There's a lot of news stories out there recently, including the Saudia Arabia killing of a journalist causing international indignation, shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 people (last year at this time we were still talking about the Las Vegas shooting, but these shootings have seemed to maintain if not picked up in intensity.) Plus the pipe bombs sent by a Florida man targeting the Clintons, Barack Obama, etc. Oh and a senseless killing of a 21-year-old college student at University of Utah by her ex-boyfriend who was threatening her with compromising photos. The world is so wacky. One ongoing story that I've been following that's not as depressing but nonetheless controversial is the Harvard University affirmative action lawsuit. It's a lawsuit brought by a nonprofit group of Asian Americans who feel like Harvard University's admission standards discriminates against Asians, and the outcome of the case might change the face of affirmative action in America forever.
Affirmative action, when put into the dictionary, doesn't have a direct translation in Chinese or Japanese (there might be one in Korean, not sure because my skills are not that high yet). Makes sense, because in Japan and China they don't really have this problem, but in America Asian Americans like myself struggle to understand sometimes why they can't get into their dream schools despite stellar resumes and admissions applications, and why other minorities seem to get "a boost" due to their race. When applying for college, I was deeply against affirmative action as it directly affected me and my explicit goal of getting into a top university. I ultimately was rejected from several Ivy League-caliber schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. despite really good SAT (admittedly not perfect 1600) scores. So I can understand why Asian students get upset about affirmative action, it's like you work so hard in school in hopes of achieving your goals, but then the schools don't want you just because of your race? Seems like reverse discrimination. On the other hand, the schools are also in a difficult position because they're try to ensure a diverse student body with many different types of backgrounds, which includes race. And they're not trying to reverse discriminate, but part of the process requires a bit of selecting by race when it comes down to it.
1.) All Asians are not alike. Yes a lot of us look similar (I get mistaken for different types of Asians all the time), but many have different interests, pursue different activities, come from different backgrounds, etc. Some have gone through the difficult childhood and come from a "diverse background" just like other races, but Asians usually get lumped in with the category of "hard worker," "too smart," "only care about grades," etc. We don't all want to become doctors or computer programmers, or lawyers (I did become a lawyer).
2.) I think some races do need a "lift up" by society to do well and have success stories that become positive role models in society, like Barack Obama becoming president and proving to the African American population that you can have a career in the most powerful positions in America, or Sonia Sotomaier in the Supreme Court, or other pillars of the society. This social boost is one of the most positives of affirmative action, to try to expand the possibilities (not saying that Obama or Sotomaier got into great schools because of their race, but it allows more opportunities for the next generation)
3.) Getting into an Ivy League school isn't the end all and be all. It carries prestige on one's resume and stays with you for life, but so does that enormous student debt. I personally went to my state school university, graduated in 3 years without paying much in student loans, and saved for law school. When I was in high school, I didn't see that far ahead, all I saw was this big banner at the end of the marathon of childhood that said "you need to get into an Ivy League school!" I didn't even think that maybe I could try again for grad school, maybe way down the line.
4.) Personally, I wasn't ready for an Ivy League school, and some of the Asian students clamoring to get in might not be, neither. Just because you get a perfect SAT or ACT score, doesn't actually mean you are entitled to getting into an Ivy League school. I do understand that schools consider other factors besides grades and test scores including "soft skills" like community involvement, maturity, achievement in sports, etc., so I do think there should be other qualifications, and adjusting the admissions criteria for these other factors that determine eligibility for one of the top schools is a good solution, especially if you can say beforehand what weight those carry. The achievement tests were artificially created to help weed out students anyway, schools can add other factors in addition to those tests, and students (especially 1600 or now 2400-score Asian students who spend all 4 summers of high school studying exclusively for those tests) should understand that those tests aren't the end-all be-all.
5.) One of Harvard's arguments in its defense of the lawsuit is that "they don't punish a student for being Asian, but they do reward points for being a certain race." I understand the sentiment behind that, but ultimately it's a zero sum game- if you bump up one student for his or her race, doesn't that bump him above the student right above him that didn't have that race, and thus disadvantage that student? Seems like a
6.) I feel pretty strongly against racial quotas, and so does U.S. law. "We can only let in so many Asians" should not be a valid reason for not admitting someone. The Harvard suit claims that Harvard uses a "soft quota" to get the number of students they want of a certain race. To avoid adopting a blatant quota system, Harvard introduced subjective criteria like character, personality and promise. Apparently, Asian Americans scored the lowest out of those personality traits, which I believe. When I was 17 years old applying for Harvard, I had an interview with a local alumni. I pretty much bombed the interview, couldn't discuss in-depth issues about what I was doing and what my dreams were, and at the end of the interview the alumnus asked me what other schools I was applying to and that "it's good you're applying to so many schools." Aka, "you're not getting into Harvard." I look back and agree with his analysis: I was immature and not ready for Harvard, and had only focused on grades and tests and didn't have an understanding of the world yet. I think there's something to be said for this "personality test" without being discriminatory, where interviews can be used to dig deeper into a candidate's understanding without just identifying the candidate's race.
