One Happy Family (天伦之乐)

 There's a phrase in the Chinese language roughly translated as "heavenly joy," referring to the happiness when a family is all united again. One of the fundamental appeals of the Chinese nuclear family concept, and one that is shared in most cultures, even in America (see Fast and Furious movies, 1-9) even though concepts of "modern family" and new age family alter the traditional definition somewhat. Indeed, I am pretty lucky to have been raised in a 2-parent household (as did MJ, who is with her family now in Korea!) and may of my conceptions of family and happiness and being together with other people stems from my childhood of all staying under one roof, even if it was a dirty roof with cramped rooms while I slept in the same room as my grnadfather and woke up with a ton of mosquito bites. Not everyone gets to have that, and some go through life in need of father/mother/parent figures. I especially feel sympathy for those in the LGBT community who are outcasted from their family because of their sexual orientation and unwillingness of their families to accept them for who they are. I think it might be important to look at the bigger picture, that LGBT people are not willingly trying to betray their families and likely need their family more than ever when dealing with difficult personal issues. 

I guess my idea of family carries through to who I like to hang out with. Whereas MJ likes to do one-on-one meet-ups with friends for intimate conversations (the Joe Rogan podcast form), I actually prefer the large friend outing where the group goes out together and form relationships with each and every member of the group, embracing each other's similarities and differences. For example, last night I went out to an annual gathering of our USC Law fantasy baseball league to the Dodger-Giants game (a crowd 52,000 people, showing how motivated people to get out there after the pandemic). This was the 10-year anniversary of us all graduating from USC Law, but we stayed connected through baseball even though everyone lives in different parts of the world, people are brannching off and starting their own families (babies!). Even with some minor disagreements over the years and various idiosyncracies (I am considered the "AirbnBobby" of the group due to my nomadic behavior), it was good to connect with that particular group of people, just one of the families we all belong to. 

MJ often asks me why I want to have child(ren), and it's not an easy answer: I am aware of the downsides of having a baby: loss of sleep, loss of free time, enormous cost over the lifespan of the child. I often have to explain with vague concepts of "love," "I've always wanted to have children," "I worked well with children," "I want to continue the family tradition," "I want to have more people in my life that I adore and trust as much as you, MJ baby!" and "we will make a very healthy, happy, and smart baby because of who we are" (of course, not necessarily but I am optimistic) but I think of the driving factors is that I grew up in a loving family that made me want the same thing when I grrew up. I can definitely envision children of broken families seeing the sadness of divorce and feeling their love divided, so I get why people might hesitate. Also, the longer MJ and I are together, the longer it seems likely we will stay together forever to build our family, so bit by bit MJ is buying into the program. It probably doesn't hurt that I show her pictures of all my friends and relatives having babies (that's the trick, right?) 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Bicycle (자전거, 自転車, 自行车)

 I had a fun weekend this past weekend with some dodgeball (more than 15 months after I played the last time, I forgot to take it easy and felt sore all over my body the next day, but it was worth it!) and went to a party where the topic of 1980's movies came up because the common theme of "they just don't make movies like they used to anymore" came up. I realized that both MJ and I have a collective movies-watched collection that goes back only to the 1990's or so, and any movies beyond that had to have been real classics like "The Godfather" or "Gone with the Wind" (actually never saw that, although I know the story of Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, etc. I realized that although born in the 80's, my first true dive into the movie world was in the 90's and never really got into classic movies, so that's where my "movie watching career" began. The gentlemen I talked to was of a slightly older ilk/generation and mentioned some great 80's movies like Teen Wolf, "Atlantic City" (Susan Sarandon aspires to be a blackjack dealer in Monte Carlo, something I admit I've romanticized about) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Basically all movies that could possibly come up on Jeopardy randomly in the a "classic movies" category that I wouldn't be able to name. I then went home and frantically watched clips of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the first Indiana Jones movie that I had actually saw as a live show in Disneyland as a kid. The 80's: what a time to be alive. 

Speaking of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, I have embarked on many journeys in my life using various forms of transportion, some have given me great experiences (my first time in a plane was traveling from Shanghai to Chicago when I was four and a half years old, leaving the East to start a new life in the West) but also some of my worst experiences like going whale watching on a small, crowded, rocking ship without taking Dramamine or anything to prevent seasickness, and feeling like I was going to puke the whole time, didn't see any whales but did see the regurgitations of what I had eaten that morning........anyway, bicycle would belong in the former category of good experiences, riding around Waterfall Glen with my dad in suburban Chicago, riding down Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago, even just riding around the neighborhood with friends during long summers where there were less distractions and screens and more free time to go out and be one with nature. 

During the pandemic, the new hot craze was Peloton, a stationary bike that cost over $2000 but offered the chance to join a community of people also doing it and to join the leaderboard. Sounded a bit like a cult, to be honest, and I just never understood the appeal of biking in doors, indoor exercise bikes, etc., especially if it's not snowing or raining outside. To me, half the working out process is getting out of the house, going to new places, letting the wind rip through my hair and cool my body, completing a journey somewhere and back, whether it be down a 10-mile loop around a lake or just the most routine ride around the neighborhood. It's the same appeal as running for me, but with the ability to go much farther distances. Perhaps that's what got me into the Tour de France, for most it's just a bike race with lots of colorful jerseys and riders mostly packed together into indiscernable groups called "the peloton" but for me it was also the scenery of rural France, climbing mountains, cutting through lush meadows, and riding into Paris in the home stretch. There was a group in college that organized a bike across America during the summer, and it's become one of my main regrets as an adult not to have participated; perhaps I will later on in life. 

I'm not a fast rider, I'm not a good rider; I never learned how to ride with no hands, a skill that seems so natural to competitors in the Tour de France but even just the local kids around the neighborhood. I just never took that step of getting my last hand off of the handlebar and just letting the bike go. Well I finally did it today, successfully riding for 10 seconds without the use of hands, and understood something about the exercise: you have to have good balance, and you have to have the right bike that maintains the right balance. I never had a combination of the two, and most times didn't have either. I always felt that right after letting go the bike would just tilt and fall, causing me to crash and burn, which I was justified in doing so. This time with the right bike, the bike just sort of kept going along like I still had my hands on it, no need to shift my weight or make any crazy adjustments. I felt similar to how all kids feel when riding a bike for the first time: free and accomplished, ready to conquer the world. Even at my age, sometimes doing something for the first time can be a great experience. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Newspaper (报纸, 新聞, 신문)

 On Saturday I did something I haven't done in (at least) 15 months, and it's not something most people craved after enduring the pandemic: going to a restaurant, going to a concert, attending a party, although all of those were nice to experience. I went to a library, which is now fully open, and yup, as expected the books were all still there, waiting for me. MJ and I went to Barnes and Noble earlier, and yes the aesthetics are more pleasing at a bookstore, it smells nice, with good spots to sit and read and the space is more roomy, the music makes you want to buy at a bookstore, but a library still has quaint qualities about it. MJ doesn't like libraries (other than digital libraries so she doesn't have to go in one) because of this one traumatic experience she had of opening up a library book one time and there being a dead bug in it. I personally find that as library patronage has dropped off in the digital age, books tend to become newer and in better condition because less people have checked them out......people don't read, and so I'm essentially checking out a new or newish book. Encyclopedias, new releases, foreign language books, graphic novels, the deeper I go into a library the more I feel like I'm entering into a different world, like the kids from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe crossing over into Narnia. There's also the periodicals section, which is a veritable treasure trove of up-to-date magazines and newspapers: Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, Time Magazine, all updated and ready for me to peruse. There's really nothing like sitting down on a couch free of pressure of having to buy like at a bookstore. 

I've gone over my nostalgia for newspapers before, how I used to pick up the newspaper from the driveway rain or shine (a lot of times it'd rain in suburban Chicago, or even snow) and pull it out of its cover ready to decour all the contents. Back then I was a little too into sports, choosing to check the scores of last night's baseball games or get the best sports headlines right away rather than business news (STOCKS!) or world/ current news. 

