one glorious wave of accomplishment and fulfillment. Oops, that's actually the premise of the Disney animated movie "Soul," which MJ and I watched tonight. In some ways, I do sympathize with the main character, who has loved music and specifically jazz his whole life waiting to become a jazz musician with a band, and when he finally scores a gig, he (spoiler alert) passes away, falling into a Manhattan manhole, of all the horrible ways to die. That is probably a very visceral fear for people like me who've been investing time and energy into long-term endeavors (for me, it's learning multiple language) or especially people in medical school, PhD programs, and other long-long-term endeavors........when will all the waiting in the weeds pay off, and will it ever pay off before the world changes or throws you for a loop?
I've been waiting for the stock market to reach a bottom for a couple weeks of rampant selling and transitioning from speculative technology stocks into re-opening stocks.......many pros will tell you that the easiest money (and most, apparently) to be made is when things go from worse to just bad, when markets have oversold certain stock or assets way too much to where they're now undervalued, and at that point is when you can make the most money, like when the stock market hit rock bottom at the March 23, 2020 low point of the pandemic. The tricky part is when to spot that bottom, and pros also say not to try and "catch a falling knife," time the bottom, because there could be even more room to go down. There's also tons of false bottoms where the market will spring back up violently for a stretch, only to be sold off vigorously the next day just as hard and keep going lower. That's unfortunately where we are, IMHO, FWIW (in my honest opinion, for what it's worth, 2 acronyms that were on Jeopardy tonight) so more waiting in the weeds and being the patient tiger rather than the overeager beager is prudent.
Another fantasy, of course, for any lover of trivia is that we are just waiting in the weeds learning about facts like Patty Hearst being aducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army, that the 3 territories (not provinces) in Canada are the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, and that EEG stands for electroencephalogram, which monitors electric activity of the brain, and that one day all those answers will be presented on the episode when you're a Jeopardy contestant and you'll remember all of them from studying all those times about trivial names and events.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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