The Pearl (진주, パール, 珍珠)

 I read the synopsis of a book called "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck that resonated with me deeply. My summary doesn't do Steinbeck's work justice, but the Pearl is about a man who finds a big pearl that's likely very valuable, and he hopes to sell it to help his sick child get medical treatment. All very noble and seems to be a good omen and windfall for the man, right? The problem and main conflict of the story, and a very useful lesson for readers to learn from, is that he tells other people in the village about his discovery of the pearl, and the news spreads throughout the village that he has it, causing jealousy, attempted thefts, and general worsening of life. The man's wife tries to convince him to throw away the pearl, but he insists on keeping it to save his son, but in the a gang who comes to rob him of his pearl shoots and kills his son anyway. A sad story indeed, but illustrates one of the main reasons why the societal norm is NOT to tell people about your financial situation, how much you make, etc. 

I have to introduce myself as an attorney at my work and to my clients, of course, but when I'm in my public as a normal person, I don't introduce myself as an attorney, and it's mainly because I don't want to be associated with a lucrative career. I made the mistake in 2013 when I bought my first car......I learned from a Cosby Show episode not to show up to a car dealer looking too fancy or like your made of money, but I also let loose at one point that I was an attorney. Big mistake.....from that point on I felt the mood in the room shift, and the car salesmen I was dealing with turned into sharks who smelled blood in the water, even though they didn't anything else about me. That's just the nature of human beings....we try to find a way to benefit from other people, whether it's companionship, love, status, comfort, or in the case of most service businesses, money. I have to admit I feel it too as hard as I try not to......when I'm dealing with a low-income client with little to no funds, I don't try to advise too many legal actions, whereas I know that big multinational clients can afford the legal expenses and the fees associates with billing for more hours. 

So how to deal with questions about financial health? I adhere to a "don't ask, don't tell policy" where I don't ask people about their salary or reveal even by insinuation how much I make. I also try not to assume that anyone else has money and go out to dinner with them just so they'll pick up the tab or anything like that; I just try to live by ignorant bliss about the topic and treat everyone equally and on a level playing field as me. In fact, it's always better for me to assume other people have little wealth and then be pleasantly surprised if and when they reveal they're actually pretty well-off, or the flip side, let other people assume I don't have much money until money is needed, and then I come through in the clutch! 

Don't let people know how much money you have or make! It can really do damage to human relationships just like it did to the protagonist in the Pearl. Thank you, John Steinbeck, and I really appreciated East of Eden, the Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men too! 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Ex-Post Analysis (事后分析, 사후 분석)

In the financial world, ex-post analysis is a useful to use previous results in the stock market to predict future results. For example, this upcoming week is a huge earnings week for a broad section of the market, including stocks I own like Boeing, Amazon, Tesla, Apple, Facebook, Google, Honeywell, MSFT, and other companies that make up a huge swath of the S&P500. I can use what I've learned from previous earnings reports to inform how I should react to the earnings reports of those companies. For many of these companies, I've held that long enough now that I know that a disappointing earnings report from any of them (and I mean hugely disappointing, like 7 or 8% down in one session) doesn't necessarily signal that the peak has arrived and it's all downhill sledding from here, I can feel comfortable enough to buy on that dip and feel confident from past experience that it's going to snap right back up, or take longer but eventually get back to gong up steadily. 

What I don't like about ex-post analysis is how it's used in the real world: looking back at things that happened to point out mistakes that people made and what they should have done differently, even though we're looking back at it with perfect information as to what eventually happened, no matter how unlikely that event would have seemed to occur beforehand. We do it in analysis of the news, sports, gambling, relationships, how people should have lived their lives, it's an easy trap to fall into. It would be like me going back and looking at why NFLX just dipped 10% after it reported earnings and point to factors like increased competition, people coming out of Covid lockdowns who don't streaming TV anymore, and others to explain why OBVIOUSLY people should have sold the stock before earnings.......but not take the further step of using it to help inform the decision for next time, just using it as a way to criticize others for not having seen it earlier, despite having the advantage of perfect hindsight being after the fact. 

