Spirit Airlines

 As chronicled on Jeopardy, Trevor Noah has a bit that he goes back to time and time again in his skits, especially on the Daily Show (back when Trevor Noah hosted the Daily Show and spawned the phrase "Na mean?" mean "You know what I mean?" which MJ and I have adapted in our daily conversation. Good times. Having never flown Spirit Airlines (I know, surprising, given my history of being a tightwad and trying to save as much as I could on any purchases and going with the lowest quality product) but I can just imagine what it would have been like and the type of people on those flights.... pure chaos. So at the end of the Spirit Airlines era (it went public in 2011, about when I started investing, and got all the way up to $85 dollars in 2014, indicating there was some promise the company would become a major player in the low-cost airline industry), and then cratered and is trading at $0.69 per share today. Just another reason not to dabble in airline stocks, despite United, American and Delta all having big stock market years..... the year to year volatility is huge and it's frankly just hard to run an airline, huge overhead, have to pay the pilots, the workers, order the planes.......if there's one industry I wouldn't want to become an owner of, it's airlines. Fun fact: I once owned Jet Blue stock (JBLU), one of my first stock purchases.... and the stock is trading almost exactly the same price as it did in 2010 when I first started investing, while inflation has increased more than 45%. 

It's probably hard for people to have nostalgia about plane trips, but there are some plane rides from my childhood that I felt alive, emboldened, or just had a really good memory. Maybe it's because they used to have full meals on planes that were not necessarily better but different from my parents' cooking, I sometimes craved going on planes to see what food I would get (Chicken or fish was a big decision for me back then!) and looking out the window at the clouds, taking off from the airport, and admiring all the busy-looking adults looking important and business-like (come to realize now that they were just slaving away at their jobs or trying to handle 3 kids on a cross-country flight, no easy task on its own) and boy oh boy, I was so excited to know what the flight movie was! Yup, that's right, back then there was just ONE movie for everyone to see on the plane, and the pilot announced it at the beginning of the flight. Like it or not, that's the one you were stuck with watching, no matter if you were a kid, liked cartoons, rom-coms, or Friends re-runs. Oh but I enjoyed those movies. 

Yesterday also marked my 23rd anniversary of coming to America, landing in America on December 13, 1991 (a George H.W. Bush kid!) Hundreds of flights later, I'm a veteran of planes and am just trying to get through from place to place as quickly as possible, but when I was 4 and a half years ago I was full of wonder, what this plane thing was, why my stomach feels so weird, why we had to switch planes in the middle (changed in either SFO or Vancouver, I forget) and whatever happens, follow my grandpa. My grandpa was as old as my parents are now, that's how the grains of time have shifted. I crave that feeling now, of adventure, youthful exuberance, not knowing what's going to happen next but being excited about the day, not knowing exactly where the plane was headed (somewhere called Chicago? I just knew it wasn't Shanghai where my relatives had sent me off) but satisfied that I had a destination, and that destination would have food and soccer ball chocolate candy. Now I can see my road map to my death, and it has some exciting things on its path but it's not nearly as mysterious and ignorantly blissful as I was on that plane coming to America. I didn't fly on Spirit Airlines; I had spirit on that airline. (I know, bad pun, but I tried). 

Hunger Pains (饥饿的痛苦, 空腹の痛み, 배고픔)

 My body has a weird way of processing hunger; sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night because I didn't eat enough during the day, and my stomach is screaming for the brain to feed it with something; and I give into those hunger pains which are caused by a hormone in the stomach called ghrelin. Ghrelin is everywhere in the middle of the night. But then, the next day after I wake up, the ghrelin levels (they sound a lot like gremlins, maybe they're only active at night!) seem to be always on a steady level, so that even if I eat something, my stomach still feels upset and a faint feeling of hunger pains lingers. It's like an unsatiable beast, no matter how much I eat it will not be tamed! And in the middle of the night I wake up really hungry again with hungry pains, and I have to eat to go back to normal and the cycle continues. All except LAST NIGHT, when I tamed the ghrelin/gremlins and decide to just go back to sleep hungry on the advice of my medical professional (MJ) and it worked! I deceived the gremlins and actually fell asleep without having to further distort my stomach, and sleep won the day! If it was like a Magic School Bus episode of exploring the human body, the melatonin army overpowered the rogue ghremlins and let my body shut off on an empty stomach. Probably the best case scenario; now I just need to for my whole life, which MJ has been doing (trained since birth, raised by wolves, apparently, is how MJ put it). 

Unfortunately other than hunger pains, I dealt with more serious pains on 12/11/2024, a pretty bad day in the history of Robert Yan. On the even of 12-12-2024, no less! Sometimes all the training, practice, hard work, and good vibes come together to create a magical day where it all pays off, but some days it's like a House of Cards where everything goes wrong and everything comes tumbling down (House of Cards, good first season, I just couldn't finish it knowing what eventually would happen to Peter Rousseau and Zoe Barnes and what Frank Underwood would do to them. Sad stuff, even for a fictional show). Yesterday was a House of Cards day. I got stuck out in the rain, my sock got wet, I woke up early to catch the train but missed it because I forgot where I put my cell phone and spent a crucial 3 minutes frantically scrambling around looking for it, by which time the train had left and I was resigned to take the next train. This after having a ghrelin-induced bad sleep the night before. But all minor compared to learning that MJ and I will not be having a baby as a result of our latest attempt. Doesn't mean we have stopped trying, but this was our to-date best shot at it with the best odds of success, and it still didn't happen for us. This time I had maybe the worst thing, the thing with feathers (Emily Dickinson), hope. The tough thing with trying to get pregnant is that you get weeks of lead-up, of thinking maybe this is the time (I've been secretly hoping to replace my grandpa's life force with a new life force after he passed away 3 years ago in some sort of weird circle-of-life scenario) we finally succeed, and it only takes about 5 seconds to get the bad news that it's not happening. I guess all bad news is sudden, there's no leadup, no one wants to prolong the bad news or have any build-up, unless it's something chronic like cancer that increasingly gets worse. No, the bad news comes pretty quick and just totally tears down everything that I'd been privately hoping for (buying a new house, picking out name) but rationally guarding our hearts, as they call it. It's also tough because I realize that MJ is going through her 5 stages of grief, going through bargaining stage ("I wish you had done something about this"), anger, depression, etc., whereas I have to put on a brave face because she deserves her time to grieve as she's putting her body on the line and in some sense going through it for me, but I also have no time to grieve, to let the 5 stages of grief play out, I just have to be strong and take it each time (and we've done this more than a few times now) and each time a little bit of me is heartbroken, like that Joni Mitchell song "Both Sides Now" from "Love Actually..." I've looked at pregnancy from both sides now, and I don't know how much disappointment and thinking I might be a father soon to not becoming one to maybe never becoming one I can take. Maybe it's melodramatic, but I am losing hope and losing confidence, and maybe some cosmic force is telling me parenthood is not right for us. In the middle of my jog today I just yelled out in the middle of the street (hopefully nearby people didn't hear me!) some curse words for the situation, a real breakdown. I don't think I've failed, I definitely don't think MJ has failed because she's had to put her body on the line for us this whole time and has bravely done things I might not have been able to do, it's just this feeling of being left behind, of being exactly where we were 3 years ago, coupled with a lot of wallowing in self-pity. It's not as physically painful as hunger pains, the pregnancy pains have zero physical pain (for me, MJ might feel some) but a lot of psychological pain. I don't wish it on anybody. 

Petrichor

 Asian languages don't have the concept of petrichor or at least a word of it, which means the scent you smell after rain falls (usually after a long time of drought) caused by the wet soil. I too have witnessed the smell of petrichor, and it's not unpleasant; it doesn't depress me like rainy days themselves do. I always thought it had something to do with earthworms or some other living creatures from the soil, but there you go it's got a distinct smell. Apparently it has the same word as "ichor," the blood of the gods, and in many ways I can see rain as the life-giving substance that all life needs: as much as I dislike rain because it causes traffic, blocks out the sun, forces the use of umbrellas, causes puddles which are a runner's worst nightmare, and basically just messes up my plans, rain is essential to life on Earth, much like oxygen, nitrogen, pretty much any essential element. 

I bring up petrichor because it's one of the scents that emphasizes how important smells are to moods and daily life. The human body actually gets accustomed to the same smell all the time and gets desensitized to it, which is why we should always shower even if we don't think our own bodies smell bad; it may be that you just got used to your own body odor and others are being exposed to it for the first ime. Except MJ; MJ doesn't really have a natural scent (unless I've gotten used to it) or else she hides it really well. It's also really helpful for marketing campaigns to have really favorable smells; I walked into a Whole Foods today and instantly felt a little uplifted, a little more upbeat, maybe it was the Christmas music (auditory senses another big trigger) but scent definitely played a role and enhanced my mood to buy. Also I like the smell of oranges and you can kind of smell how good certain fruit will be from the outside, like Mandarin oranges or pineapples (MJ has a big thing for pineapples nowadays and always has one waiting). As for this idea of pheromones and ovulating women giving off a certain pheromone that raises the testosterone level in men who pick up the scent.......studies have shown that there might be a correlation (not very conclusive), but nowadays it's probably hard to pick up on any of that with the amount of artificial fragrances in the air that allow me to smell someone else on the street from yards away because they're doused with fragrance (see previous rant about this topic), but yea there might be something to be sad that one everyone smells too good, it desensitizes everyone's noses, and no one ends up smelling that good anyway. A race to the bottom.

What I DO crave is having a new home smell. Like a new car smell (there are car fresheners sold that play on that aesthetic), new homes also have a type of smell that I can only describe from being in other people's new homes; MJ and I have only lived in new apartment buildings and been the first ones to live in certain apartment units (we've actually done that three times).....and it's pleasing. So maybe that's why we're aspiring to buy a "new construction home," plus all the benefits of course like not needing to get things repaired (theoretically for a few years), not living in other people's filth, not smelling stuff that OTHER people left behind. Now come to think of it, yes of course you can deep clean a please, paint the walls, have it smell differently and make it like new, but there's still no denying you're living in someone else's home that has their air, the remnants of their dead skin skills, etc., etc.... I get why MJ doesn't like staying at hotels lower than 4 stars that don't do a thorough clean now. It's not petrichor, it's people odor. New home would be ideal (even if it's a little past our budget). 

Mezzaluna knife (圆顶刀, 메잘루나 나이프)

 What an elegant name for something, "mezzaluna," evokes images of classical music, like a direction to play softer, or maybe the middle section of an opera house called the mezzanine, and if it had been any of those I'd probably have heard it before the other night on Jeopardy when I heard it for the first time: a mezzaluna knife is a curve-shaped blade used for cutting veggies, and not just cut, to "mince" (there's a difference! Mincing has a lot more minor cuts and making product into small uniform pieces). And it has 2 handles for both hands to use in making it as precise as possible for cutitng the green onions, chives, parsley, garlic, ginger, and other herbs and spices MJ likes to use for her cooking. Me? I use one of 2 knives in the kitchen: the "small knife" and the "big knife." Literally only two. You'd think that after having watched "Culinary Class Wars" (streaming on Netflix, and Season 2 expected for late 2025) that I'd be more into chef-like duties, and trying out different recipes, acquire fancy knife-wielding skills, figure out how to gut a fish and de-bone without getting any of the flesh mixed in, but no, I guess I'm just interested in the existence of activities rather than actually doing them. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of possibilities in life, like in the same "In the Kitchen" category there was "blanching" or "par-boiling" veggies which is just not something I've ever had patience for. Watching the Bear and Jeremy Allen White yelling at Ayo Edibiri is stressful enough, I am not ready for MJ and I to have that type of relationship in the kitchen (to be clear, she would taken on the Jeremy Allen White role of head chef yelling at sous-chef me). 

Not that the kitchen itself is not imporant to me. I think of all the kitchens that I've ever lived in.....whether there's been an island, or any of the other types like parallel, straight, L-shape, u-shape, open, and galley. I really haven't thought about that at all before, but as MJ and I consider moving into a bigger space MJ wants everything bigger- closet space, number of bedrooms, living space, storage space meaning cabinets, (bigger jewelry) and most likely, more kitchen space to put those mezzaluna knives in (it's probably because I don't use many kitchen tools at all that MJ hasn't complained about getting more kitchen space, but as we get more stuff I'm sure it'll come around. All the places we've ever lived in have had rather cramped kitchens (the not-big-enough-to-have-a-type kitchen) because we've had pretty much cramped everything just given that we don't have pets nor kids, but maybe those are coming? Whenever I look at those fancy decorate pictures of available homes for sale (likely showroom pictures and home staged so it's not exactly what you're getting), at least you can see the structure of what the kitchen would look like, or the amount of space allocated for the kitchen. Some kitchens are just awesome. And some homes are just awesome. Sometimes I wonder when I'm doing work on a weekend, "why am I even doing this? I could be watching "House of Cards" on Netflix, great first season that is perfect for current times because it takes place in D.C. and the first 100 days of an administration) but then I'm reminded, more money = more ability to purchase a nicer house. And maybe even a mezzaluna knife.