Regardless, affirmative action has been and remains a hotly debated issue, especially for Asian Americans. I look for the Harvard lawsuit to draw lines on having quotas for race but maybe suggesting some alternatives to satisfying racial quotas. Repeal and replace racial balancing; enact diversity balancing based on personality and background factors.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Friday, October 26, 2018
October (神無月)
Curiously, the Japanese to the month of October as "the Month without Gods," and it certainly has felt that way this month. I don't attend church and don't profess to be affiliated with any organized religion, but I do "pray" or "wish for" things to happen, usually related to me, but sometimes to other people. For example, I pray that something good will happen to someone else in the world, that there will be less death and suffering. I also pray for winning to win the lottery, which was I'm sure a common prayer this month with the Mega Millions lottery ballooning to 1.6 billion; I also do wish that whoever ultimately won that grand prize (somewhere in South Carolina, as reported) will do something good with it, as I would have. Easy to say, I know, but I honestly would have devoted a lot of time and energy and obviously money towards solving social issues with the money, visit different charities or countries to make sure my money was going to a good cause, and then give to those causes. I also wish for my wife and my family's success, health, and happiness.
My No.1 prayer, though, this month, has been for the stock market to rebound, and since I'm writing about it, you can probably guess that it hasn't rebounded; worse, it keeps going down. I read my February entry about the Great Recession of 2018 and I've basically all the checkmarks of things I shouldn't do that I wrote about then. I pay too much attention to the market, I don't realize things can go down a lot faster then they go up, I don't realize how much losing hurts compared to winning. Added some other lessons though:
1.) Many in the market say don't panic sell. I agree with this, but sometimes having a little panic is good, as opposed to being complacent and always thinking the market will go up. I ask myself how I can just watch the stock go down this month without taking much action, and a lot of the reason stems from continuously thinking the stock will bounce back any time. Yes, eventually stocks SHOULD bounce back, but it's very difficult to call a "bottom," and can become very costly if you're wrong.
2.) Kind of related to No. 1, don't think I'm the smartest guy in the room, or even smart, at playing the market. As Jim Cramer says, "THEY KNOW NOTHING!" not even the best people in the world can know exactly what the stock market is going to do next; let alone the casual investor like me. I can't think that just because I try to "buy low" that the stock's going to go up just because I bought it. The stock market's like a raging bull (well, actually, in the last month, a bear); you can't try to outsmart it or tame it and plant a flag that says "I defeated the market! I called the bottom!" you just got to react, try to take some profit if you can, limit the losses, and try to stay alive.
3.) I started trading on a site called Robinhood a few months ago, and it's helpful to not have to pay commissions on any trades, which is a blessing, but it also becomes a curse for me to make reactionary moves all the time. It allows for much easier panic-selling, feeding into my buyer's or seller's remorse ( I regret buying/selling and want to redo my position, basically neutralizing what I just did minutes ago), and it becomes such a mess I forget what I was trying to do in the first place. And I also make tiny trades so that mistakes wont' hurt as much, but then that leads to leaving too much of position open to a huge sell-off ( I didn't sell enough).
4.) I think I'll always remember the day of October 25, 2018. I knew Amazon earnings were coming out, but the whole day the stock market went up and up, recovering a lot of the losses that I had incurred this past month. "Let's go! This is it!" it was like I was a fan at a sports game, cheering for my team, the (stock market) bulls. I considered hedging a bit from Amazon, but I thought earnings were coming out, they did so well last time, if they do well, I might get all the money back! 3:00PM was the close of the market, I eagerly await, and at 3:01PM the stock plunges, instantly eviscerating all the gains from the 7-hour trading day in a click of a button, then going down more, and dragging the stock market with it today. It was really the worst-feeling website click in my whole life, watching the AMZN stock say -80.00 in red letters after-hours. Hopefully that will FINALLY, FINALLY ingrain in me the lesson that all gains are temporary until you close out the trade, and that I'm much more likely to sell when things are looking up and I'm still feeling good about msyelf (SELL HIGH!) than I am to do so when things are going down because of how emotional I get (maybe set stop limits?)
Also some other things going on that are making October difficult: I keep just missing buses and trains; the timing is just off. Like I am coming up on the train and it's in view, but it just goes by before I get there. To me, as most know, that's one of the worst feelings: I very much dislike getting delayed. I'm sure it's not that extreme and I'm exaggerating the frequency of it, but in September it felt like it never happened, and in October it feels like it's happening all the time.
I can't wait for this month to be over. Why does it have to be a 31-day month?
My No.1 prayer, though, this month, has been for the stock market to rebound, and since I'm writing about it, you can probably guess that it hasn't rebounded; worse, it keeps going down. I read my February entry about the Great Recession of 2018 and I've basically all the checkmarks of things I shouldn't do that I wrote about then. I pay too much attention to the market, I don't realize things can go down a lot faster then they go up, I don't realize how much losing hurts compared to winning. Added some other lessons though:
1.) Many in the market say don't panic sell. I agree with this, but sometimes having a little panic is good, as opposed to being complacent and always thinking the market will go up. I ask myself how I can just watch the stock go down this month without taking much action, and a lot of the reason stems from continuously thinking the stock will bounce back any time. Yes, eventually stocks SHOULD bounce back, but it's very difficult to call a "bottom," and can become very costly if you're wrong.
2.) Kind of related to No. 1, don't think I'm the smartest guy in the room, or even smart, at playing the market. As Jim Cramer says, "THEY KNOW NOTHING!" not even the best people in the world can know exactly what the stock market is going to do next; let alone the casual investor like me. I can't think that just because I try to "buy low" that the stock's going to go up just because I bought it. The stock market's like a raging bull (well, actually, in the last month, a bear); you can't try to outsmart it or tame it and plant a flag that says "I defeated the market! I called the bottom!" you just got to react, try to take some profit if you can, limit the losses, and try to stay alive.
3.) I started trading on a site called Robinhood a few months ago, and it's helpful to not have to pay commissions on any trades, which is a blessing, but it also becomes a curse for me to make reactionary moves all the time. It allows for much easier panic-selling, feeding into my buyer's or seller's remorse ( I regret buying/selling and want to redo my position, basically neutralizing what I just did minutes ago), and it becomes such a mess I forget what I was trying to do in the first place. And I also make tiny trades so that mistakes wont' hurt as much, but then that leads to leaving too much of position open to a huge sell-off ( I didn't sell enough).
4.) I think I'll always remember the day of October 25, 2018. I knew Amazon earnings were coming out, but the whole day the stock market went up and up, recovering a lot of the losses that I had incurred this past month. "Let's go! This is it!" it was like I was a fan at a sports game, cheering for my team, the (stock market) bulls. I considered hedging a bit from Amazon, but I thought earnings were coming out, they did so well last time, if they do well, I might get all the money back! 3:00PM was the close of the market, I eagerly await, and at 3:01PM the stock plunges, instantly eviscerating all the gains from the 7-hour trading day in a click of a button, then going down more, and dragging the stock market with it today. It was really the worst-feeling website click in my whole life, watching the AMZN stock say -80.00 in red letters after-hours. Hopefully that will FINALLY, FINALLY ingrain in me the lesson that all gains are temporary until you close out the trade, and that I'm much more likely to sell when things are looking up and I'm still feeling good about msyelf (SELL HIGH!) than I am to do so when things are going down because of how emotional I get (maybe set stop limits?)
Also some other things going on that are making October difficult: I keep just missing buses and trains; the timing is just off. Like I am coming up on the train and it's in view, but it just goes by before I get there. To me, as most know, that's one of the worst feelings: I very much dislike getting delayed. I'm sure it's not that extreme and I'm exaggerating the frequency of it, but in September it felt like it never happened, and in October it feels like it's happening all the time.
I can't wait for this month to be over. Why does it have to be a 31-day month?
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Attention to Detail (세심한, 細心)
The kanji for "meticulous," (an SAT word!) or paying attention to detail, is the same in Japanese and Chinese and is very interesting: it means having a "thin heart," as one can picture someone examining with a fine magnifying glass or focusing all of one's energy into that one thin piece of one's heart. The opposite is true in Chinese, being rough and oblivious to detail is called 粗心, or having a thick heart. Really don't know why these analogies are what they are, but it definitely describes me.
Today I noticed that my pants have a whole in them on the inner leg; near the crotch area. It's not really obvious to others and not in a critical area, but the problem is I've been wearing these pants for 2 days, and didn't notice. I don't know if the hole was caused by me tripping on something or trying to stretch out and overdid it, or just got washed too many times in the laundry (probably the laundry). But yes I don't notice things, even about myself. MJ constantly adjusts my hair back and forth because I notice my own appearance. MJ is great at paying attention to detail especially appearance wise, not just for herself but the things we own, the places where we live, the hotels we stay at, the beds we sleep in (and whether they are dirty!) so she's a great compliment to my rough ways. She definitely would not have let me walk out of the house wearing pants with a hole in them!
But it's not just that, there's other areas where it's critical to be fastidious. Checking one's bank account or credit card statements, for example, is really important to go over with a fine tooth comb. Contracts, legal agreements.
There are industries where the whole basis of the job is to be meticulous and look over details. I just watched a Japanese drama where the main character (Satomi Ishihara, kawaii!!!!) is a book editor and has to check over whole books for factual accuracy, grammatical accuracy, etc. I used to have to do that job in law school for the Interdisciplinary Law Journal at USC; very, very tedious job to get a law journal published, not just for the author, but for the staff working on the journal who have to check everything.
My job now, for example, requires a lot of meticulousness: I go over a lot of documents in different languages to see if something is pertinent to the case and might prove the case. One paragraph, one sentence, or even one word (one single character! in Asian languages) can be the difference between something being unimportant to the one that breaks open a case and is the "smoking gun" and used as evidence.
Sometimes just in life, it's important to notice details of the world that surround us: the color of leaves changing in the neighborhood, which neighbors have cars parked on their driveway (house burglars actually hone in on these details to see who's on vacation), it's just good to notice things. I used to when I was a kid, question things, try to remember differences, but now it's just one big mush of information crammed in and forgotten immediately by the next article I read online about the next big sequel to come out or who's playing in the World Series.
As a result of not paying enough attention to detail, some things build up over time that I notice and become a burden eventually. My car deteriorating bit by bit until I need to have a major fix-up (recently it was my tires had almost worn out entirely), earwax clogs my ears gradually until one day I can't hear normally out of my ear, subscriptions to the MLB app pile up month by month before I remember to cancel, and over a year they become a 12x cost. That's how they get ya, these subscription-model businesses! And over time lotto ticket costs pile up (unless I win in which case they will seem trivial!)
Ironically, I might have already made a post about the importance of being meticulous, but I didn't pay attention enough to detail to check!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Today I noticed that my pants have a whole in them on the inner leg; near the crotch area. It's not really obvious to others and not in a critical area, but the problem is I've been wearing these pants for 2 days, and didn't notice. I don't know if the hole was caused by me tripping on something or trying to stretch out and overdid it, or just got washed too many times in the laundry (probably the laundry). But yes I don't notice things, even about myself. MJ constantly adjusts my hair back and forth because I notice my own appearance. MJ is great at paying attention to detail especially appearance wise, not just for herself but the things we own, the places where we live, the hotels we stay at, the beds we sleep in (and whether they are dirty!) so she's a great compliment to my rough ways. She definitely would not have let me walk out of the house wearing pants with a hole in them!
But it's not just that, there's other areas where it's critical to be fastidious. Checking one's bank account or credit card statements, for example, is really important to go over with a fine tooth comb. Contracts, legal agreements.
There are industries where the whole basis of the job is to be meticulous and look over details. I just watched a Japanese drama where the main character (Satomi Ishihara, kawaii!!!!) is a book editor and has to check over whole books for factual accuracy, grammatical accuracy, etc. I used to have to do that job in law school for the Interdisciplinary Law Journal at USC; very, very tedious job to get a law journal published, not just for the author, but for the staff working on the journal who have to check everything.
My job now, for example, requires a lot of meticulousness: I go over a lot of documents in different languages to see if something is pertinent to the case and might prove the case. One paragraph, one sentence, or even one word (one single character! in Asian languages) can be the difference between something being unimportant to the one that breaks open a case and is the "smoking gun" and used as evidence.
Sometimes just in life, it's important to notice details of the world that surround us: the color of leaves changing in the neighborhood, which neighbors have cars parked on their driveway (house burglars actually hone in on these details to see who's on vacation), it's just good to notice things. I used to when I was a kid, question things, try to remember differences, but now it's just one big mush of information crammed in and forgotten immediately by the next article I read online about the next big sequel to come out or who's playing in the World Series.
As a result of not paying enough attention to detail, some things build up over time that I notice and become a burden eventually. My car deteriorating bit by bit until I need to have a major fix-up (recently it was my tires had almost worn out entirely), earwax clogs my ears gradually until one day I can't hear normally out of my ear, subscriptions to the MLB app pile up month by month before I remember to cancel, and over a year they become a 12x cost. That's how they get ya, these subscription-model businesses! And over time lotto ticket costs pile up (unless I win in which case they will seem trivial!)
Ironically, I might have already made a post about the importance of being meticulous, but I didn't pay attention enough to detail to check!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Prison (감옥)监狱
There are a lot of different names for prison in Asian languages, to the point of almost romanticizing the idea of it. There are words that express the idea of "justice implementation station," a "holding cell," a "man house," and even a "pig box" in Japanese. Even in English there's various connotations including "the slammer," the "big house," "penitentiary" (with the idea to pay penitence for your crimes), "juvie," the "joint," etc., etc. It makes prison seem like some sort of fantasy land, and Hollywood has glorified the idea of being locked up in various movies (Shawshank Redemption, the Rock, The Green Mile come to mind).
I would not do well in jail. Not only am I physically weak causing me to be bullied (or worse) by other inmates, I dislike very much the idea of staying in one place all the time, and being trapped. Which is why I feel like I'm in prison sitting at my desk for approximately 80 hours a week, week after week. I get a brief respite to get on a subway to get home and sleep, but otherwise I spend 12 of my 16 or so waking hours in the same room, trapped to my yearning to make more money. It's a metaphorical prison that I live in, always yearning to achieve financial independence but never really ever getting there. There are so many different types of prisons and restrictions in life!