Nowadays, though, newspapers represent one additional aspect to me: a bond to my 95-year-old grandpa, who still lives with my grandparents. He still gets the World Journal, which might sound odd for non-Mandarin speakers, but it's essentially the main Chinese-language newspaper in the U.S., or at least in Southern California where my parents live. I gotta say the World Journal does not lack for up-to-date reporting, even in a digital world, getting top headlines that just happened into the next morning's paper, with different sections like local news, business news, etc. My grandpa spends hours reading the paper every day, as he has done for the last 30 years, ever since he came with me from China. But in the last decade, I've grown accustomed to reading the Chinese newspaper with him, asking him vocabulary words I'm not familiar with. It's a mutually beneficial relationship: I get to learn new words and phrases while learning about the news, while my grandpa gets to show off the depth of knowledge of Chinese culture and Chinese history and also Chinese etymology. I don't think I've ever really stumped him with any words in the newspaper, except maybe new online-based words that have developed in the last 10 years. And even those he has some idea of what they may mean. He is a profoundly useful resource, and I make sure not to waste it when I come visit my parents. It's also a great way to bond with my grandpa who hasn't had much company except my parents ever since the pandemic shut everything down; he hasn't been able to visit the senior citizens activity center that he used to go to. He doesn't act like it's a big deal or complain about it, but we can tell he's itching to go and reconnecting with everyone,just like we all are itching to see our friends. My grandpa also has this thing about "letting everyone know he is still alive," which I guess is a constant source of price when you're his age. With reading the World Journal, though, I totally unplug from phones and computers for about an hour or so and it's like I was a child again, taking Chinese lessons from my grandpa who was explaining the meaning of words but also explaining the history of China and where certain words came from, like the best Chinese tutor you could get, or in an analogy Americans might relate to better, Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel-san all the tools and techniques he needed in the Karate Kid. So reading newspapers is not only a relic from the past I cherish, but the act of reading and learning from my grandpa doubles the value of the exercise. I plan to continue the tradition indefinitely, or until newspapers go out of business entirely (not for awhile, if I and other avid readers can help it). 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

SAT exam (SAT考试, SAT試験, SAT 시험)

 Recently California state colleges prohibited the use of the SAT exam as a factor for college admissions. The SAT exam is a sort of ritual for all high school students who wish to attend college taken during their junior or senior years (some high achievers even take it in their sophomore or freshman years) to try to get the best score possible to make themselves attractive to colleges. I'd been hearing for years how the SAT might discriminate against some students in the types of questions they answer, but I also thought that the test had tried to balance that out by appealing to different backgrounds in their reading passages. Ultimately, the test is divided into verbal and math sections, so there's only so much you can do to make it "non-discriminatory," although I'm not sure how testing those subjects discriminates against underrepresented populations.....math and vocabulary/ reading comprehension seem like pretty basic tenets of a college student's curriculum. Trying to look at it from the other perspective, though, the SAT does allow wealthier students from wealthy backgrounds to prepare constantly for the exam and get as much help to take the exam as money can buy, whereas people from poorer backgrounds don't have the economic resources or the time to worry about college and taking the SAT. Personally, I have generally fond memories of taking the SAT, not necessarily of studying for it and reading short passages from scholarly articles but in the thrill of taking the exam, I actually like the adrenaline rush of going into an exam under time pressure and using the skills I'd gathered over weeks of studying and memorizing vocabulary words through flashcards. And I liked doing the math puzzles, as they represented a small challenge and would occasionally stump me for a little bit before I would inevitably figure it out. Looking back, I think that's the big challenge with the SAT: certain students can just naturally figure out the math problems through just knowing math rules, studying math at a young age, having analytical brains, etc., that the math questions are a cinch, while on the other end of the spectrum some students rack their brains for the right answer but just can't seem to crack it. The testmakers couldn't make it easier for fear of making it too easy for the top scorers but couldn't make it harder due to the low scorers. 

My first reaction when I heard the news was, "that's a lot of SAT teachers who are suddenly out of a job in California!" And it will probably continue throughout the country, as California will likely set the trend for other states to adopt the same measures. Because of the number of high school students (and their parents!) who see the SAT as the Holy Grail of exams to get into the college of their dreams, SAT prep courses make tons of money if only from profiting off the fears of students (Andrew Yang, the presidential candidate from 2020, made his fortune from SAT prep). I can understand giving the option to colleges not to accept the SAT exam, but to disallow the use of the SAT exam seems to be overcompensating in the wrong direction. Is there an alternative to the SAT? How do colleges make decisions now? Just based on GPA and "soft factors" like extracurricular activites, the essay, leadership, etc.? Difficult to quantify and compare betwen students, even for GPA, which have different scales around the country (4.0, 5.0, my school was a 6.0 system) and varies based on how lenient schools are with grades. 