One of my least favorite things about fantasy baseball is how often the most unlikely thngs can happen, like a batter who has a lifetime .050 average hits a home run in a key situation, or some other flukey event. Such a huge discrepancy, to not knowing anything about how the world will turn out before something happens, to having complete full knowledge of what occurred after the fact. Even the most unlikely, once-in-a-lifetime Black Swan event like Covid-19 can be accepted easily as "of course that happened" quickly as soon as it does happen. There's no hedging like "oh maybe it went from a 1% chance of happening to 50% chance of happening..." nope, it goes from 1% to 100% immediately, or from 99.999% to 0% immediately. It reminds me of what a certain moral philsopher whom MJ and I both knew who believed in "black and white," or his most famous phrase, "There was always a 100% chance of something happening, or a 0% chance. No in-between." I laughed his statement off at the time as overly simplified and nonsensical, but the more I think about it I kind of understand what he's getting at. 

I guess all this relates back to the recent police shootings stemming from the George Floyd killing in Minnesota almost a year ago.....it's almost a daily event nowadays that a police shooting of a black suspect will be in the news and scrutinized using witness reports and body cam footage. Just hours after Derek Chauvin was found guilty of all counts of murder in the 2nd and 3rd degree and manslaughter, a 16-year-old black girl in Ohio was shot by the police. Once again, there was body cam footage, and this time it divided the nation into people who supported the police officer's actions to kill the girl who had a knife in her hand about to stab another black girl, and those in the nation who believed the officer should not have acted as he did and should be punished. I think one thing we forget, no matter which side of the debate we are on, is that we as the viewers have perfect information as to what happens after the officer makes his/her decision to do what the officer did. We know that the girl was actually the one who had called the cops, we know the 4 bullets the officer used would cause her to die at the scene, and we know that the other girl didn't get stabbed. When the officer arrived at the scene, he had about 5 or 6 seconds to assess the scene, yell commands to "Get down" repeatedly, and then make a split-second decision what to do. He doesn't have the body-cam footage that we all now have, he doesn't have the knowledge that everything will calm down. I guess this makes me sound like I'm on the officer's side, but I'm more against the side of people who watch from their screens in the basement and have a knee-jerk reaction to the shooting and post about it making judgments. 

As for a proposed solution to the police shootings problem? I've thought of one: Give positive interactions for positive police interactions. Use body camera footage, witness testimony, etc. to go back and check every officer's interactions and give out POSITIVE feedback every time there is a good interaction with black people that didn't involve violence and the officer acted correctly without racial prejudice, and add those points up for some sort of reward, increased pay, extra vacation time, a free meal, whatever it is, to give officers incentive to act in a good one. Maybe they already have those, but don't just stress all the negative interactions. Most parents and child caretakers (and camp counselors) know this: children react better to positive reinforcement, and adults really do too. Show some "good apples" in the street and make them examples, and even "bad apples" might want to model their behavior like them. Right now it just feels like there's too many slaps on the reputation of officers and negative reinforcement that engenders a learned helplessness where no matter what officers do they will be blamed in any situation. 

-Robert Yan 

Brainwashed (세뇌를 당하다)

 Brainwashed. Maniuplated. Mislead. Mind controlled. No one wants to be controlled by other people; we all want to make independent decisions and "be ourselves." MJ used to accuse me of brainwashing her into making the financial decisions that I was comfortable with or making my standard of thinking the predominant one, so I know how negative emotions can be conjured from feeling brainwashed. When thinking of authoritarian countries that control everything that their citizens do including the way they think, most think of heavily domineering countries that censor outside opinions and punish those who critize the political leaders, like North Korea, China. Yet with as many ways to express ourselves and all the independence that we have in the U.S., I feel in many ways the country is brainwashed as well, it just hides better in plain sight because we don't think we are. 

It has only been the last few years where I realized how much the media controls the narrative, and how important controlling the narrative shapes the mood of the country, the values of the country. I made a speech at a politics camp before my senior year of high school and railed about the evils of the media and how dangerous they can be for the country, but I was mainly just reading it off of others' opinions, political texts I had read and regurgitated, without fully understanding how the media does it. Perhaps I still don't. Even without any thought of the political leaning of the media, the news has a bias of trying to make money, and they make money by getting the most eyeballs to read or watch their material, and nowadays the most eyeball-catching material is controversial things, eyecatching headlines, sensationalist new stories. I feel it in my daily stock shows or news bulletins: the more drastic the headline, the more I read to make sure I'm not missing anythng, especially if it's about a stock market crash and I feel like I'm losing money. Other news stories work similarly: they play on people's emotions of fear, worry, anger, distrust (usually of the government or other ethnic groups). The slogan used to be "if it bleeds it leads," as in if people died, then that story comes first, and that's still somewhat true, but the real No. 1 story now is politically controversial material. 

