Militia (民兵,시민군)

 Some people, including myself, sometimes wish they were born into a different time in history, maybe like 50 years ago, or 200 years ago, something like that, because our mindsets are not fit for the current era of hypersensitivity, need for fame, extreme wokeness, etc. I consider which decade I would have thrived in, and then pretty quickly I come back to reality and realize, I would be terrible in any other time in history, this time is the only one that has the best medical technology in the world, vaccines produced faster than any time period in the world, better electricity, indoor plumbing, and best technology than any other time in the world (unless we travel further in to the future, which is much more difficult to envision). Yup, I would probably have died of diseases or been murdered by a hostile warring tribe by now in any other century (MAYBE not the 1990's, I would like liked to maybe experience that decade as an adult just to see what all the excitement was about). 

Also, in any other time in history, I would have most likely had to serve in the army, or some other branch of the armed forces, as in the history of the world almost every single civilization has required their men to enlist and fight, often using some sort of draft or other conscription systems. The U.S. was embroiled in tons of wars in the 1900's, including 2 WORLD wars, and if my parents had stayed in China it didn't get much better; they had a civil war and opium wars, wars against their neighbors like Japan, etc. I am definitely not fit for the army; very few men in my generation are. Instead of fighting on the battlefields we fight on our internet browsers. Instead of waking up at 5AM in the morning for roll call we roll out of bed at 10AM in the morning to log in to a work meeting on Zoom. In fact, I went to play chess today, a board game played on a pretend battlefield where I get to trade pieces and sacrifice assets as if I were a supreme commander, without any risk to myself. I believe "soft" is the term nowadays that describes me and my generation. Men probably have it the easiest compared to any other time in history: women still have to be the ones giving birth to children AND in many cases raise the children and act as the caregivers, while men increasingly have stopped being the sole breadwinner anymore. Men even go to college at a much lower rate than women do now. 

I didn't mean for this post to be a "Men's guilt" outpouring; my point was to count my lucky stars that I didn't have to serve in the armed forces, but also to wonder if armed forces are needed any more. They seem to serve the same role as nuclear weapons: to keep other countries honest and prevent them from attacking our country. Sure there are plenty of wars going on right now that require armies (Exhibit A= Ukraine and Russia for 1.3 years now), but it seems a pity that our society still allows hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people to die for what is pretty much just.....global politics. I read a stat that of NATO's 31 member countries, the only country that doesn't have a military is Iceland. (Other countries around the world like Japan also don't have militaries). Seems like a real drag (defense spending is the No.1 item on the U.S. government's budget) on finances to keep spending so much on military, and it's a prisoner's dilemma, a mug's game, whatever you want to call it: The bigger other countries' militias are, the larger we have to make ours to counteract and keep the balance so we don't get a losing position. It all seems so wasteful, a waste of life, waste of money, waste of time, when we have the Internet and all this technology; we just can't invent something to solve the human need to go to war, to assert power. Obviously, the counterargument is that if we don't have a military, we can't stop evil dictators around the world like Saddam Hussein, and that is true that military exists to serve as leverage against just a few bad actors. Will we ever be able to get rid of militaries altogether? Probably not, just psychologically if the whole world was devoid of militias, there would surely be somebody to exploit that and build a military force to take over. Where there are humans, there are armies. 

Out of the 6 branches of the US military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines, and the most recent, Space Force) which one would I be, if needed? Well I don't do well on boats and I don't like flying in weird areas, so I guess I'll take the good old Army and dry land... I'd hopefully just volunteer to be tactical "office job" of the military that doesn't go on the battlefield, just use my language ability to help in the control room? Anything like that available? 

Podcast (播客, ポッドキャスト, 팟캐스트)

 Last week I checked another bucket list item off of my list: I started a podcast! Well, kind of a bare bones version of a podcast, the entirety of the program is just me calling up a friend from my fantasy baseball league (of USC Law Class of 2011 graduates) and having a conversation for an hour, and me recording it. Not really even edited, haven't even put in musical jingles or fancy intros, just me and another person talking, one cut, and not uploaded onto SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So not really an official podcast, but the meat of it is there: it's essentially what my favorite podcasts do: 2 people having interesting conversations and often going off topic and random tangents, hugely reliant on the podcast participants being funny and/or having good stories to tell and/or keeping it fresh and interesting. Hopefully I'm doing a good job! 

Especially in this digital era of 10-second clips and "shorts" on social media, it's a bit surprising that the No.1 podcast in America (probably the world) is the Joe Rogan podcast, a daily show where Joe just has guests on and talks to them for 2-4 hours, nonstop, very few videos, no musical acts, it's just having a conversation (and sometimes some alcohol intake, marijuana use, etc.) My best guess is despite the short attention spans, people still crave conversation and feeling like you're in a room with someone and participating in that conversation (even though you're not) and relating to the guests' points of views, and the guests throwing jokes and/or funny tidbits every few minutes or so is a nice dopamine hit to incentive the listener to keep listening. That's sort of why I started the podcast: I crave for conversations where I don't feel the social pressure of moving on to a different person at a party so as not to be too clingy, or having to schedule a big thing to meet someone and scheduling around other people's schedules. Personally, I can talk to anyone for an hour and likely not have the conversation dry up, I have enough anecdotes and fun facts (especially armed with trivia and Jeopardy knowledge) nowadays that I can keep the conversation and piggyback off of what the other person says on almost any topic. I managed to throw in a fun fact about what a "piloerection" was yesterday- it's another name for goosebumps. I've always prided myself on being a decent conversationalist: I'm able to talk to people at parties, and the banter of a conversation is where I get to know someone but especially how I ingratiate myself to other people who might get a certain impression of me upon first meeting that's not necessarily who I am (looks like computer guy/engineer, has loud voice, looks uninteresting) whereas I can at least get a couple laughs in as an icebreaker. 

Doing a podcast takes some preparation, but it's important to relax and settle into it. Even for a casual conversation, I did do some mental preparation like inserting certain jokes here and there, stretching out an hour-long show, but also needing to stay with the conversation and listening to the interviewee to hear their take and adjust....think on the fly for what to say next. I'm sure most podcasters develop a routine and settle into it after awhile. I also had to adjust how I sounded on the podcast: hard to change my voice (kind of surprising to hear a recorded version of your own voice for the first time) but also taking out the throat-clearing fillers like "um," "uh," "like..." and the dreaded "you know." I get distracted when I'm on a work call if someone talks with too many fillers like that, and as a listener I cringe at all those filler words, they add nothing and makes one sound unprofessional. So it's important to figure out my thoughts, not over-think and pull back on a thought too much, and clearly express what I'm trying to say without having to stop and change directions too much. Often I use "um's" because I'm thinking TOO much, and worrying about how I might sound, or offending other people, or I have 3 different choices of what to say and just can't choose one. Podcasting may be a good one to work on those bad speaking habits and edit out the fillers as much as possible. Oh, also I try to keep any swearing to a minimum, or insensitive topics, and especially politics.

Rattlesnake (响尾蛇, ガラガラヘビ, 방울뱀)

 Today my parents went on a hike and....almost got bitten by a rattlesnake. I was in the front of the pack leading my parents, but apparently wasn't doing that good of a job because it wasn't until my dad started making weird noises behind me that I realized I had just stepped over where a small rattlesnake had been resting its head....just its head section peeked into the trail, and I apparently just didn't look where I was walking. Phew; close call. Everywhere in California there are signs before entering a hiking trail to beware of rattlesnakes, but rarely do I ever see one, much less have one lying in the path. They can be a serious problem though; seriously deadly. My old boss at my summer camp counselor job would tell a story every year of having a camper get bit by a baby rattlesnake, and the camper had to be rushed to a hospital and treated with antivenom because baby rattlesnakes apparently don't know how to control their venom and use up more than they need to, which goes into the human bloodstream... not exactly something I ever want to deal with, either with one of my campers or myself. Just the idea of being bit by a snake is daunting, the bite itself. 

I do feel like rattlesnakes get a bad rap due to how they're portrayed in so many movies, media, and stories....they're always the villain, they always make an ominous hissing sound, they slither slowly and menacingly. The only exception I can think of is maybe Viper, voiced by Lucy Liu, from the Kung Fu Panda movies, or maybe kind of a villain-turned-hero in "Bad Guys" the movie, which is a movie about the most common tropes of bad guys played in movies like snakes and big bad wolves? I do feel like real snakes get a bad rap; they're just trying to eke out a living like any other living creatures on this earth, except when they get threatened they do fight back occasionally, unlike squirrels or mice, and is it really their fault that ignorant human beings like me are always stepping on them? If they didn't have scaly bodies, forked tongues, and not look cute like puppies or birds they'd become lucky symbols or spirit animals or something. Instead they've become the biggest threats when going out hiking in California's vast wilderness and national parks system, except for maybe like (cocaine) bears and sharks. MJ does not think like me, she totally goes with the mainstream of animals she doesn't like, like cockroaches, mice, snakes, all the disgusting animals; she told me to kill an innocent bug in our house the other day just for the crime of breaking and entering into our humble abode; for the sake of life (and hoping to get good baby karma or just karma in general) I released the bug back into the wild, where it probably would die within the next couple days anyway but not by my hand. And happy story: my parents and I got by the rattlesnake safely without incident, although I wonder what's the correct protocol to alert other trail users about a snake on the path, to avoid them getting bitten as well? Leave a big sign? Try to scare the rattlesnake away? I've seen people try to use a big stick to lift the snake's entire body and thrust it away off the path, but that seems like a lot of risk to me personally to not a lot of benefit of potentially saving a random stranger I'll never meet. 

I just found out Lucy Liu is 54 years old! Well geez! She is closer to my mom's age than she is to my age, but she has aged so gracefully. Good news MJ! What is her antiaging secret? 

Joshua Bell

 Recently I went to see Joshua Bell perform. No, not Josh Bell the first baseman for the Washington Nationals and Pittsburgh Pirates; we're talking the star violinist (and conductor!) who tours around the world (but mostly the U.S.) playing at sold-out concerts and playing in front of thousands of people. A life that MJ would love to have had. 

First, Joshua Bell looks young. I saw him pretty close-u and would have guessed he was in his forties, and not even in his late-40's, just a regular old 40-something, and his profile pictures kind of confirm that. His real age according to Wikipedia? 55 years old. That goes to the importance of skincare and anti-aging lotion, I guess, something I should probably (definitely) work on. 

Joshua Bell grew up in Indiana, specifically Bloomington, Indiana, near the campus of Indiana University, a place MJ and I recently visited. I like college towns because you never know what you'll find, including a fabulous Mies Van der Rohe building in the center of campus. Most people just walk on by, but MJ and I knew it was special, just like the entire Midwest: most coastal elites who live on the East and West Coasts just walk (or fly) right by the Midwest, but you're missing some gems in Illinois, Indiana, etc. Indiana University in particularly is not prohibitively far from Indianapolis, which is itself not too far from Chicago. Don't underestimate the Midwest! 

Joshua Bell seemed to gravitate towards violin at a VERY young age, like age 4. That's how geniuses are made. It's sad but unfortunately true and probably why so many helicopter parents drag their kids to soccer practice, violin practice, chess practice, etc., because the reality is that if a kid is not outstanding at one thing by the age of like 7, their chances of being one of the best in the world, world-renowned, world-classed, becomes so low (unless they're a genetic freak or something). It's like a garden with many flowers, but only one of millions of flowers can grow into the one flower that shines on, as the other flowers just fall away. At my local club I see this too: parents being more excited about bringing their kids to play chess than the kids themselves are. It shows commendable dedication by the parents to give their children a good life, and playing chess, violin, and others give a good foundation for other pursuits and keeps kids off the street, but if their goal is to be world-class at something, it's probably futile unfortunately. Out of a whole orchestra of musicians who have tried to make it in music, there's only ONE Joshua Bell or Ray Chen. You have to be the elite of the elite, and at some point even excellent musicians/ talents find there's someone better. 

Joshua Bell one time played in the subway in DC and pretended to be a busker (someone who plays music on the street). At one time, I had an opportunity to play with the LA Lawyers' orchestra in a subway concert performance, and it sounded like a cool idea at the time, except then I thought some more and concluded: 1.) It's dirty in the subway. Where would I set my violin? 2.) It smells in the subway, especially in most L.A. subway stations, it smells like marijauna, 3.) People who ride the subway probably wouldn't appreciate it, people like me who are usually in a hurry to get to work or get home that I would just walk right by and not think about the musicians exhibiting their artistic expression for free, 4.) I'm not that good and I don't want other people to hear me as a fraud, and 5.) It's dirty in the subway stops, as well as the people. So yea, I commend Joshua Bell for doing it even as a world-class musician, but I feel like it was a publicity stunt, not the best acoustics or anything. Oh and I wouldn't want to take away opportunities for real buskers who need the money. 

Speaking of geniuses starting at a young age, the FIDE World Championship of Chess is this week, and it's a Best of 14 chess match. Wow. Each match takes like 5 hours too, and it's actually mentally and physically draining; the two competitors Ian Alexandrovich Nepomniachtchi of Russia and Ding Liren of China both seem physically exhausted by the end of each match, even though they're barely past 30 (younger than me! That hurts). They of course both were world-class by age 12 or so, winning international tournaments. I have enough comprehension of chess strategies to understand why they play certain moves, but that's about it; I can never hope to play chess at their level or their understanding of chess; it's exactly like violin: I know enough to know what is required to play such beautiful music and be one of the best in the world, but I would never be able to do it myself. Thus is life. 

Tax Bracket (税级, 税額括弧, 세금 괄호)

 Theoretically, moving up in tax brackets is a good problem to have, because that means you are raising your income, so it's a net gain. But then tax season comes around (as it does on April 18, when taxes are due unless you're in California or another disaster-stricken area this year- figures America would let people procrastinate further and further. It used to be April 15, now it's April 18, and now any disasters can stretch the tax day back) it kind of makes me wonder...why am I paying so much tax? 

MJ is very very upset around this time of year every year, despite all the Easter eggs and flowers and tulips and cherry blossoms- she's upset about paying so much tax on her income because she has the misfortune (at least, from a tax standpoint) to be married to me, and our married filing jointly income launches us into a completely different tax bracket than her income on her own would be. I didn't notice this before as a college student or when I was a spendthrift about money, but the American tax system is funky (on top of having to pay both federal AND state tax, not to mention local taxes, etc.). The federal income tax brackets are just 7 levels: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37%. Notice something about those numbers? The first 3 numbers should you remind you of a math problem on the SAT or a sequence in Jeopardy: it's a perfect Fibonacci sequence! 10+12= 22. Math nerds probably love it, but why is it such a huge leap forward? I get the arguments for a progressive tax rate to put more of the tax burden on the rich and less on the poor, and the rich can afford to pay taxes, etc., but this isn't a "progressive" sloping tax, this is like jumping steps (MJ just bought a stepper this week to help her exercise indoors). Basically if your family (household income) for 2022 exceeds $81,051, you leap up from the 12% tax bracket to 22%. That's 10%! Someone who made $82,000 of taxable income is out an extra $8,200 than if they stayed at 12%. That's substantial, and so is the jump from the 24% to the 32% tax bracket, the borderline set at $329, 850. I guess the system has no sympathy for households who earn more that much in the $300k range, but as someone who's made $300k not necessarily in one year but over the course of a little more time than that, that goes quick! It's not like I'm pocketing the $300k per year so I can buy Teslas, travel to the Bahamas, and buy a private yacht. Frustratingly, for those in that 32% tax bracket, the max tax bracket you can be is 37%, so the richest billionaires are paying only 5% more in federal tax than you, no matter how much they make! And we all know the billionaires have enough accounting professionals running doing accounting jiujitsu and shell corporations that they don't pay that much tax. As usual, it's the middle class that's taking hit for this. As the motto I've developed over the years go, "you either have to super rich in this country or super poor." It's tough to be stuck in the middle. Luckily, despite Joe Biden's very public hard line against the wealthy (who he defines as those earning $400,000k or more), the 2023 tax brackets (for next year's filing) will be a little more lenient due to inflation, but the percentages are still the same (10%, 12%, 24%, 32%, 35%, 37%), it's just the thresholds go up a little bit so you might slide down one tax bracket with the same amount of money earned. 

Other the fact that I'm stuck paying back a tax debt this year (no refund! It's like reverse Christmas every year coming around and realizing not only do I get no presents I owe the IRS some presents) I find doing taxes somewhat interesting: I use TurboTax software, but I find the math part is fun for me; I like to extract the sum the employer withheld from my paycheck and figure out if they deducted too little or too much; TurboTax is just good at filing out the bubbles on the tax form and doublechecking your math; it admittedly gets a little tough even for people who are good at tax. I don't take it as hard as MJ because I'm used to the US taking out tax every year before you even touching it, but yea after reaching a higher tax bracket, I start realizing how much I'm paying to both federal and state governments every year.....for what? Where is that money going? My high school English teacher once said, "young people start as liberals, but gradually as they grow older they turn into fiscal conservatives...." mainly because of the taxes and fiscal policy; maybe he was predicting my future. I can understand where he was coming from now; the reality hits home more when it's real money we're talking about, and when the taxes are used to fund wars we didn't agree to and not used to save the climate or victims of gun violence. MJ has weird patients who yell at her sometimes saying, "I pay your salary and the hospital!" I feel like that patient now, yelling at the void that is the bureaucracy: I pay your salary but what are you doing with it?

Youth is Wasted on the Young

 I've been saying and thinking this phrase for a long time, ever since my youth (haha), but only today did I realize who actually said it: the great Irish playwright and poet George Bernard Shaw, who said it for the exact reasons I thought he might say it: to lament that the best times of our times are wasted on children, who don't know what they have and how good they have it, waste it, and have nothing to show for it when it's over and they're old except to lament that they wasted their youth. I feel the same way about my youth! Bill Maher recently said something on his show that I'm sure everyone over like 30 or 35 could relate to: I wish I could go back to my early 20's, but only if I know what I know now, not if I still had the same brain and mindset as I did when I was that age. Everyone lacks maturity and clear thinking and sense of purpose back then, but especially me: College, which is supposed to be the best time of one's life, I spent as if it was a bridge to something else; just the fact that I voluntarily shorted myself 1 year of college in order to graduate early and go to law school shows how little I valued those years, as well as the fact I never went on a study abroad program, likely one of the few chances in one's life to live in a foreign country totally out of one's comfort zone but totally fresh and possibly life changing. And part of Shaw's lament, again perfectly relatable, is that there was time for those young people to take chances, make mistakes and start over again, but as an older person without youth, there's no more room to live like a youth and get bailed out; you have to be much less risk-averse and thus live in a cage of age-induced responsibilities. 

There are some college students, though, that seem to have their acts together, as I re-watched NBC's College Bowl and wondered if I could get some of those questions right back in my college years... (what's a DEXA scan? Did I know what the first book of the New Testament Bible was? Deep knowledge about Poe works like The Fall of the House of Usher and Lenore? Probably not. One of the many missed opportunities of college (among learning a new language, studying abroad, signing up for scholastic bowl/trivia club) was getting really good at something, even if it was like becoming a music buff or dive into a whole new world of music, like many high school students/ college students do. Instead, I spent the first time away from living at home with my parents by doing the same things that I liked that were still in my comfort zone: play online poker, play basketball at the gym, read books. I do have some pleasing memories of those times, but they weren't life-changing, they were like making myself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich every day when there are so many different ethnic cuisines to check out; the major US cities have pretty much the whole world's cuisines available to you, and that's probably what it feels like for a 20-year-old in college: you have the whole world in front of you and your whole life ahead of you, but you just want to do the thing that your 20-year-old self feels comfortable doing, and you just stagnate there. I took a week-long trip with my undergrad business program to Germany and Poland after my freshman year of college; I wasted it by not understanding the culture, the business areas of the region, and just wandering around. Oh and I had some bratwurst; that's what I remember ( I was also oddly repelled by alcohol in some sort of rebellion against my peers who were really into alcohol, so I missed out on all the fun, another thing I look back on and ask, "Why did I DO that?" 

I also forget the technology factor: the world was different when I was young. I used to write papers by hand; use a cell phone only for calling people, meet people in person. The world of 2005 (when I was just entering college) is such a different world than 2023 (social media just started in 2005, and in some time-traveling fantasies I have a kill-baby Hitler role and stop Mark Zuckerberg (not kill him, he's not that bad of a guy) from creating Facebook and stop the social media revolution), and as I drag myself begrudgingly towards my 36th birthday in a couple weeks I realize that I've lived just as long as an adult (18 years old+) as I did the rest of my life. I've lived another "adult-life" cycle! Do I have anything to show for it? I guess just the awareness and knowledge not to act like I was 18. 

Which leads to my conclusion: what if college was later? People mature at different ages, but some people like me don't "get it" until much later in life and would appreciate college in a much different way later on in life. A gap year makes a lot of sense, but few eighteen-year-olds have the audacity to tell their parents or their peers that they're not going to college but taking a gap year.....to do what? In fact, I think the opposite question should be asked: You are going to college....to do what? So many kids just do it because it's the natural thing to do and everyone else is doing it, to get a job (not a bad reason, but the number of people who change majors or directions leads me to believe those kids could have a better idea of that later). Imagine an adult 30-year-old "gap year" that one builds equity for earlier in life, like saving up credit card points to one year of freedom to live one final year of youth again, but without the insecurities and worries of needing to make it and the ignorance of what the real life is like. That would be a year well spent for a 30-year-old, unlike many beer-drinking frat party-attending years of a college students wasting one of the best years of their lives. 

The Last Natural High

 I've never used drugs in my life, and I realize I'm in the minority of the people in my age group. Luckily for me, I haven't need drugs to achieve highs in my life: I produce them naturally, through accomplishments and working hard to achieve, and to be honest, some luck. But not drugs! Although I'll never understand what drugs are like, thanks to the Omnibus podcast and listening to those who have ventured down that path, I kind of understand the motivation for those highs: those who use crack describe a feeling of deep accomplishment, like being the first person to climb Mount Everest, or the first person ever to walk on the moon, a feeling that goes away almost as quickly as it came once the drugs lose their effectiveness, so each time getting high is an attempt to recreate that feeling, to search for it again, because the rest of one's life is so in shambles and not worthy of living. It's really a vicious cycle for people living in poverty or miserable lives: their real lives don't give them any highs, but the artificial highs that they can get spiral them deeper into misery and addiction, which makes them want to seek those highs even more, and so on. I get it too as a non-drug user: even in the relatively successful life that I lead, certain activities that use to create highs no longer do after the first time, or the first few times: once you've experienced it, it loses its luster, like the first time kissing a girl, or the first time finding out you passed an important time, the first time winning a sports championship, the first time you graduated college and drove in the car west on the road to the rest of your life. The high of those events kind of fade over time as you wonder, exasperated, "I used to feel something!" and now that feeling is gone. 

If I were to start a podcast (I keep saying but not doing!) I might call it "The Last Natural High" podcast, for people desperately seeking to get high (like myself) but without the use of drugs: the use of achievements and accomplishments, of personal satisfaction, and I'm here to say it can still be done! Every time I feel like I've run out of things to get high on, I find something new: I thought I'd never match my glory days of high school chess anymore, but I still find now the thrill of winning just a random pickup game against a worthy opponent can give me an adrenaline rush (and justify the hour-long episode it takes to get to achieve that victory). Every night I achieve a little bit of dopamine rush when I answer a tough question on Jeopardy that's never been answered before (Friday night it was that Colombia is the only one of 13 nations the equator runs through that borders the Caribbean Sea). But everyone can have their own highs! Do I feel low? Of course I feel low all the time. Today after a few summer-like days in the area, it went down to the 50's, cloudy, and overcast, a nothing burger day, a perfect day to be bummed out and feel depressed, moody, and out of it (Oh and MJ and I watched the short film "If Anything Happens I Love You," a heartbreaking film about loss of a child to gun violence), but what got me up was suddenly and unexpectedly diving into a good book, this time (finally) The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-time, now apparently developed into a play too. I started as a kid lying down prone (face down) with my nose buried in a book, and I've never lost that page-turning high... it's my anti-drug (a popular marketing slogan when I was a teen but unlike most marketing campaigns, for a good cause). 

Ida B. Wells- remember that name anytime you're in Chicago, she is the namesake of Wells Drive, an important downtown street in the Loop, but for a good reason: Ida B. Wells lost a close friend to lynching growing up in post-Civil War America, and promised when she grew up to fight against racism and racist violence, eventually starting a newspaper and using her reporting to promote feminist and the civil rights movement, eventually helping to establish the NAACP. And now, for a good reason, she is immortalized in history by being referenced frequently on Jeopardy (and sometimes not being known by even Jeopardy contestants, indicating that she is underappreciated and needs to be known more). Just that pledge at a young age to do something noble and actually following through and doing it deserves praise and admiration from young people today, including myself who lacks the discipline to stick with anything for more than 5 minutes, much less 5 years or 50 years like Ida B. Wells did. 

Sauces (酱料, ソース, 소스)

 The more I learn about food and try different recipes and cultures of food, the more I realize that essence of most main dishes (not fruits, side salads, etc.) is the sauce. Which is ironic, because I used to have the nickname "The Sauce" in college (alternatively, "Saucy")... most foods I've had would just not be the same without sauce: Hot dogs without ketchup/mustard/some sort of sauce, Mapo tofu without the mapo sauce, authentic sushi without the soy sauce...and now that I've delve into Korean cuisine, Korean food is all about sauces, from rice cakes to bean paste sauce, and some even stronger sauces. 

Out of those abundances of sauces that I like comes this curious mixture of chopped parsley, garlic, olive oil, and spices....from the depths of South America, it's....chimichurri sauce! Good with potatoes, and.....really so far, just potatoes. Chimichurri is like the one friend who only hangs out with one best friend: does not mix well with others. It's also a little uninviting, to be honest: green, like chill sauce, but a deeper tone that makes it less welcoming to the palate; it's no wonder Asian cooking has stayed away from it and I never had any before the age of 35. Even now MJ's kind of hesitant about having it, but after a little coaxing and "just give it a try" energy, the jar of chimichurri that says it expired in December 2022 but we're still consuming anyway so we don't feel like we're wasting earth's natural resources.......is half gone! We did it! Put something to use that we didn't think we would use. 

If chimichurri's not really your jam, a more welcoming, white creamy concoction (the color of mayonnaise, milk, and all kinds of rich food) is tzatziki sauce, the Greek blend of yogurt, cucumber, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice.....can have it almost with anything, the tzatziki will likely overpower the taste of the other thing and provide the flavor. I've had tzatziki on pizza dough, tzatziki with rice, tzatziki with salad, and just scooped tzatziki into my mouth by the spoon before (don't try this with peanut butter, I tried once and got sick, too much of a good thing everywhere all at once). 

That's kind of the lesson of preparing food nowadays for me: try different combinations of things. Tonight I had potatoes with pasta sauce on top, when ketchup was getting old; the food prep company (similar to Blue Origin) that supplies us with food recipes often leaves extra portions of stuff, especially sauces, which we can never finish; I just dip different food items into different sauces, kind of like a chef understanding how certain things go together. That really is the best artistic ideas of a chef: figuring out what tastes good with what else, like a fashion designer knowing what top outfit matches with the pants/dress, shoes, headwear, etc. The sauce is the scarf tied around the neck to top off everything, or a symbol worn next to the chest: It doesn't have many practical application of getting the consumer the calories they need, but it's what people remember and reveals about their taste. Respect the sauces! 

Board Games (棋盘游戏, ボードゲーム, 보드 게임)

 The winner of tonight's Jeopardy! episode used her contestant interview segment to talk about her love of board games and the apparent boom in board games that we are in the midst of right now. Who knew? But then I realized that I know quite a lot about board games, and have indulged in them as a guilty pleasure since I was a kid...from the ubiquitous game chess to the Game of Life, Monopoly, Chutes and Ladders, Sorry, Battleship, Stratego... and those are just the famous ones! There are more trendy ones that have grown in popularity in my circles like Settlers of Cataan and Ticket to Ride. The problem, of course, is that in order to play these games, you have to have OTHER PEOPLE to play with, and that's always been an issue for me, this recruiting of other people who are cooler than me and have their own ideas of fun (a real missed opportunity that the American standard of having fun is to just go out, get wasted, talk about nonsense, play beer pong, and forget). I don't want to forget, I want to PLAY board games). 

There are in fact, many board gamer out there, who live in their own circle of board gamers, and I was briefly within that circle (that title reminds me of the book "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vuong), during law school, my APALSA tutor initiated me into that circle of board gamers playing foreign-sounding games like "Carcassone," "Dominion," and "Alhambra." I actually learned a lot from those board games, like where Alhambra actually is (in Spain, Granada, Andalusia), some names of old currency like doubloons, but more importantly, I had a great time learning the games, how they work, and what the best strategies are. It's kind of why I play fantasy baseball and obsess over it: I want to perfect my strategies, implement and execute, then see if the pay off. Adult board games allow you to do that and have the perfect bend of theme, playable characters, and interactions with other players. While within that circle of board gamers I heard about an exclusive club called "The Gathering of Friends" which allowed enthusiasts to meet every year at a convention, much like Comic Con or AnimeCon; I believe I would have thrived at one of those events, and always yearned to go back to that life of entering board game fantasy worlds each board game is its own world of city building, sushi ingredient mixing, firework finale composing, and for anywhere from 5 minutes to multiple hours of game play I'd be enthralled, engrossed, infatuated by those games. 

Some of the best in memory: 1.) Bang, a game set in the Wild Wild West where players select various Wild West characters to play under such as Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Pat Garrett, and use various guns to do shootouts. Very entertaining and educational about famous Wild West characters. 2.) Pandemic, a game I played before the real pandemic but had all the same principles, where the CDC had to stop infections in various cities before they got out of hand and spread to other cities. My takeaway: there are a lot of infectious diseases in the world, and they can spread VERY fast, overwhelming even the best efforts of epidemiologists. 3.) Ticket to Ride: Actually the last board game that MJ and I played (MJ is a serious person who doesn't dabble much in things as trivial as board games), it's good for geography, but one of the simpler games of "collect the cards" that doesn't require much strategy: feels like the ultimate road trip. 

Alas, playing board games doesn't pay the bills, and besides pursuing my career and family, I got into other hobbies like dodgeball and trivia, but one day, one day....I'll come back to board games. Meanwhile, board games are very much fair game in the trivia world! Chinese checkers wasn't invented in China, it has a German origin; backgammon is often used as a trivia clue where the object of the game is to "cast off" (remove) all of one's pieces; just wait for the next board game category on Jeopardy! 

Speeches (毕业演讲, 卒業スピーチ, 졸업 연설)

 As the calendar flips to April, my anxiety that the year is already a quarter of the year over heightens (ALREADY???) and the my old college internal clock is ticking again to let me know that graduation season is right around the corner, a clock that sometimes gets reset when I attended my sister's graduation, or attended MJ's graduation from nursing school, at which the commencement speaker was...the legendary John Legend! 

I've always had a fantasy of giving a speech in front of my high school, or in front of a college or something, probably due to my illusions of grandeur as a teenager and my close run at valedictorian at my high school (I should have gotten it to if the "regular" classes didn't actually count against my GPA, but that's another story for another day) but in my mind it was because a graduation speaker is someone who made it, who got to the top of the mountaintop, achieved everything that they wanted, and they succeeded so much that at least thousands (likely millions) of people know who they are. I was hoping I'd become a famous Survivor contestant, Jeopardy champion, or maybe the CEO of a major company, a state or U.S. senator, etc. Those are the types of people that usually make it on stage to give the graduation speeches. I always thought that was a little presumptuous, and definitely do now, that because you're a celebrity and people know who you are, you earned the right to give advice to graduation high school or college students to tell them how to lead their lives and be just as successful as the celebrity! Of course it doesn't necessarily work that way, and the celebrity/ successful person giving the speech likely went through a l of adversity, got a little lucky, and often didn't listen to people before them to get where they are today. And it depends on what you mean by "successful." Is a retired army captain raising 4 kids and helping with local charity causes that no one's never heard of not as successful as a famous actor who got paid due to his fame to speak at the school?

And yea, I really need to adjust my image of a graduation speaker: In my fantasy of speaking at graduation I would tell everyone the secrets of success and how to make it in life, and impart the crucial piece of wisdom that all young people need to make their dreams come true. Nowadays that's probably even less likely than it was back in my day sitting at my high school graduation listening to speakers talk (In fact I can't remember who the guest speaker was at either of my graduations from high school or college); students are probably checking their cell phones, thinking about what Tiktok videos they want to check out next, how to become the next 20-something-year-old millionaire/billionaire rather than listening to an old geezer talk. 

But, after reading a book devoted to commencement speeches called "Way More than Luck....." I find that I kind of enjoy the speeches. They're inspirational, usually pretty funny (highly recommended, as it loosens up the crowd and makes people pay attention for the next joke in case they miss it). I do feel like most of them lean a little more toward "do what you love, go out of your comfort zone, take chances!" when most of the people listening to the speech will likely take the safe route of using their college education to advance their careers and have a safe journey through life, but I do appreciate the reminder by the speakers to look at life in the bigger picture, 10, 20, 30 years down the road to what you want to be when you're at the age of looking back on what you've done in your life, and maybe, just maybe, one day think about that one time at the graduation ceremony when the speaker imparted some valuable pearls of wisdom that you can use to further your life, even if it's misdirected or doesn't apply to one's own particular situation, at least knowing that just maybe, one day your life can improve or get a lucky break enough to become that guy giving the speech.