Which is why the lotto (record 1.6 billion dollars!) could be my salvation! On another level, I'm in a wealth prison of being stuck in the middle class (a good problem to have considering the plight of those living in poverty who can't escape poverty), but as it stands now I won't be able to unlock the door into the upper-middle class or the top 1%, which is fine I guess but those people seem like they have it all! It'd be better if I was ignorant of that wealthy class, didn't know about the fresh air outside the prison, but I do and it's all around us, seemingly just beyond our reach inside those glass houses and fancy dinner parties that I just can't break into and won't for the foreseeable future.
I think I have an abnormal need to move around from time to time; it's kind of why I run around a lot (to change my location) and partly why I shake my leg while sitting which MJ sits: I'm anxious to change location, change scenery, get new stimulus. Some people are content with having a home (in fact, some people like prison and enjoy the free healthcare, rent, and provisions). Being trapped in a cage would be torturous spiritually in that I can't access the outside world, go where I want to, and experience something new. That sometimes is the real prison for me: being trapped in the same existence, reliving the same day over and over again, like a rat in a maze (or labyrinth!)
My water weight is being locked in a prison inside my body right now: no matter how much I run in Chicago, the weather has cooled down enough to make my body not sweat at all, and the water is totally absorbed into the body, unable to be dispersed through sweat. And I drink a lot of water at work to keep hydrated and to keep my skin from drying out, so that water has nowhere to go. No wonder I gain weight every time in Chicago, even if I don't eat italian beef sandwiches, deep dish pizza, hot dogs, or all the different kinds of yummy but fatty food they got around here. In LA I would do 2 miles or so every day and by the time I got home I would have worked up a pretty good sweat.
I would not do well in jail. Not only am I physically weak causing me to be bullied (or worse) by other inmates, I dislike very much the idea of staying in one place all the time, and being trapped. Which is why I feel like I'm in prison sitting at my desk for approximately 80 hours a week, week after week. I get a brief respite to get on a subway to get home and sleep, but otherwise I spend 12 of my 16 or so waking hours in the same room, trapped to my yearning to make more money. It's a metaphorical prison that I live in, always yearning to achieve financial independence but never really ever getting there. There are so many different types of prisons and restrictions in life!
Which is why the lotto (record 1.6 billion dollars!) could be my salvation! On another level, I'm in a wealth prison of being stuck in the middle class (a good problem to have considering the plight of those living in poverty who can't escape poverty), but as it stands now I won't be able to unlock the door into the upper-middle class or the top 1%, which is fine I guess but those people seem like they have it all! It'd be better if I was ignorant of that wealthy class, didn't know about the fresh air outside the prison, but I do and it's all around us, seemingly just beyond our reach inside those glass houses and fancy dinner parties that I just can't break into and won't for the foreseeable future.
I think I have an abnormal need to move around from time to time; it's kind of why I run around a lot (to change my location) and partly why I shake my leg while sitting which MJ sits: I'm anxious to change location, change scenery, get new stimulus. Some people are content with having a home (in fact, some people like prison and enjoy the free healthcare, rent, and provisions). Being trapped in a cage would be torturous spiritually in that I can't access the outside world, go where I want to, and experience something new. That sometimes is the real prison for me: being trapped in the same existence, reliving the same day over and over again, like a rat in a maze (or labyrinth!)
My water weight is being locked in a prison inside my body right now: no matter how much I run in Chicago, the weather has cooled down enough to make my body not sweat at all, and the water is totally absorbed into the body, unable to be dispersed through sweat. And I drink a lot of water at work to keep hydrated and to keep my skin from drying out, so that water has nowhere to go. No wonder I gain weight every time in Chicago, even if I don't eat italian beef sandwiches, deep dish pizza, hot dogs, or all the different kinds of yummy but fatty food they got around here. In LA I would do 2 miles or so every day and by the time I got home I would have worked up a pretty good sweat.
Friday, October 19, 2018
기차역 (Train Station) 火车站, 駅
Recently I watched the animated prequel to the 2016 hit South Korean movie, "Train to Busan." Train to Busan was one of the most memorable movies I've ever seen because MJ and I saw it in her own home with the lights off, on our awesome movie projector (that replaced a TV for us). It was a horror zombie movie but more of a thriller with heart-pumping action, and MJ's hands apparently got sweaty. The prequel is called "Seoul Station" and has some of the same themes, but definitely not the real-life pounding action of the live-action. Zombie movies have to be live action to get the real gut-wrenching affect of the real people turning into zombies, in my opinion. Requires lots of crowd actors and a lot of makeup, but worth it in my opinion.
A LOT happens at a train station, and now living in a city where trains basically take me everywhere I need to go, I spend a LOT of time at train stations. Seriously, I don't even take Uber, I can get almost everywhere in the downtown Chicago area by train and sometimes bus.
MJ and I saw a guy wearing a shirt from Osaka called 弱肉強食, or "weak meat, strong eat," meaning the strong will eat the weak, it's a dog eat dog world. (same in Korean and Chinese). Ironic because the guy did not look like someone who would have gone to Osaka to get the shirt, and was doing some kind of drug that MJ identified as possibly cocaine. Kind of sums up the crowd late at night in downtown train stations. Some have weird music playing where bands basically set up shop for what seems like eternity, there are rats that invade the tracks and have made a home. I've been able to ponder a lot about where my life has turned out (come from) and where it's going, all while real trains come and go on the train platform. It's like that crossroads scene at the end of "Castaway" (probably not as memorable for most because Castaway wasn't that popular of a movie) but that metaphor exists elsewhere as well. Wondering where my life is headed next, if my stock portfolio will recover from the latest stock beatdown this week (We had a wonderful day Tuesday, but it was a bull trap! Euphoria only to see it dashed later and provide false hope that the market would rebound and get back in. What a treacherous beast, this market is!)
I prefer train stations that are outdoors, and on an elevated platform. I know in Japan there are people who make a hobby out of going to all the train stations in the country, which is probably possible in an island country like Japan, but they have a LOT of stations, and many in interesting places. Now there's something America can aspire and learn from other countries, how to maintain train stations. Their train stations are better run than our military bases, in my opinion. All trains running on time, people cleaning constantly, station workers coming around to help out and gently push people into stacked trains. Stations have nice restaurants, some are known for them. Some have great views of the Japanese scenery, it's really a pleasure to ride one of their trains. Chicago train stations look like they haven't been cleaned in years. Not to say that Koreans don't have nice train stations like Seoul station (the name of the Train to Busan prequel that everyone should watch!- It's a pun on "Soul station" where the zombies are like humans with lost souls!) I just haven't experienced Korea's KTX trains as much but from watching Train to Busan they're nice as long as they're not teaming with the undead!
Btw, Train to Busan 2 is filming and coming out in 2020!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
A LOT happens at a train station, and now living in a city where trains basically take me everywhere I need to go, I spend a LOT of time at train stations. Seriously, I don't even take Uber, I can get almost everywhere in the downtown Chicago area by train and sometimes bus.
MJ and I saw a guy wearing a shirt from Osaka called 弱肉強食, or "weak meat, strong eat," meaning the strong will eat the weak, it's a dog eat dog world. (same in Korean and Chinese). Ironic because the guy did not look like someone who would have gone to Osaka to get the shirt, and was doing some kind of drug that MJ identified as possibly cocaine. Kind of sums up the crowd late at night in downtown train stations. Some have weird music playing where bands basically set up shop for what seems like eternity, there are rats that invade the tracks and have made a home. I've been able to ponder a lot about where my life has turned out (come from) and where it's going, all while real trains come and go on the train platform. It's like that crossroads scene at the end of "Castaway" (probably not as memorable for most because Castaway wasn't that popular of a movie) but that metaphor exists elsewhere as well. Wondering where my life is headed next, if my stock portfolio will recover from the latest stock beatdown this week (We had a wonderful day Tuesday, but it was a bull trap! Euphoria only to see it dashed later and provide false hope that the market would rebound and get back in. What a treacherous beast, this market is!)
I prefer train stations that are outdoors, and on an elevated platform. I know in Japan there are people who make a hobby out of going to all the train stations in the country, which is probably possible in an island country like Japan, but they have a LOT of stations, and many in interesting places. Now there's something America can aspire and learn from other countries, how to maintain train stations. Their train stations are better run than our military bases, in my opinion. All trains running on time, people cleaning constantly, station workers coming around to help out and gently push people into stacked trains. Stations have nice restaurants, some are known for them. Some have great views of the Japanese scenery, it's really a pleasure to ride one of their trains. Chicago train stations look like they haven't been cleaned in years. Not to say that Koreans don't have nice train stations like Seoul station (the name of the Train to Busan prequel that everyone should watch!- It's a pun on "Soul station" where the zombies are like humans with lost souls!) I just haven't experienced Korea's KTX trains as much but from watching Train to Busan they're nice as long as they're not teaming with the undead!
Btw, Train to Busan 2 is filming and coming out in 2020!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
水涨船高 (A Rising Tide lifts all boats)
2 expressions today! ( I will get to Korean proverbs soon as I'm learning quite a lot of them!)
Chinese: 水涨船高A rising tide lifts all boats- first associated with John F. Kennedy, this quote has a long history and was possibly derived from the Chinese, and the 4-character idiom says exactly that. It's exactly what happened yesterday, when good earnings reports from different companies in various sectors (Goldman Sachs, United HealthGroupand then Netflix!) all reported good numbers to combat the recent worries of high interest rates and trade war with China to send stocks higher, a welcome reprieve from the fretting and worrying I'd been doing recently due to stocks being down. Finally was able to take a sigh of relief, as ALL my stocks and went up steadily throughout the day without dropping off for a bit as usually happens. Home-game personal investors like myself live for days like yesterday where all the boats rise......
only to have them sink a bit today as the exact opposite happened: housing information caused companies related to housing to sink (like Home Depot, one of my stocks!) and the whole Dow came crashing down again. The market is a fickle person: one day she can be really happy and energetic and positive, the next day it's like she changed into a totally different person: negative, complaining, aggressively get upset at a drop of a hat. Most of my stocks went down, even some of the technology stocks that have nothing to do with housing, the ripple of the tide was so pervasive. So I guess a Falling tide sinks all boats as well, hopefully those boats have enough support and safety inside them to have them rise up again and not totally submerge into the bottom of the ocean.
Japanese 鵜呑み (unomi ni suru):
literally means swallowing without chewing (not a good idea in itself because you're eating too fast and may cause indigestion, don't inhale food!) but more commonly associated with the idea of accepting facts without questioning, as in being too gullible.
As hardened as I am and as practical-minded as I try to be, sometimes I am still too gullible. I've been able to block out the people on the street in downtown Chicago who ask for money (it's almost every street corner and almost every subway station!) but the other day I had a normal-looking guy come up to me. I thought he was asking for directions, so I actually stopped to talk. BIG mistake. He said he left his wallet on a bus, and he just needed to get home, so if I could call him an Uber. In retrospect, his story seemed too perfected, too freely offering details, so he said he lives pretty close by, not too far from downtown Chicago. I accepted his story without asking, which is my mistake: I could have asked him any of many questions, like "why don't you try to track down the bus now?" or "did you lose your wallet too? Can you pay me in cash?" but I just took him for a guy in distress who needed to get home, so I pulled up an Uber for him. He said he'd venmo me back and had me pull up "his Venmo account." It was late at night so I didn't think much about it, but I figured Uber can only send you to one place, it's not like you can trade the Uber money for cash. Needless to say, he didn't pay me back. It's my fault in being too nice and believing without asking questions. If I had just thought to ask a more direct question and be skeptical, he probably would have backed off. Sadly, that guy has an even more negative affect on society in that those who ARE actually in distress will be less likely to get help, just like I will be less likely to help next time.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Chinese: 水涨船高A rising tide lifts all boats- first associated with John F. Kennedy, this quote has a long history and was possibly derived from the Chinese, and the 4-character idiom says exactly that. It's exactly what happened yesterday, when good earnings reports from different companies in various sectors (Goldman Sachs, United HealthGroupand then Netflix!) all reported good numbers to combat the recent worries of high interest rates and trade war with China to send stocks higher, a welcome reprieve from the fretting and worrying I'd been doing recently due to stocks being down. Finally was able to take a sigh of relief, as ALL my stocks and went up steadily throughout the day without dropping off for a bit as usually happens. Home-game personal investors like myself live for days like yesterday where all the boats rise......
only to have them sink a bit today as the exact opposite happened: housing information caused companies related to housing to sink (like Home Depot, one of my stocks!) and the whole Dow came crashing down again. The market is a fickle person: one day she can be really happy and energetic and positive, the next day it's like she changed into a totally different person: negative, complaining, aggressively get upset at a drop of a hat. Most of my stocks went down, even some of the technology stocks that have nothing to do with housing, the ripple of the tide was so pervasive. So I guess a Falling tide sinks all boats as well, hopefully those boats have enough support and safety inside them to have them rise up again and not totally submerge into the bottom of the ocean.
Japanese 鵜呑み (unomi ni suru):
literally means swallowing without chewing (not a good idea in itself because you're eating too fast and may cause indigestion, don't inhale food!) but more commonly associated with the idea of accepting facts without questioning, as in being too gullible.
As hardened as I am and as practical-minded as I try to be, sometimes I am still too gullible. I've been able to block out the people on the street in downtown Chicago who ask for money (it's almost every street corner and almost every subway station!) but the other day I had a normal-looking guy come up to me. I thought he was asking for directions, so I actually stopped to talk. BIG mistake. He said he left his wallet on a bus, and he just needed to get home, so if I could call him an Uber. In retrospect, his story seemed too perfected, too freely offering details, so he said he lives pretty close by, not too far from downtown Chicago. I accepted his story without asking, which is my mistake: I could have asked him any of many questions, like "why don't you try to track down the bus now?" or "did you lose your wallet too? Can you pay me in cash?" but I just took him for a guy in distress who needed to get home, so I pulled up an Uber for him. He said he'd venmo me back and had me pull up "his Venmo account." It was late at night so I didn't think much about it, but I figured Uber can only send you to one place, it's not like you can trade the Uber money for cash. Needless to say, he didn't pay me back. It's my fault in being too nice and believing without asking questions. If I had just thought to ask a more direct question and be skeptical, he probably would have backed off. Sadly, that guy has an even more negative affect on society in that those who ARE actually in distress will be less likely to get help, just like I will be less likely to help next time.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Labyrinth (미궁) and Maze (미로)
Yesterday MJ (who was in town for the weekend to revisit our awesome days in Chicago, yay!) and I went to a little-regarded place in Chicago called the Garfield Conservatory- a greenhouse-like building that showcases various types of plants and flowers- and of course had a great time. Apparently Garfield Park has a bad reputation among most Chicago people and it's located on the green line, the bastard child of Chicago CTA lines (red line cuts through the city and hits both baseball stadiums, orange and blue runs run to the airports, and brown is the most scenic), but both times we've gone we've had a blast.
There's a grass formation on the lawn of the Garfield Conservatory that taught me the difference between a maze and a labyrinth. Yes, there apparently is a different. A maze has many false endings and ways you can get lost, but labyrinth has just one way to get in, one way to get out, despite its windy and circuitous nature. They both have a sort of "target" within the center of its layout. What a metaphor for life, a vague, undefined, well hidden goal at the heart of a huge structure that we're all try to get to, like the pursuit of happiness in life. To get there, some might prefer mazes, or some might prefer labyrinths. Mazes have a lot of surprises, lots of failures, but among those failures some turn out to be lessons in how to find the right path, whereas a labyrinth is one track, single-minded, no surprises (except there was a Minotaur or something roaming around that could cause certain death? Seems kind of hazardous). Some people bounce around one, two, maybe many different jobs before finding the right career, others go to a medical school-track program right out of high school and never stop until they've gotten their residency. Personally, the maze route seems more interesting (and is in fact what I've done, bouncing around and experiencing many different jobs) and stimulating, as long as in the end you get to the pot of gold at the center of the maze just like a labyrinth. There's more adjusting, disappointment but then recovery and resiliency against disappointment, but it definitely makes me feel more appreciation if and when I do make it to the end, that golden goal of "achievement."
The stock market's definitely a maze. It's by no means a straight line up (although based on the last 9 years of charts, it sure has seemed like it). It goes up and down without any noticeable pattern, often with forward progress yielding to sudden and unexpected pit falls before climbing out of it and going forward. I'm trying to decide whether I should just go with the labyrinth approach (buy and hold, through all the good and bad times, weathering the storm and just hold onto all invests) or the maze approach (ditch the bad stocks, try to find the good ones, actively manage the portfolio). It certainly would make me less anxious to go with a low-return labyrinth route, but it also might be less profitable.
Personally, if I were a kid, (and I'm kind of a big kid still) I'd prefer mazes. Why go through that whole big mess of a garden/ prison with walls called a labyrinth if you can't venture out a bit, get lost and have to figure it out? I've often told people I don't want to feel like a rat in a maze to describe taking the same route to work every morning, or doing the same routine every day, I'm sure the rat understands. But what I meant to say was I don't want to be a rat in a labyrinth fighting to get to that cheese....you're going to get it, but you didn't work for it, you just followed a path down that seems predestined, preordained.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
There's a grass formation on the lawn of the Garfield Conservatory that taught me the difference between a maze and a labyrinth. Yes, there apparently is a different. A maze has many false endings and ways you can get lost, but labyrinth has just one way to get in, one way to get out, despite its windy and circuitous nature. They both have a sort of "target" within the center of its layout. What a metaphor for life, a vague, undefined, well hidden goal at the heart of a huge structure that we're all try to get to, like the pursuit of happiness in life. To get there, some might prefer mazes, or some might prefer labyrinths. Mazes have a lot of surprises, lots of failures, but among those failures some turn out to be lessons in how to find the right path, whereas a labyrinth is one track, single-minded, no surprises (except there was a Minotaur or something roaming around that could cause certain death? Seems kind of hazardous). Some people bounce around one, two, maybe many different jobs before finding the right career, others go to a medical school-track program right out of high school and never stop until they've gotten their residency. Personally, the maze route seems more interesting (and is in fact what I've done, bouncing around and experiencing many different jobs) and stimulating, as long as in the end you get to the pot of gold at the center of the maze just like a labyrinth. There's more adjusting, disappointment but then recovery and resiliency against disappointment, but it definitely makes me feel more appreciation if and when I do make it to the end, that golden goal of "achievement."
The stock market's definitely a maze. It's by no means a straight line up (although based on the last 9 years of charts, it sure has seemed like it). It goes up and down without any noticeable pattern, often with forward progress yielding to sudden and unexpected pit falls before climbing out of it and going forward. I'm trying to decide whether I should just go with the labyrinth approach (buy and hold, through all the good and bad times, weathering the storm and just hold onto all invests) or the maze approach (ditch the bad stocks, try to find the good ones, actively manage the portfolio). It certainly would make me less anxious to go with a low-return labyrinth route, but it also might be less profitable.
Personally, if I were a kid, (and I'm kind of a big kid still) I'd prefer mazes. Why go through that whole big mess of a garden/ prison with walls called a labyrinth if you can't venture out a bit, get lost and have to figure it out? I've often told people I don't want to feel like a rat in a maze to describe taking the same route to work every morning, or doing the same routine every day, I'm sure the rat understands. But what I meant to say was I don't want to be a rat in a labyrinth fighting to get to that cheese....you're going to get it, but you didn't work for it, you just followed a path down that seems predestined, preordained.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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