I unfortunatley think that this brain-washing effect has colored the coverage of the Derek Chauvin trial, probably the biggest trial since the OJ Simpson case. Specifically, news coverage has already caved to the mob opinion that Chauvin should be guilty and be convicted for the murder of Derek Chauvin. He may still be, but now a murder conviction has become the expected result, and anything short of that (like manslaughter) will be seen as a travesty and cause riots in Minneapolis and cities all across the world. As a lawyer who was trained in law school to assess all the facts and apply the law, it sure seems like there has been enough reasonable doubt that George Floyd's death may have been partially caused by factors other than Derek Chauvin's knee, and even if there was direct causation that Floyd was killed by Chauvin, that Chauvin did not act maliciously. I haven't seen enough evidence of murder from the limited amount that I have seen of the case, and even non-lawyers know that a murder conviction requires certainty beyond a reasonable doubt. Unfortunatley the media know that there is a lot of raw emotion with this case and is feeding off of the racial motivations and making this case about systemic racism and police brutality against black Americans, which I haven't seen any evidence that this case was racially motivated......but that narrative gets the most attention, and that's what sells. So instead of, when later in the week the jury comes back with a verdict in this case, this being a minor case with local coverage about a black man who died due to a police officer's misconduct, this will be the biggest news story in the U.S. representing the system vs. the common man and white people v. blacks and the police v. blacks.....we are unfortunately being brainwashed by the media to think this way, and it will have some really bad effects if a certan outcome (maybe the right outcome legally, but the wrong one for many) isn't reached. 

Geocaching

 Today I downloaded an app for the first time in a while. I'm a pretty basic person, not prone to playing games or getting the latest trendy app on my phone; I just extract what I need. But after reading Ken Jennings (he's quickly becoming my hero) on geography nerds called Maphead, and spending a wonderful day outdoors, I decided to add "Geocaching" to my list of apps including Google Maps (one of the more useful geographic tools we have and Ken covers it in his book), Youtube (the addicting app that I should probably hide), Facebook (the one I've contemplated deleting many times), imiwa? (Japanese dictionary), MLB (baseball app that I've logged into way too many times in a sugar rush-inducing 2-week start to the major league season, Robinhood (panned by millenial investors as selling out to the big corporations and hedge funds, but I guess I've sold out), and Podcasts, and Mail. Really the only apps I need other than the occasional Uber ride, Instagram check, or selfie. 

Geocaching is not a new concept to me, as I learned it from a law school friend during the way-too-long-ago law school years finding myself in my early 20's in Los Angeles (on the surface not a bad situation to be in, but I was in Los Angeles, had acne so my dating life was non-existent, and job anxieties took a toll) I discovered this cool Pokemon-like game of finding Geocache boxes in various areas in nature. It gave my Wanderlust some justification, as I often like to just go some place new just to feel something different, feel the air, how the roads lead up to that spot, what kind of greenery exists and how green, and know everything about that place, even if it's in the middle of nowhere. For a few short weeks Geocaching was on my mind and I was hungry to get to the next one and find the next box on my own, but it's a very isolating game if you can't drag someone along with you: usually the Geocaches that people leave behind are in remote places hidden so that normal people ("Muggles," as the game community members call them) can't find them. 

I've come to the realization after reading Ken's book: I may secretly be a geography nerd, and have been all throughout my life. Even as a kid I loved reading maps (back when they weren't accessible in seconds through a phone) and liked to map the best direction to get our next location on family road trips. My parents, who admittedly aren't the best navigators and often find themselves lost and frustrated on said road trips (my dad often gets a "sense" about which direction to go, but it's often wise to go the exact opposite way of what he senses), I loved just looking at maps as a kid, or the globe, and I liked exploring cities by just getting lost in them and trying to find my way myself. Oh and I love reading subway maps, especially if they're in a foreign language. My affinity for visiting various colleges around the world probably stems from the geography nerdiness, as well as the desire to go somewhere new and check it off a list. It's comforting to know that I'm not alone, there are tons of people who have that obsession of knowing where they are at any given time in relation to how the world is, and even a nerdy competition similar to the Spelling Bee for young geograhy scholars: the Geography Bee! It's a shame I never took geography as a class, even in high school because it wasn't one of the coveted "Honors" classes that would raise my GPA and position me for college; looking back, a class in geography likely would have had much more practical value to me than some other subjects and DEFINITELY been more enjoyable and opened doors to a whole new world out there. It's not too late! The world still awaits. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

High quality (고품질, 高品質)

 When thinking about using high quality products, I'm often reminded of what Aziz Ansari said in an interview (before his reputation was tarnished by allegations of sexual misconduct) about the one thing he is happy to have spent money on during his career (the thing he least regrets), and his answer was the extra comfort he enjoyed from flying business class or first class on airplanes when flying across the country for shows. My initial reaction was, that's actually the LAST thing I spend money on, comfort! It's not surprising for a guy who played Tom Haverford, a well-dressed, high-spender South Asian government employee who often "treated himself" with lavish expenditures, to spend on high quality, but recently I've been realizing the extra value in high quality, as in there's actually more value in getting the higher quality item...sometimes. It's like buying an "expensive" stock like Amazon at $3400 versus a "cheap" stock like Gamestop, $141.........Amazon is cheaper because it has better earnings, future earnings, growth, everything you want in a stock! 

The analogy works on a number of different arenas as well. Just recently I got the JNJ vaccine, but turns out it causes blood cotting in a very very low percentage of the population, and now it's been halted! I would still recommend getting the vaccine and even the JNJ vaccine if that's the one that's available, but it adds more fuel to the building opinion that Pfizer and Moderna are superior vaccines (by effectiveness), and now by the fact they don't raise serious questions about damaging side effects. The only good thing about JNJ is its one-shot convenience, but I've found that that sort of "covenience" sometimes doesn't save time in the long run, like if I have to get a Pfier and Moderna shot anyway down the road if and when the JNJ vaccine loses effectiveness. It's a lot like computers I bought in the past, I got the $200 laptops that I filtered by price on Amazon, whereas MJ got the more durable, virus-protected Apple Mac, and she gets to use it longer plus gets the better quality computer during that time, and if hers costs triple what my laptop costs but lasts 3 times longer, it's a good deal for her! 

As some major purchases are coming up for MJ and I like buying another car (we share my good 'ole 2013 Honda Accord for now) and houses (oh man just the thought of home buying makes me nervous) that's something to keep in mind, and makes MJ's clammoring for a Tesla or similarly high-priced but next-level technology car that much more convincing. 

Part of my new-found appreciation for high quality also has to do with age...I can't eat buffets all the time anymore! My stomach, digestive tract, and more importantly taste buds, just can't handle it anymore. Sure a 2 for $5 deal at a fast-food restaurant (McDonald's, Arby's, Burger King seem to have those specials revved up all the time) seems tempting and is much less than a meal at a sit-in or even just a decent restaurant, but the fast-food just doesn't taste like real food anymore, so my mindset shifts to that $5 being actually a waste of money rather than a saving from having a nice meal, it's just $5 wasted dollars to make me less healthy and feel greasy. I'll instead try to savor my food even though there's less of it, not just wolfing it down and forget the taste. Oh and Youtube subscriptions/ other online digitial subscriptions to take out the ads? I'm really thinking about doing it.....ads and interruptions are just like fast food except they're draining the most limited and precious of all resources.....time. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Police Academy (경찰 아카데미, 警察学校)

 Ever since the June 2020 protests over George Floyd's killing and the Black Lives Matter movement, I've wondered how police forces around the country would fare, whether they'd be defunded in the Defund the Police campaign, and even more than ever how hard it is to be a police officer nowadays. 

I've been disillusioned recently by how many people from my high school ended up being a doctor and getting a M.D., especially those in the Honors classes and AP classes. Everyone has a good reason, of coure, to get a good job and have financial stability, but it seems unbalanced that all the smartest and high-achieving people in the schools choose to become doctors and lawyers and engineers (and more recently, computer programmers). What about all those tough jobs like teachers, nurses, and police officers? Not that doctors and lawyers don't work a lot or work hard, but the latter group of jobs are more fundamental to our society, and have a reputation for not getting paid very well, making them even more attactive to high-achieving people. 

I read a recent article in Time magazine (yes, I still read news magazines even in 2021!) by Melissa Chan about police departments struggling to recruit black cops, and one police academy in Jefferson City, MO trying to recruit more black officers. My first reaction was "duh, of course after all the BLM events, black people won't want to join what's increasingly being patrolled as the enemies, the other team." The article made me think too, who really wants to be a cop nowadays? It's a physically demanding job, you deal with criminals and potential lawbreakers, you have to carry a gun because the job is inherently dangerously, and there is actually a risk of dying on the job. Oh and the job has a bad reputation nowadays. According to the article, 260 law-enforcement officers died on duty in 2020. That's more than a "hit-by-lightning" or "eaten-by-a-shark" random chance event, that's a significant amount. Add to that the general populace doesn't trust cops nowadays. I just got called out of the blue by a law firm investigating the police officer who cited me for allegedly jaywalking in downtown L.A. 3 years ago, apparently that officer is the target of a criminal investigation. They're like referees in a baseball game: nobody talks about if they police do a good job, but eveyone will criticize them if they do a bad job. It sucks to be a GOOD police officer (unlike the cop who stopped me) because no matter how good of a job you try to do, you're always one bad interaction away from disgrace and giving all cops everywhere a bad name. Every time a bad cop ends up on the news, all cops everywhere get a hit on their reputation. Lawyers already have a bad reputation with the public, but we still get work from corporations and big businesses, and we don't necessarily have to deal with ordinary people each and every day who are propounding "Defund the Police" demands and "All Cops are Bastards" (a truly unproductive overreaction to the police unrest over the summer). 

I guess my point is, as much as society is down on police officers (and I'm not a cop-lover neither, I see plenty of bad police work) I'm grateful to those who do the work and continue to try to do a good job despite the current environment, especially those (as pointed about by the Time article) who stepped up to the challenge specifically because of the George Floyd protests to show that policing can be done in a better, more responsible way. According to the article, police departments everywhere are updating their training to show what are the correct ways to make arrests, restrain assailants, etc. Andrew Yang once suggested that all police be required to be get a purple belt in jiu-jitsu. Seems another difficult standard to uphold just to be an officer (and why police departments likely need MORE funds and not less funds to incentivize more training and get better officers). Only with better job perks, better pay, or better reasons to join the police force than just "responding to the call" or "proving to society things can change" (very noble reasons, but most people's motivations are better aroused with cold hard cash) will you get more capable, high-achieving people to join. 

Despite the Derek Chauvin being on trial for the murder of George Floyd even now, policing still has to be done- crime doesn't stop. Hopefully we'll get enough good candidates (and black officers!) to apply and become good officers, so people like me who live off the work of others should be thankful for officers, or the good ones at least. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Side Effects ( 부작용, 副作用)

 I had April 7, 2021 marked down in my calendar: it carried so much promise to allow me once again to enjoy the freedoms of traveling around the world and going to places outside my little 750 square foot apartment, so much hope for a new life post-pandemic, so much intrigue in finding out what all this fuss about Covid vaccines was all about, and so much FOMO, fear of missing out on all the fun that everyone already had posting their vaccine photos. I wanted in on the action, and finally it was my turn. 

Much like many anticipated days in my life, though, this one........didn't meet expectations. In fact, I was proven to be blindly naive about the side effects of the Covid-19 vaccine, which I'd only heard passing remarks about from my parents and friends. It's a component of vaccines that has been suppressed by mainstream media, likely to encourage people to get the vaccine and not back away from it. I got the JNJ vaccine, which is a one-and-done shot which sounded great to me because I didn't need to go again, and only one quick jab into my arm, and presto! I'm vaccinated. And for a blissful hour, it worked out beautifully: I scheduled my shot, went to the facility where it was being administered, sat down with a local volunteer nurse who would give me my shot, Nope no allergies to needles, Yes I consent to getting the vaccine (they were required to notify me I had alternatives to taking the vaccine, which was to NOT take the vaccine.....Thanks!), and pretty soon the needle went in. Still a bit of an unexpected pain, but nothing I wasn't use to from blood donations, and pretty soon the nurse had put the Daffy Duck band-aid on my left arm and I was ready to go! I went back home and got back to working from my remote work computer again like nothing had happened. Happy times ahead! 

Oh but something had indeed happened. See, the JNJ vaccine injected an adenovirus into my body with a single coronavirus gene with instructions for making the Covid vaccine so that my body could create the antibodies needed to fight the vaccine. And yes my body reacted. I was still fine after work and went for my evening run without a problem, but towards the tail end I was already feeling some weakening effects and often stopped to pause for breaks. After dinner, I started feeling a little hot, flushed in the face, and my head started burning. And I wanted to curl up into a ball under the blankets in bed, something that MJ does pretty frequently but now I understand why........my body felt very weak, and I had to convince every muscle in my body just to move around. It wasn't much different than having a cold, without any nose stuffiness or dripping, just weakness. At one point I remember asking myself, "was it worth it to get the vaccine? Should I have just risked not getting it and waiting it out? It's almost as if I gave myself Covid to fight Covid!" Except the vaccine doesn't actually give us Covid, what I felt was just the side effects of the vaccine. The side effects were exactly as advertised: arm soreness, body aches, fatigue, and a low-grade fever, yet I felt a little overwhelmed by the onset of it so quickly. Apparently I wasn't alone: Just in the Raleigh area, the PNC Arena stopped giving out JNJ vaccine shots today after four people were hospitalized from the side effects, and three of those developed those effects within 15 minutes of getting the shot! Pretty horrifying for those people, as immediate buyer's remorse must have set in. I guess ultimately, I should be pretty happy: I took a few naps during the day, Nurse MJ prescribed me some Tylenol, and as of this writing I feel pretty much back to normal. A 30-hour or so bout of epic proportions that will hopefully last me a while (even 6 months would be good!) Future vaccine shots will likely produce similar side effects, but maybe my body will get used to it? I remember the first time I got the flu shot I had similar side effects. 

This reminds me to remember to read the side effects of any drug I take. Side effects are no joke! 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

심사숙고 深思熟考 (Thinking Deeply and Carefully)

 Our household is divided into 2 general camps: MJ and is a deep thinker who ponders about something for a long time before making a decision: she'll routinely ponder over how to word an important email for what seems like an hour before finally sending it out, only for me to later find out it was just a thank you note that was a route "Hello thank you, hope to work with you again soon." On the other hand, I make some pretty drastic decisions rather quickly and can be considered rash, but the decision gets made quicker without agonizing over it for too long. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. It's become such a noticeable contrast in our relationship that I often tease her, "are you thinking too much again?" if there is even a hint of her staring blankly and pondering something, or being hesitant and indecisive. 

To me, the worst outcome is to think long and deeply about omething, but then still make the wrong decision. This could happen just because we don't have all the information available; we don't know what the world will be like in a year, we don't know what other people are thinking, we don't know how the economy will turn out in the future; we just simply don't know the future. Sometimes we make the right decision given what we know, but bad luck makes it a bad decision. For example, my law school decision, in hindsight, might have been the wrong decision, even though I researched all the schools I applied to meticulously, drove all the way from Chicago to St. Louis to take the campus visit and even met with a law school dean (who had a wonderful memory for zip codes and knew that I lived in Dupage county based on my 60561 zip code. Of all the talents to have.....that one probably hasn't aged well in the digitial world). I made the decision based on what my 20-year-old self felt was important, not my 30-year-old self, so the decision in hindsight didn't seem the best. Ultimately, though, even if I make some bad decisions along the way, I figure if I stick to my foundational principles and general philosophy, I'll wind up generally in the right place over time, so the time I spent worried, agitated, and indecisive over the decision tends to be wasted. 

Other decisions like what to eat for dinner, what to wear outside, are even less consequential to me compared to life-altering career decisions, so I tend to make those in seconds, sometimes even less than a second ( I am the opposite of Meg Ryan's character in When Harry Met Sally at a restaurant, hoping to just order the most obvious thing, eat it, and admire its tastiness). Often this works for food if I'm cooking something, because I can throw other stuff into a meal and combine them to create a 2 dishes for MJ and I, without planning on it beforehand. This is also a testament to MJ's ability to adapt to my lack of pickiness, as her standards have come down, especially when she's worried about getting the best grade she can in class and not about what she's tasting). 

On the flip side, I sometimes make very important decisions very quickly, like selling a large portion of my investments, based on emotional impulse (usually it's "I want to stop losing money!") These are the times I wish MJ's thoughtfulness would kick in, and I can just delay the decision and give it some more thought. I've tried the "come back to it in 30 minutes" method, and it's pretty useful: it helps with submitting emails to not rush and miss obvious spelling errors, a second read through with "fresh eyes" spots the errors much easier, responding to a job offer or an invitation to a party: the instant response is encouraged in our society nowadays as everything is NOW! NOW! NOW!, but letting something happen and "marinating on it" for awhile usually reduces the possibility of an impulse. ESPECIALLY when I'm about to post something mean or nasty somewhere, even if they deserved it like the apartment complex not fixing the elevator or picking up the garbage even though we paid for valet trash service..... I usually come up with something better or more effective to say after a few hours or a day, or just complete it altogether, likely for the better. 

Luckily, sometimes (actually more times than we realize, we just don't keep count of obvious decisions like "do I run this red light or not?") life gives us easy decisions: no-brainers. MJ recently was presented with a good quandary to have: Multiple job offers! And she already seemed to be going down a slippery slope of agonizing and thinking too much, but the hospital she interviewed with kind of made the decision for her, so she won't have much regret. I think that's what causes all the thinking and thoughtfulness, is being burned before: we don't want to get burned again. Past regret is the mother of thoughtfulness. Hopefully, we don't have to get schooled by mother too many times. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

The Roaring Twenties

Here at the tail end of the pandemic, many economists are forecasting a "Roaring Twenties" scenario playing out where the economy reopens and roars after everything was closed during the pandemic. Especially with the weather cooperating and the U.S. just crossing the one-year anniversary since Covid started, it is definitely starting to look that way, with retaurants being packed with patrons and peopel being ecouraged to come outside once again. It's times like these where we realize how many people there are in the world: I often have to remind myself how many people is a million people. I can imagine a thousand people fitting into one room, with all of their various eccentricities, ethnicities, genders, etc., but for a million people I have to imagine those 1000 people as a unit, and then imagine 1000 more of those units. That's a million people. And the U.S. (just by documented population, the actual figure is probably more than) 330 of those millions. Luckily, we are now also vaccinating 3-4 million per day for Covid, so those 330 million people will largely be vaccinated. 

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to live through the Roaring Twenties (or as my friend calls it, "what a time to be alive.") The history of the world has so many time where I didn't want to be alive due to diseases, lack of air conditing, transportation, etc., but the Roaring Twenties does indeed sound like an optimistic time, with no inventions like automobiles, film, radio, etc., and lack of warfare. The problem I see in today's world is that it seems like we aleady have everything, and new inventions and ways of living just seem like excesses, shortcuts to doing something that's already been streamlined to the necessary amount. Then again, I'm sure the people in the 1910's thought that life was just fine already: delivery by snail mail, horse and buggy, calling people by telephone (were telephones even around?), so maybe we are still missing something that will give us great pleasure and convenience that we haven't even thought of before. My point is just that there seems to be diminishing returns to our innovations now: the jump from horses to automobiles was a big one, but will the jump from cars to self-driving vehicles be as big of a jump? That would require something revolutionary like teleportation, which I don't think we will create in my lifetime. Same with artificial intelligence: we got the computer and devices that can store the entirety of the human knowledge in the palm of one's hand, but can we upload it into people's minds in my lifetime? That seems less impossible, especially since I plan on living until I'm 100, especially with the medical innovations available today. 

Also, there can be new artistic innovations. MJ likes to school me on things like art deco, which developed in the 1920's and produced such exquisite works as the Chrysler Building and New York skyscrapers, so there's definitely more room for new and exciting art. What will be the new exciting world places to live during the Roaring Twenties that future civilizations will be jealous of and yearn for a time machine to travel back to, like 1890's Paris or 1920's New York? It might still be the same big cities, but maybe some emerging places like Austin, Texas, Seattle, Washington, or San Francisco? Silicon Valley of the 1990's or 2000's would be a great place to time travel back to and examine everything that happened in the tech world, where events that changed the world exponentially occurred in single home garages or fraternatiy houses (Facebook). Heck, the best innovations of the next decade or generation could have been created in someone's home office during the 2020 pandemic. I alway regret that I was born a little too late to have a cognizant understanding of what was going on in the 1990's, and used my newly-bought Compuserve computer in 1997 to just play video games and write 5th grade essays. Then again, maybe I was born at just the right time to fully experience the new 21st century Roaring Twenties. Life is all about timing, and maybe we've gone through the pandemic just to set up for the biggest time of our life (or it can be a gigantic disappointment of relapse into another pandemic, stock market bubble burst, political polarization leading to warfare and trife, who knows). Whatever the case, what a time to be alive. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan