Landlord ( 房东, 家主, 주인)

 If there are a group of people with worse reputations than lawyers, it might be insurance salespeople.....and landlords. I personally haven't had too much issue with landlords (usually I'm dealing with apartment companies), but recently I've been dealing with an issue with my sister's former landlord and living vicariously through the nightmare that can be dealing with a bad landlord. 

I HAVE dealt with a bad AirBnB "host" which gave me a good idea of what it's like out there in the real world: It was an apartment in Queens, where I need a place to stay for just a couple nights, and I booked a place with someone named "Laura." Laura immediately made my Spider-senses tingle when she mentioned I'd have to pay some sort of extra New York tax on top of what I'd already paid through AirBnB even before I had gotten to the listing. Then, when I came a little late to the AirBnb later at night than I had anticipated due to a delayed fight, Laura refused to let me in and threatened to cancel. However, when I called AirBnb to resolve the situation, they called her to give me "another chance" (like I'm sort of repeat offender committing crimes!) and she was gracious enough to give me another chance........to sleep on the couch of her living room with 2 other people in the room. It was worth than a hostel: this woman was staying in a basement apartment with her son in one bedroom and her occupying another, and she rented out the living room for 2/3 guests a night to share in this wonderful family environment. Borderline tenant lifestyle. While I was living there, she would conduct business on AirBnb in front of me, and make shady statements on the phone like "can I get the fee even if I cancel on the renter, even though this is their fault?" For me it was like watching fellow lambs get taken to the slaughter, but even more alarmingly Laura didn't think it was improper to have me in the room witnessing this take place. What really gave proof to MJ's admission that I have a "strong stomach" is that on a couple occasions a would-be renter would come in to the apartment, look around briefly at the accomodations, and just leave, never to come back. I was the poor schmuck that stayed. Finally, mercifully on the day I left that place, I wrote a semi-harsh review on AirBnb something like "pros and cons...." not a blistering hack job, but gave the realistic pros and cons of the place, Laura messaged me immediately after I published it cursing me out for what I thought was just telling the truth, and not in even a mean-spirited way. That was the last I heard from Laura, and the last time I used AirBnb. 

(If I ever get famous enough to write a memoir, I will have a whole section devoted specifically to the summer of 2019 living in New York City from place to place........the depth of AirBnb and "alternate accomodations" is mindblowing). 

The lesson from that long story is, there are just bad landlords out there. There's really no reasoning with them, no negotiating, no way to improve them/change them, they are unreasonable by nature, likely because they have to deal with some bad apple tenants that are as bad or worse than they are. So for us living in the land of civility and reasonableness, it's just best to end the relationship with those people as soon as possible; the longer you stay (like my sister did for 2 years! A running saga of ups-and-downs, mostly downs with this landlord) the longer you extend the misery and increase the chances of them screwing you over like charging you for repairs in common areas even though you didn't cause it and there are 5 other people living in the unit, stuff like that. And how do you know a bad landlord in the first place? I guess it's hard to tell, but calling them beforehand helps, or meeting them......maybe just get a Spidersense that something is off. I've certainly learned my lesson. 

August is the Cruelest Month

 "April is the cruelest month." - T.S. Eliot, in "The Wasteland. It meant that in the world of the Wasteland (a post-pandemic London that just went through the Spanish flu), it was cruel to think that the outside world was living April with all the flowers bossoming and world living again after a long winter, but inside the Wasteland nothing is happening except death and decay. 

I don't think my life is quite like that, but certainly I feel a little jealousy and melancholy in August for times gone by when I was young and free, heading off to college for the first time or attending 1L year of law school, in bright spirits and a bright future, which is constantly driven home to me with all these social media posts of parents sending their children to school for the first time, or the eagerness of college students walking hand-in-hand (well, not really hand-in-hand but the camaraderie is there) on their college campuses, eager for their new lives to begin.......while I'm at home working and venturing outside for maybe 1 or 2 hours a day. It's also kind of cruel how August shoves this "enjoy your summer!" vibe at you with seemingly everyone in the world on vacation (even the Australians come to the Northern Hemisphere since they're in winter right now) and boats, summer BBQ's, rock concerts, bike rides, and just so much sunshine, sunshine, everywhere. I've never been the biggest fan of summer (I'm on record as saying people get dumber in summer) but even I can't deny the long days and breezy summer nights, the frolic and fecundity of life. I just ran by a prominent private university around my neighborhood and college freshmen were gathering in the quad on a beautiful Sunday night for convocation welcoming them to the University, basically the school telling all students to spread their wings and fly....(and with the added good news of $10,000 deduction of federal student loans for qualified students!) as long as you pay the tuition of course. I wish somebody would tell me to spread my wings and fly and that the world is waiting for me. 

August is cruel because.......there's no Jeopardy episodes. Even Jeopardy knows that everyone's enjoying their life and not watching TV, so they take a break. It's cruel just replaying old episodes over and over again, although this past season has garnered plenty of rewatchable material. 

Oh, and also, after 2 years it finally happened, a cruel disease that I've been trying to avoid like the plague but it finally caught up to me.......nope it wasn't Covid or any of its derivative strains, it was just a cold/the chills that made my whole body feel weak, get a headache, and knocked me out for a whole day. And I know exactly what caused it: The cruel August weather caused the library to jack up the AC to freezing levels, so when I had marinated in all that cold air for 4 hours but then walked out to a 90+ degree furnace, my body couldn't handle the drastic contrast in temperature difference and got a glitch. No matter how good my immune system is (it's kept me from contrasting Covid for 2 years, alhamdulilah) it can't handle both a freezer and a furnace within minutes of each other, and thus I was stuck indoors all day getting over it. This type of cruelty doesn't even happen in winter (I'm never in the cold for that long), but this time 'twas beauty of weather that killed the beast (Bobby). Wake me up when September (begins)- Green Day song. 

Capital Cities (首都, 수도)

 When you were a kid, chances are at some point you learned, or tried to learn, the 50 states and capitals of the U.S. I don't know when I did it, whether a teacher challenged me to do it, whether I saw it in a book somewhere, whether I was staring at a map; at some point I just learned them all, like the multiplication times table, and those combinations just stuck. It's one of the few crucial trivia "lists" I consumed as a child, and I wish I had done more of those lists as much like learning a language, it's easier to remember them when you're a child. If you're a little more adventurous with capital cities, you expand no to world capital cities (I didn't, but I definitely knew a few back then, and know more now), and then move on to  even bigger lists, like the history of Academy Award Best Picture awards, or succession of English kings, all elements on the periodic table of elements, etc. 

There are so many lists in the world, but several key ones come up in the trivia world all the time; they're like meat-and-potatoes material for studying for the biggest general knowledge test in the world; you know at some point they're going to come up. Memory experts and brain analysts have a lot of fancy mnemonic devices and tricks to memorize a long list of information quickly, but I find that another factor is important as well in remembering things: whether you're interested in the topic. As a kid I found capital cities pretty fascinating because I could always envision myself visiting that city in the U.S.: Boston, Massachusetts, Atlanta, Georgia, and Honolulu, Hawaii, are obvious big cities and major US cities, but I could even fantasize about Jefferson City, Missouri, or Lansing, Michigan; I remember I was so upset one time in a 6th grade social studies class when I couldn't remember the capital of Kansas: was it Wichita? Kansas City? No, too easy. (It's actually Topeka, one of the most obscure cities in the U.S.) As an adult I've undergone the quest to earn all country capital cities, and it's nearly complete; there are just some Pacific Island countries I don't think I ever need to know the capital of (the utility of knowing them is just too low, like Tuvalu- Funafuti or in Africa, Ougadougu for Burkina Faso. I think I also like the sound of capital cities, they're unique data points unlike "what do you need to make a caprese salad," that there's one distinct answer like "Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan" or Ashgabat for Turkmenistan. 

On the flip side, there are just some lists for the life of me I can't remember- monthly gemstones, for example, where you'd think it'd be easy since there's only 12 of them, but then I get mixed up due to the multiple gemstones for some months, and I just am not a big fan of gems/minerals/rocks anyway. I've never gotten those down because I just don't CARE, I don't have a picture in my head for them, and they don't have a fancy name: diamond is April's but I just can't place exactly where all of ruby, sapphire, pearl, opal, and aquamarine go. 

By the way, Capital Cities also happens to be the name of a band, and most people have heard at least one of their songs: "Safe and Sound." How do I remember that? Because there's 1 band with a cool sounding name matched up wih 1 pretty catchy (and alliterative, which helps) name of their biggest hit. That's a nice, easy, thing to remember, UNLIKE all of Madonna's hit songs, for example, (Vogue, Papa Don't Preach, Hung Up, Like a Prayer, Like a Virgin), almost no discernable pattern on all of those. Don't even get me started with songs that have 7 generic words in them like "Love Don't cost a thing" or "If It Makes You Happy" ( Sheryl Crow) basically mishmashing all the most generic words in song titles Love, You, Happy, Sad, Fire, Light, Night, Cry, Born, etc., etc. Those are tough to learn. I have newfound admiration for those who are able to master all these lists.....it takes a whole lot of time, repetition, and ACTUALLY caring about all kinds of stuff! I find that I get better in the categories I'm good at (new places in the world, YAY! And new titles of books with their authors, YAY!) and just miniscully better at categories I'm not good at because I JUST DON'T LIKE those categories, like eating vegetables or doing sit-ups. It's tedious and I know that there are so many differnet worlds of knowledge out there that's NOT that. Urg! 

Memoirs (伝記, 회상록, 回忆录)

 Besides reading through encyclopedias nowadays, there's another type of reading that's always caught my eye: memoirs, usually of celebrities but especially of people I find relatable or interesting. I picked up the David Chang (founder of Momofuku restaurants) memoir "Eat a Peach" today and just got hooked it; it marks the 3rd memoir of an Asian American cook I've read in just the last few years! (Previously Eddie Hwang of "Fresh Off the Boat" fame and Roy Choi of Kogi food trucks (big in LA) fame. "Surprise, surprise, an Asian American man likes reading about Asian American men!" Maybe, but I've also read memoirs by Amy Schumer, Chelsea Chandler, Ken Jennings, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Trevor Noah ("Born a Crime"), and others from different walks of life. No, I think it's more that I like the human aspects of stories and find real people's stories more compelling than totally fictional stories like Shakespeare and sci-fi. I find people's struggles with daily life fascinating and getting into their thought processes helpful; it's like having an omniscient narrator in every story telling you exactly what the main character is thinking. I'm also a big historical fiction fan, like I think Forrest Gump is a genius movie because it takes viewers back to different events in world history that most people can relate to and lived through; I like reading a memoir because I get to know what other people were doing in their little corners of the world while I was stuck in high school AP history class or trying to make it in L.A. David Chang, for example, was a child prodigy at golf (wouldn't have known it from his physique) and taught English in Japan where he was inspired to create ramen dishes. Also, I find cooking memoirs like that of Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential) really funny and easy to read through because working in kitchens is apparently one of the most difficult, grind-it-out, hate-your-life-for-a-few-years, smell-like-food-all-the-time jobs, but chefs and workers have a good time through all that hard work, making for some of the funniest stories (sure beats my stories of, "well went to the office to look at the computer screen and talked to my co-workers during break for 10 minutes." They also almost always intersect somewhere in New York (Culinary Institute of America) and since the biggest restaurants are in NYC. 

Also, if anything, I like memoirs because I am actually completing my own memoir here. I guess nobody cares about the everyday affairs of people until that person eventually becomes famous, so my 15 years of blogging will never have a mass audience unless I make it big. It does bother me sometimes that only the ones who "made it big" get a book deal to make a memoir, as if their stories are so compelling just because they actually succeeded (with varying degrees of luck associated with that success). I'm sure others who didn't become famous also have great stories to tell and can express themselves in a funny way. This is what kind of bothered me about Simu Liu's tale, he didn't really give credit to luck or acknowledge that he could have failed had a number of specific things happened that really weren't in his control. How many of the same stories of actors who quit their day jobs and moved to Los Angeles without an established acting resume are there versus one person who became Simu Liu, Shangchi and the Seven Rings? Certainly, these memoirs aren't marketed as "ones to make it in life," so I'm not criticizing the authors for bragging and acting like if others just did what they did they would have succeeded, but I guess my biggest pet peeve about celebrities is how once they're on the other side they act like they always knew they were going to make it big, like it was natural and just a matter of getting there. I think that's too simplistic and a bit of hindsight being 20-20, but maybe that's why I'll never make it big and I won't ever have a best-selling memoir called "Eat a Banana!" (my ritual each morning and key to having energy every day). 

Space Travel (太空旅行, 宇宙旅行, 우주 여행)

 In 2019 I was in New York City where there was a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, and some mild excitement could be seen on banners, Google Doodles, etc., but otherwise it kind of passed without much fanfare. I completely ignored it, one of those "Huh, OK, that's cool" moments and just letting the moment pass by. That seems to be the prevailing attitude of my generation and all my circle of co-workers, friends, and acquintances (admittedly, a dwindling number since the pandemic hit)......we talk about Game of Thrones (a new prequel series coming out this weekend), living in different cities, sports, food, music festivals, social media and new Iphones....but I can't think of a single time that I've discussed space travel with anyone at all. It's just not a topic that comes up.....but maybe it should? 

I get it; there are so many stressors, details, obligations, traffic tickets, appointments, etc. to keep up with daily life there's very little time to worry about something that the normal person probably won't get to see/ travel to in our lifetimes; planets and stars just look like bright dots in the night sky. NASA isn't embarking on missions to the Moon anymore, but there's a bigger prize: Mars. Most of our TV shows, media, and query about whether there's life outside of Earth has been centered on Mars for awhile, with the Mars Pathfinder series and Elon Musk's company SpaceX going to Mars. 

To me, space is difficult to even fathom: There's 8 planets (and one Dwarf planet, Pluto) just in the orbit of our sun and solar system, and there's millions of suns in the Milky Way, the galaxy that the sun is in, but then the Milky Way is only one of many galaxies within the Local Group of galaxies, and the Local Group is one of millions and billions of groups within the entire universe......and then the universe as we know it is infinite. Hard to wrap one's head around. It becomes one of those existential/ philosophical puzzles with no answer, since there's no end, no right answer, it just stretches endlessly on. Another obstacle to me being interested about space is having no interest in personally getting on a space flight.......I never wanted to be an astronaut anyway, but just the amount of G-force, lack of gravity, and falling from the sky makes my stomach churn......I would not be a good astronaut (I keep thinking of that scene in First Man where Ryan Gosling/ Neil Armstrong is in the flight simulator and keeps throwing up. No thanks). The planets, as cool as they are with all the different colors and rings, aren't really that interesting because they're not living things: they're big balls of gas or earth, and don't talk or do anything like human beings, so they're not relatable at all. So what's left? Basically it's like if the ocean was infinitely deep, and we kept sending missions down to explore areas (that actually sound more compelling to me because there's actually fish and living creatures abundantly existing in the ocean) but knowing that there would be no endpoint, and so far no life forms have reached back out to us. So what's the point? Maybe inhabiting Mars eventually after we (chuckle) destroy Earth? Hard to fathom that concept, but given the amount of issues we run into on Earth, somewhere we have much better knowledge of, living on Mars seems like quite the challenge, especially to convince ordinary people to go. 

In conclusion, space seems cool and there's plenty of great facts about astronauts, galaxies, asteroids, distant stars (supernovas, red dwarfs, oh my!) but it's understandable why ordinary people aren't that interested and doesn't excite people, except maybe when the astronomy category comes up in Jeopardy and all of a sudden I'm channeling all the terms like Cassini, Saturn V, Voyager missions, SpaceX, Halle's Comet, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 colling with Jupiter. 

The Sweetest Place on Earth

 Before becoming an adult, I thought Santa Clause was real, and I thought that Disneyworld was really the Happiest Place on Earth. I remember 3 separate occasions where my parents took us on a family vacation from Chicago, Illinois all the way to Orlando, FL for Disneyworld, and I loved it....all the Disney characters I could handle in one place, the outdoor parades through Main Street, the turkey legs, the anticipation of arrivig at the parks by monorail... this was where dreams were made of, we'd made it! This fascination even carried over into adulthood with visits to Disneyland and California Adventure, and even overseas stops at Disney Sea in Tokyo and Disneyland Hong Kong. They really got me. 

The magic really wore off though the last few years, and it all came full circle when MJ and I visited the "Sweetest" place on Earth in Hershey, PA, the propaganda theme parks for the Hershey Chocolate Company. The way I described it to MJ was if business consultants went to Disneyworld and copied all the marketable concepts of those parks, changed the marketing concept from story characters to candy bar characters, and placed it in rural Pennsylvania instead of Florida. That's Hersheyworld. A similar concept was the World of CocaCola in Atlanta; a purely corporate venture blatantly promoting their own products, passing out free candy at every occasion to get their name out there. The place oozed of business executives trying to give off a happy vibe, from blowing sweet-smelling chocolate flavors into the air to employees wearing Hershey uniforms to store packed with merchandise (all marked up significantly) and mellifluent voices on the intercom welcoming visitors to the park and wishing you a sweet day, but under the surface the employees seemed a little off, not exactly happy inwardly but forcing smiles outwardly, knowing they'd seen it all before and trying to mask the inner workings of working for a coporate conglomerate. It reminded me of the Dharma Initiative from Lost or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; the chocolate at Hersheypark/Chocolate World (they have 2 theme parks right next to each other!) was the soma. There was the 4-D movie, the indoor Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-style theme ride, the long lines to get to the good stuff, the screams coming from the roller coasters and upbeat music coming from the speakers and temperature tuned to a perfect temperature to encourage purchases. Disturbingly, and this is probably from a cynical 35-year-old attorney speaker, I would ot want my kids to be brainwashed into being "Hershey" people and associating chocolate with happiness......the trolley tour guide bold-faced tried to make Hershey bars seem like a nutritious part of one's diet, pointing out the 14% of our daily calcium intake, and that if we had 6 bars we'd be well on our way to our daily allotment.......yea, OK, maybe for calcium, but then we'd be at like 500% of our daily sugar and saturated fat allotment too, so there's that. It's just too easy for kids to fall into the trap like I did of associating places like Chocolateworld and Disneyworld with fun and a beautiful piece of our childhood that we want to stimulate that desire again later in our adult lives......and by then we'd be addicted to sugar/choolate/Twizzlers. 

One interesting marketing trend I noticed.......Hershey's seems to acknowledge now that their most popular brand is Reese's peanut butter cups, and I agree that's their tastiest item: chocolate and peanut butter together in one, who would have guessed people would like that? I have a pretty "standard" tongue where I like what most other people like, and dislike what others don't like; the original Hershey's chocolate bar taste, try as the company might, just doesn't beat out other chocolate bars and isn't the "king of all bars" like they'd like it be; it's got the same taste and doesn't have any distinctiveness about it, like plain vanilla, Americans just aren't rushing to get that bar. They ARE rushing to get Reese's peanutbuttercups, though, and even Hershey's HQ must be acknowledging that now, even though they still have these huge factories that are pumping out 3 million pounds of chocolate a day. Really seem like a precarious business model to me, relying on milk chocolate products in a world that's becoming more health-conscious and vegan (without milk). Maybe they should branch out into some vegan chocolates? Whatever it's doing, though, the company's stock price sure hasn't suffered, with a solid chart and even a 1.84% dividend; perhaps it's the long line of visitors coming to the park especially on hot summer days like today driving the business, without a lagging ESPN and streaming business holding the rest of the company hostage like Disney is. Hmmm. 

Bread and Circuses (Panem et circenses)

 I feel very late in the game to a truth about governing bodies that so many authors and political leaders have expressed in the past (including Juvenal, the Roman poet who coined the term): Essentially, those in power give the common people entertainment and distractions in order to make them neglect the more essential matters: For example, giving out bread and entertainment (circuses) to win votes in an election instead of addressing harder fundamental issues like the state of our democracy as well as existential matters like the fate of our planet. (Really a microcosm of what's going on in our society today). I was overwhelmed by the accuracy of the analogy when I went to a baseball game today (The Cooler strikes again! Home team lost, surprise, surprise when I attend any game) and observed thousands of people willing to travel from afar to spend $20 for parking, at least $20 for the cheapest seats, and then pay for way overpriced chicken tenders, fries, and other bread-like food, and more importantly spend a precious weekend day on, a hot sticky baseball game between 2 non-contending teams. It may be a general trend on my development as a person than an indictment on baseball or bread and circuses, but it's really eye-opening for me especially who's loved baseball since I was a kid but then realize it's a.) a giant corporate conglomerate that just feeds off the American populace and doesn't really give much back, and b.) is a way for governments to essentially blue-pill (a "The Matrix" reference) Americans and have cable TV wash over them (a "Runaway Jury" reference- Gene Hackman speech). I got a little angry at myself but at the world that this is what we've come to, watching our lives waste away while baseball players paid millions of dollars a year (the top ones, at least) argue about calls while there are wars being fought overseas and critical decisions made by the government every day, and I guess I'm part of the problem of just buying into the easier route in society of just succumbing to entertainment. 

And then contrast it to finishing the Simu Liu memoir I wrote about earlier........so many things that resonated with me in Simu's book, foremost of which is the big traumatic event in his life, getting laid off from Deloitte right out of college, his first job. Just so things building up for him of parental expectations, society expectations, lack of passion for the career that he had mistakenly chosen; a lot of things I was spiritually nodding my head at. Life is puzzling for a 22-year-old just starting out in the adult world. Like Simu, I've been laid off/ fired many times in my career (my work is a little different though), and I can still remember vividly the experiences of a failed job interview or the meeting notifying me that I was let go to this day, and my heart still pounds matching the pounding I felt back then). It made me feel like an imposter, like what I'd done to that point was all fake and had no meaning, and I was worthless, especially during law school interviews after 1L year in which the rest of one's career can be decided based on whether he/she lands a summer job at one of the big law firms or not. I did not....a consistent string of rejections from various law firms without a single callback interview confirmed such that fateful summer of 2009, much like Simu's accounting career hit a major roadblock when he was laid off at Deloitte. Just like him, a major break happened for me on, of all places, Craigslist (I didn't know Craigslist was a thing in Canada too!) as he responded to a casting call for Asian actors for a film called "Still Seas" (which was a code name for the movie "Pacific Rim," and his acting career started there, without any acting experience up to that point. Kind of incredible and partly due to his persistence of pursuing his passion and partly due to, let's face it, luck......being at the right places at the right time. Similary, I capitalized on dumb luck on a Craigslist ad asking for attorneys/law students who were also Mandarin Chinese speakers, during 2L year of law school.....and 112 years later I've somehow made a career out of it (not as big as being cast as Shang-Chi in a Marvels superhero movie, but OK....) 

Simu's book does do a great job of commiserating with so many high-achieving people out there who are not happy at their jobs and feel like it's hell going to work every day (MJ tells me she feels like this often) and I kind of agree with Simu to try to pursue your passion and work won't feel like work anymore. Then again, Simu and I both lucked out that we selected jobs we're good at, we enjoy (or for me, at least can tolerate), and pays well (kind of a big one, isn't it?) And it all started on CRAIGSLIST! 

Bucket List (遗愿清单, バケットリスト, 희망 사항)

 I grew up in the wrong generation for movies, music, cultural relevance, politics.....the one decade that no one ever reminisces out like the Roaring Twenties, the post-war boom, the Hippie 70's, the classic movies of the 80's, the emergence of hip-hop in the Nineties.........Nope, I came of age in the "Aughts," the 2000-2010s that was highlighted by the Bush Presidency, pop music, and.... a mishmash of movies, sequels, remakes, but once in a while there's a movie that I really relate to and can feel like I'm back in 2007 again. Tonight, that movie was "Bucket List" starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. 

Very underrated movie. I watched "Prey," the 2022 prequel of the Predator franchise right after (rated 92% on Rotten Tomatoes), but it was just didn't have the human touch as Bucket List did, something we can all relate to: the fear of dying alone, having terminable cancer, the end of life, etc., and trying to make the best of our lives in the little time we have left. And, o yea, what am I kidding, it's another movie that has scenes from Jeopardy! in it, joining "Rain Man" and "White Man Can't Jump" on the leaderboard. I can't make this up, I've been watching tons of Jeopardy re-runs on PlutoTV (24/7 Jeopardy, all day, all night!) and wanted to take a break with something completely different, and right in the first 5 mintues Morgan Freeman's character turns out to be a trivia expert who watches Jeopardy religiously. Go figure. 

Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson certainly looked the parts of terminal cancer patients in this movie, and the fact they're still alive 15 years later in 2022 is something to cheer for! They meet as fellow patients living in the same hospital room, so it gives that familiar feeling of being a patient in a hospital room; I'll have to get MJ's take on how realistic the nurses and doctors behaved in the movie (MJ was shocked at the unrealistic portrayal of the incontinence ads on Pluto TV). 

Hard to say anything profound about "Bucket List," but I guess that was a "Naughties" movie: big on sentimentality, made you feel a bit like home, but didn't deliver the KO punch it needed to be a classic. Just a cool story about 2 older dudes bonding and spending the end of their lives together, and it makes me look forward (well, not too forward, I don't necessarily WANT that day to come) of being at the end of life and summing it all up, trying to get some closure on it, and reflecting on all the adventures I've had.......and then violently experience-splurging on all the stuff remaining that I had wanted to do. It does make me realize so many things I wanted to do (say, since 2007) that I said I would eventually get to, I never got to......but that's OK......the bucket list is just a concept, it's not a check-off list that must be completed at all costs. It's a gentle reminder to enjoy life and have something to look back on with satisfaction at the end of one's life. 

Simu Liu (刘思慕)

 I recently picked up a book at the library called "We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story," the autobiography of Simu Liu, star of one of the newer Marvel movies, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. I didn't actually watch Shang-Chi because there are just too many superhero movies and I have no background to base any nostalgia for Shang-Chi like I have for X-Men, Spider-Man, and Pokemon, but Simu's story really captivated me, and as usual I got sucked in, swapping an hour of encyclopedia time for an hour of Simu's story. 

Actually, more like reading about Simu's parents' story, who immigrated from China's Harbin province and endured years of not understanding the English language, not having any money and working for $4 an hour at the local Chinese restaurant, and having to care for an infant/toddler child while putting themselves through graduate school (which required a scholarship since they didn't have money to pay, so they went to some schools that most people never heard of). And that's AFTER enduring tough conditions during the Cultural Revolution in China of Mao forcing citizens to forgo education in favor of working in fields and factories to understand the austerity of livelihood. Basically, the story of my parents too, and I'm sure thousands/maybe millions of Chinese immigrants who came over to America/Canada during that same time window. Instead of Sky Harbor Airport (Phoenix) and Pearson International Airport (Toronto) where Simu's parents went, my parents went to O'Hare Airport and settled in Chicago. Instead of getting lucky with living in a 90-year-old landlord, my parents found a spot in the rough part of downtown Chicago where bullets could sometimes be heard going off at night. Instead of working at a Chinese restaurant and making deliveries to colleges like Simu's parents......well, my dad did actually work at a Chinese restaurant washing dishes in Chicago's Chinatown and making deliveries. Simu Liu's 2 years younger than I am, but I feel like we could have been friends as kids growing up in an English-speaking land, our parents speaking in Mandarin nd reminiscing about the old days in China. Really a nice touch for him to devote the first 6 chapters or so of his book to talking about his parents' upbringing and "the day he was conceived," a little TMI but indicative of the happy days in his parent's lives being few and far between that the one day they could relax and "eat KFC" was so memorable. It's not lost on me that when my parents were the age that I am now, they had already arrived in a completely new land where they didn't speak the language well, had to adapt on the fly while raising a child and also taking graduate classes. And this is all without the INTERNET! How'd they do it? My parents definitely went through tougher times than I did. 

Kinda makes me wonder if those tough experiences are necessary to fully enjoy one's later success (and that's if you're lucky and get to experience success!) And that's where Simu started his own story. I used to hold a grudge against my dad for being really mean back when I was a kid and not being understanding when I was late from cross-country practice or something else....but now I think about all the times I get upset at someone else, and it's usually something stressing me out in my own life, and not feeling good about myself; I can only imagine that's what made my parents have bad days when dealing with me. Certainly something to remember if (and when!) MJ become parents to avoid transferring our own tensions onto the child, but the story of Simu Liu's parents made me think about my own parents in a new light. I guess that's why we need diversity in the work force, in our leaders, in our heroes (well, at least kids do, but even sometimes a 35-year-old does too): people can draw inspiration and relate to what others have been through that had the same background, so I appreciate Simu Liu for making it to the top and telling his story for all to hear. (He also made some great points about not associating all Chinese people with the negative stereotypes that all Chinese people sometimes get lumped with.) Maybe I'll see Shang-Chi after all!