Should we just make it a pass/fail, a sort of entrance exam for college? MJ just took her NCLEX exam for nurses which tests her qualification to be a nurse. Should there just be a qualification exam for college students, you need to know this much before going on to college? 

Taking away the SAT also contemplates what makes a good student anyway and what's the role of college? If it's to gain knowledge, I've learned the hard way from going through different educational systems that the quality of education really depends on yourself, how much you apply yourself. (There may be a small difference in private v. public schools in terms of how much they value the individual student and cater to your needs as opposed to just taking your tuition money and pumping you out of their system like a number. The value of the school is mostly just the school name, the name on your diploma when advertising yourself out to others. Should the SAT be used to determine one's ability to pay $$$ to get that piece of paper to be able to advertise yourself? This whole process implies that college is super valuable and that the SAT shouldn't be a determinant for such a prestigious accolade of going to top schools. I don't see it that way; I think the creme rises to the top no matter what, especially in today's society where anyone can learn anything or do anything they want with the internet. The colleges just become brand names that people pay hefty amounts of money to obtain, and the cycle perpetuates itself because the best students go to the best schools and go on to do well, leading more students to believe it's worth it. What if college is just a.......wait for it.......pyramid scheme that the whole world has just bought into blindly without thinking about it? MJ used to be in the world of academia and didn't come out of it with a great impression of it, and that's what I think all of the SAT and admissions and diversity is doing is just perpetuating the myth that college is the end-all and be-all, when in reality it's just a place to meet a lot of students who are just like you trying to make it in the world and so you can have the "college experience" of living in a college atmosphere for 3/4 years of your life, a rite of passage and a diploma at the end. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Dragon Boat Festival day (端午节)

 Happy Dragon Boat Festival day! A Chinese holiday that very few Americans that are not Chinese-American would know. It celebrates the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, where Chinese people do "dragon boat" racing, which is exactly what it sounds like, racing down the river with boats that are painted and shaped like dragons. We also eat "zongzi," or red bean rice cakes wrapped in reed/bamboo. Very iconic. Chinese people really like dragons, if you didn't know.....they are the symbol of prosperity, virility, bravery, basically anything good that can come from a sign of the zodiac. The next year for giving birth to a dragon would be 2024, for anyone planning that far ahead. Until then, we're stuck with years of the rat, ox, tiger, and rabbit. (I just missed being either a tiger or a dragon). 

Often times with everything going on, I forget about Chinese holidays: there are actually quite a lot of them, but the main ones is just Chinese New Year, or the Lunar New Year. It's interesting learning about every culture's different types of holidays because they're often inspired by their history, or historic people, or myths and superstitions. It also reveals what kind of food those cultures eat (like zongzi is mainly made from rice, a staple of Chinese culture). MJ and I are friends with a Jewish couple who invite us to join their Passover celebration every year and serve seder plate for everyone and telling the story of Passover in the Jewish culture. Although it's a somewhat religious affair that might conflict with other people's rigid religious customs, I find it to be a great educational opportunity for learning about the the Exodus, Moses, the flight of the Jews from the pharaoh, the curses and frogs raining down, etc. Growing up in a Chinese American household, I wasn't exposed to anything related to the Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament, or Judaism, but I've found through the years that even if you don't necessarily adhere to the religious doctrines of the religions, there's a lot to be gained from understanding what those religions believe in, who their heroes are, what their history consists of. As my Jewish friends tell me, they interpret the Old Testament as a series of stories that teach values to live by. I also find it fascinating that Judaism and Christianity share some scripture, but then also have other areas where they differ greatly, but the similarities involve some of the same things like "be nice to your neighbors," "love everyone," and having a day of rest every week, except Jews celebrate on Saturday and Christians on Sunday. Same idea though, and a good lesson to have. If only we could come to some sort of mutual understanding over some of the conflicting areas of religion, perhaps it would cause less tension in the world and less wars, less bloodshed. But maybe that's just me being naive and not realizing how far apart those cultures are and how much has already happened and unfortunately there's "no going back." 

I just visited 2 of my friends' homes who live in million dollar homes in the L.A. area- one in Mount Washington which is close to downtown near Griffith Observatory, and another in the highly suburban and temperate Redondo Beach area. Both houses were meant to start a family with multiple bedrooms, but they weren't what I'd considered to be "million dollar homes" in my mind when I grew up, which was like gated communities, huge mansions, elegant doors, multiple staircases, crystal chandeliers......nothing of the sort, and that's the trend here in L.A.........most people trade all of those niceties for the ability to live in L.A. That's just how it is now, and especially during the pandemic-fueled home buying craze, and despite some people being angered by the state of California's pandemic policies. It's still one of the premier places in the U.S., maybe the world to live, and once people come here (like my family in 2008) they don't leave. In other places MJ and I have lived, people are genuinely excited to be moving to L.A. or even just SoCal in general.......they are proud to announce it on Facebook, or announce it publicly like they've accomplished something great, or just starting a new adventure, or they quote famous phrase by American newspaper editor Horace Greeley, "Go west, young man." I don't blame them; I felt the same way when I moved from Chicago to L.A. to attend USC Law in 2008. "New chapter in life," "limitless boundaries," "expanding horizons," all coalesced in this idea of L.A. I might even pay a $1 million just to live here. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Moving Company (이사 회사, 搬家公司, 引っ越し会社)

 MJ and I recently had to move, and per usual it was quite the whirlwind of events... and objects, with things seemingly flying off the shelves into boxes at a breakneck pace. I view moving as a necessary means to the end of being able to live in a different location and enjoy new stimulus, so I don't mind the moving process in the grand scheme of things, but it takes a toll on MJ, mostly because of her particularness about how to box materials, fold clothes, mark boxes with pens, put books together, hide dishes and plates in newspaper as not to damage them, etc., etc. I miss the good old days of moving in and out of college with just a van and jamming as many things in there as soon as possible and just throwing out the rest, like Mary Kondo's "Spark Joy" method on steroids with the added benefit of being able to drive away into the sunset never having to think ever again about that dorm room or crowded apartment I was renting with 4 other college dudes. 

I guess that energy has carried over into moving for me in present times, while MJ has a much more......conservationist moving style, until the very end when it doesn't matter for her anymore and we're pressed up against the deadline. She claims that in Korea there are moving companies that do all the packing AND moving all in one inclusive package, so the actual homedwellers don't have to lift a finger. This seems somewhat fantastical given just the sheer density of how many things are crammed in our apartment but also the varying states of disarray that we accumulated without cleaning up for almost a whole year (MJ's reasoning is that we were going to move anyway, so why clean up? Which seems oddly similar to my excuse to my mom since childhood of why I don't make the bed every morning) that I feel like even a seasoned, tolerant Korean moving company that has seen everything would take one look at our disaster area and walk out the door, quitting on the spot. Which makes it seem even more of a miracle that somehow just MJ and I packed up seemingly everything the two of us have ever owned into neat boxes (and also ample plastic bags of blue/green for recycling and trash). It actually was a rather cathartic experience for me, being able to finally clean the place up, and that feeling continued when the U-haul movers came on the appointed day with their truck. It's always pretty eye-opening what kind of tricks movers have to fit everything out the door, but one rule remains: TRY TO LIVE NEAR AN ELEVATOR. 

The one night MJ and I spent after the movers were gone and all that was left in the empty rooms were appliances (fridge, microwave) and no bed was weirdly one of the more memorable experiences of our time living at the apartment, like us getting to see the apartment for the first time. I suddenly appreciated the sounds reverbating off the walls, the air felt more open, and I could walk to all four corners of the rooms quickly! I was almost literally walking on eggshells in our normal living situation, where there was a small 2x2 path that I'd have to follow like a field of landmines to avoid tripping, stepping on something, or banging my knee against something. MJ would argue that's more a result of insufficient overall space rather than the messiness of the apartment, but I'd say it's probably somewhere in between. Whatever the case may be, I'm once again relieved that we survived the Great Move of 2021, which was preceded by the Great Move of 2019 (MJ did that one mostly on her own while I was away for work, not sure how she pulled that off), the Great Move of 2018 (moved from one apartment building to the one across the street, so that was the warm-up) 

Oh and don't forget about the clean-up after the moving out is done! The work isn't finished until everything is clean! Like polishing up a car for the new owner, the final cleaning is kind of unsatisfying because I won't be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor (and probably won't avoid getting cleaning costs deducted out of my security depsoit anyway, as my experience with apartment companies leads me to believe) but it's like a final farewell to the living space that we occupied for all that time, we'll likely never see you again. Nor do we want to. Goodbye. 

Grey's Anatomy recently hit the library at Netflix, and the pilot is pretty interesting, likely foreshadowing a long-lasting series (that's currently still running, on like Season 18 I believe). I imagine MJ's first day at the hospital will be similar but hopefully a little less hectic than that of Christina, Meredith, and George O'Malley. Still, very exciting! The show ALMOST made me want to be in the healthcare profession. Then I think about how lucky I am to have the job I'm having. I won't quit my day job! 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Edgar Allan Poe

 After a dizzying couple weeks of moving, working overtime, and settling a trademark dispute for my uncle's company in China, I finally had some time to sit down and enjoy one of my favorite pasttimes: reading a book. MJ and I recently visited a Barnes and Noble and marveled at how the franchise still exists, in spite of the entire book industry being usurped by other media (recently Time Magazine was forced to go to only bi-weekly double issue, a change from weekly magazine I've been accustomed to all my life) and a pandemic, although a pandemic possibly aided its sales as more people had time to be at home reading. The bookstore's survival (as well as other famous bookstores like the Last Bookstore in L.A., Powell's Books in Portland, City Lights in San Francisco) gives hope for a biblophile like myself that there will still be demand for books and that great authors will still be encouraged to expess their ideas in print. 

Just like I appreciate children's books now more as an adult, I now look back fondly at being required to read classic American and British literature during high school. Unfortunately back then I had so many other obligations and other subjects to study for that I never got into the classics (It's hard to go from studying for a trigonometry test to studying for anatomy of the body in biology then memorizing the U.S. presidents in order in U.S. History and then be expected to fully understand a lenghty soliquoy by Hamlet), and lacked the adult experience that I needed to appreciate fully the rich nature of those books. I oddly never got assigned Romeo and Juliet (my British Literature professor elected instead for King Lear, Hamlet, and MacBeth) so I just this weekend got the full story of the Montagues and Capulets and how tragic a love story that was, how fate was so cruel to the star-crossed lovers and "put a plague on both their houses." And understood how ludicrous it is that a 13-year-old girl like Juliet would fall in love, and even be married (almost twice!) at such a young age, when brains and emotional structures are still developing.

Edgar Allen Poe had quite the (short) story, and little did I know he wrote all his works before the age of 40 (before he died) and before even the Civil War. I professed my love for Agatha Christie's mystery novles and especially those of Hercule Poirot when I was a teen, Raymond Chandler had a run of detective novel like the Big Sleep, and nowadays Sue Grafton gets a lot of hype for her alphabet mysteries, but Poe was apparently the first detective fiction novel in the U.S. But yes just the visceral reactions he made me feel through "The Tell-Tale Heart" (the pounding of the heart felt so real!) and stories of live burials like the Cask of Amontillado (not the Count of Monte Cristo! Different author!) made me actually remember books because I lived through those reading experiences, I warped into that world and felt the emotion of the narrator. That was as memorable to me as any shocking movie twist ending, or wild sports finish, or disaster news stories. I LIVED through Poe's stories even when I was lying on the couch for hours with no one around, just emersed in the book, which is the power still of the printed word, even in this age of cell phones and distractions. Also, I also did not know the Baltimore Ravens were named after his story "The Raven." Baltimore is apparently has the grave of Poe and devotes a lot of resources to his memory. No word if there's a tell-tale heart somewhere in the city as well. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan