뒷복치다 (Being Late to the Party)

I've developed a theme of being fancy with new Korean and Japanese phrases I've learned over the years, but sometimes I realize there's a lot of English words I still don't know, and some of them are definitely ones I should know as a functioning member of society! For example, I keep mixing up the meanings of "innocuous" and "noxious" because I made those 2 flashcards when studying for the SAT and they kept coming up around the same time, and they sound pretty similar. (For the record,  "noxious" is as toxic as it sounds, very burdensome, and on the flip side "innocuous" is as innocuous as its definition, not a word that is offensive or gives any trouble. Phew. There's a lot of words that I've just been late to the game too, and for some reason I didn't gain the experiences necessary to acquire those words in my vocabulary, words like "Pyrrhic," which means a victory that comes at too great a cost to be worthwhile for the victor, which I see plenty nowadays in Time magazine regarding the ongoing struggles by the US in Iran, Syria, Venezuela.....etc., etc. Also "defrocked" is in the news nowadays a lot as popes accused of sexual abuse are being defrocked, or stripped of their title. I've been very late to the game on these words, which coincides with the Korean idiom "dwitbok chida," which is literally "beating a drum in the back." 

Sometimes it pays to be late hearing the news, and be able to digest it for the first time a year later. Not so for the latest technology like getting the newest iPhone or newest electric car, maybe, but for certain books, the books still resonate years later, and by then they're discounted at the book seller, widely available, have been converted to a movie, or are available at the local library for free. So is the case with Anthony Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential," which came out in 2000 but I finally read in 2019.......but most of it still probably applies. The useful incite like "don't order fish at a restaurant on Mondays" probably is still relevant nowadays, that raw veggies can also transmit germs, that it's more important for line cooks to be able to follow instructions to a T than have their own ideas, that opening a restaurant is super risky and should be avoided except for the most special of people who have the ability to manage all the details of a restaurant, still all live on, which is important because the memory of Bourdain should still live on (he passed away last year) because he is such a great raconteur, which is another word I just caught on to today meaning person with excellent ability to tell stories. I am pretty bad at recounting events that happen to me, whether it's daily news stories or just a routine occurrence at the office. I struggle to find the right words to begin, to introduce all the characters and timeline, location, and general idea quickly and seamlessly and create the best image to the reader of what happened, all while drawing their attention using descriptive words and attention-grabbing analogies and metaphors. Part of the problem is, I don't remember everything that happened! Bourdain has these excellent stories about his past in the CIA (Culinary Institute of America, not the other CIA) and his experience working at a restaurant in the summers, and describes them in such complete detail that I feel like I was there, without having actually been there. Conversely, even I find the most descriptive and memorable occurrences from my early adulthood (like my experiences at summer camp or law school, for example), I would only get so far into the story and telling what happened before I would stumble, be unable to remember details, or feel like I'm losing the audience. (I can just imagine trying to tell someone a story about camp, finally finishing, and the listener just has a blank expression, "so?") Bourdain has an art about how he writes that really speaks to me, and those are the kind of books that I crave nowadays (his swearing and stories revolving around sex and other indecent behavior don't hurt), nonfiction telling of stories that happened to real people, that draws me in and forces me to keep flipping pages for hours on end before I inevitably, impulsively have to check my phone. The other book I read today (today was a big book day, as sometimes happens for me) was Tara Westover's "Educated," a book on everyone's reading lists in 2018 but I'm finally getting to. Another superb telling of one's childhood and experiences both to just get into college and getting through college, and especially influential considering Westover didn't go to school and essentially learned everything from home in isolated rural Idaho. Remarkable. I love raconteurs and want to be a raconteur when I grow up. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

止めを刺す (Delivering the Final Blow), , 最后一击, 마지막 타격

The Japanese have a phrase that's used in a lot of animes with combat scenes (ironically, I just learned it from the hit show One Punch Man, a great anime for its story but also a great anime to learn high-level Japanese) where the main character has to deliver the finishing move to beat his opponent. (A common theme in Japanese manga and comics and important step, and a recurring theme for manga authors is how to find that finishing move for the hero to ultimately defeat the villain). The best visual would be when the "FINISH HIM!" letters come on in Mortal Kombat when you've pretty much defeated your opponent but are encouraged to deliver the death knell, the hit that finally finishes them off once and for all.

Dealing the final blow is huge in sports, too. Taking (and making) game-winning shots is what legends are made out of, and Michael Jordan, the greatest player ever, largely built his legacy on making game winning shots that finished off opponents like the Cleveland Cavaliers or the Utah Jazz. Baseball has specific players that teams employ for the sole purpose of finishing the game, called "closers." Many say that finishing a game requires certain mental fortitude because it's the time when players are most vulnerable to humiliating themselves, as the gravity of the moment weighs on them. I myself have had a lot of experience in dodgeball "finishing" games, and while I have finished a lot of games before, I've also "choked" under pressure before, failing to get the last out and letting the opponents back in the game despite having a winning position. It really is a very deflating and frustrating thing to be almost point to the point of dealing the final blow to the other team but failing and letting them come back. The crowd's cheering for the other team, everyone except you wants to have an exciting finish, it's truly nervewracking.

In life, too, I often have trouble "finishing off" a project that I've started. Currently, I have a bag of clothes that I took the time to wash and do laundry for, but I haven't taken the last step to fold them and put them away. I just rationalize that I can do it later, when I'm "inspired" to do it. It's kind of dangerous because it's like not pressing the "submit" button after finishing all the other requirements of filling out information for like paying the rent button, but then you don't hit the final button and end up being late on a payment, or not sending an email that you should have sent. That's definitely happened to me more than once or twice in my life.

Luckily, MJ and I (I've started to give ourselves the couple name LeeYan Rimes, has a nice ring to it and LeAnn Rimes the singer still has enough name recognition that people get the reference) filled out an application and completed it before the deadline to get a nice signing bonus (very common nowadays for new apartments, we are now 3/3 for receiving a signing bonus each time we apply for an apartment), and this time we signed up for one right after they decreased rent at the apartment complex we were looking at! I think that's the apartment's trick to get prospective tenants who were on the fence about signing up to "todome wo sasu" deliver the final blow and go forward with the application, but hey I'm not complaining. We are now 3/3 for getting apartments with hardwood floors, 3/3 in getting a brand new apartment that's never been lived in before, and 3/3 in getting a free parking space that comes with the apartment. (Not that easy to get in Los Angeles and probably much more difficult in New York City).

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

은자 (Hermit) 引きこもり,

Being a hermit has become a major societal problem in Japan, where millions of young Japanese men (and some women!) hold up in their room and never come out, doing whatever they can in their room like surfing the internet, reading books, etc. (Depicted in one of my favorite Japanese dramas when learning Japanese, called “Date.”) the real “Hikikomori”s, as they are called, is no laughing matter, as these people never get any exercise, don’t go to a job, don’t do anything except their own thing in their room. Hopefully they shower once in a while? Not sure. And their parents have to send them food to their room. 

“Stranger in the woods” is an book about a real hermit, Chris Thomas Knight,  a legendary hermit at that called the North Pond Hermit who roamed around the Maine wilderness area for almost 30 years! Just living by himself in the woods, not talking to anybody. He still had some connection to society with a radio and reading books, but never interacted with any real people. He stole food and supplies from local camps and trailers so he could survive the winters and difficult times. Finally he was caught in 2013 when his burglarizing ways became so famous in the area that the police force focused on him.


What his motivation for becoming a hermit was interesting: he just didn’t feel like he belonged as part of society. Never got along with people, and the more he drifted away from society the more he felt at peace, more comfortable. I can certainly sympathize with how he is, there are times when I feel like only I understand myself, or I can just be alone with my thoughts, and not worry about the people I talk to. (For example, this past weekend I went to Durham, NC to go apartment hunting for apartments for MJ and me, I had food conversations with all the agents but it was artificial conversation, where they have an incentive to keep the conversation going, to try to get on my good side. And I’m trying to keep the conversation going to learn more about the place, ask more questions to see if they are omitting something important on purpose. Totally artificial. 

Several years ago I started a trend of going on vacations on my own, just wandering cities and countries by myself, listening to podcasts or music but generally taking in everything by myself, doing a solo adventure. I think that’s my version of being a hermit, to be in middle of civilization and lots of people but still being alone, being a hermit lost in the crowds of people. At those times I’m just as isolated as Thomas knight in the forest in the sense that no one knows I’m there, no one knows who I am. 

But then I met MJ and visiting places together and having something to discuss while walking is pretty cool too. So not a total hermit, I just like different experiences and internalize thoughts quite a bit. 

Ultimately, I don’t think being a hermit is a bad thing! Wise people in ancient Chinese “dynasties” used to go off into rural areas and just be by themselves, and they’d often be consulted for advice by kings who’d try to coax them out of retirement and hermitude to come advise them. There’s definitely something to be said for not being lulled into conforming to social norms and what other people think and just having your own way of life, own thoughts on life. 

Just as long as I don’t rely on my parents to send me food all the time. That’s just leeching. 

Dynasty (왕조, 王朝)

The idea of a dynasty has been embedded in me for a long time, since I was a Chinese American kid learning Chinese history, since pretty much all of Chinese history is dynastic, with families and families of people ruling over the country for a long time and then being replaced by other families after the initial dynasty had become too corrupt, weak, or both. The idea of dynasty, though, feel strong, like planting a flag into a piece of land stating this is my territory, establishing a dynasty means sticking your flag in a stretch of time in history, something that others will always use to associate with that time. I guess ultimately that's what powerful people like kings and emperors are yearning for, the power to stand in history as defining that time. Dynasties are fun; I always yearned to call something of mine the "Yan Dynasty," like one of my fantasy teams, or my dodgeball team. You have to be pretty confident in yourself to name something a dynasty at the beginning; usually these things are annointed at the end long after the events have occurred. 

The US isn't immune to honoring dynasties; I often hear people defining major moments in their lives by who was president in the US like "I was a Bush baby", or like me, a Reagan baby, or my sister, who was a Clinton baby. For sports fans, it's often defined by sports dynasties, like the current NFL dynasty by the New England Patriots, whom everyone outside of Boston hates because of Boston. 

The latest dynasty in the NBA came to an end last night; the Golden State Warrior's 5-year stranglehold as the best team in the NBA came to an end when they were dethroned by the Toronto Raptors, coinciding with the last game at Oracle Arena. The history of the NBA is also filled with many dynasties where championship teams reigned supreme and great players defined their "legacies" by being the best players on one of those teams. I was lucky enough to be part of one of those dynasties, the 1990's run with the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and the rest who won 6 championships. I'll say that having a winning team every single year spoiled me; I expected a championship and didn't even celebrate that much when they won; now I would be so fortunate for any of my sports teams to win something, even my fantasy sports team! 

Lately, I've been learning a lot about the Joseon Dynasty in Korea, the most famous one out of many that existed. It's easy to know if I'm watching a Joseon Dynasty TV series or movie based on what the people are wearing on the show. It's really too bad that so many people have to die during the establishment of dynasties and overthrowing of the old one; it'd be so much more humane to just have a peaceful transition of power.  Japan just started a new dynasty on April 1 of this year (The Reiwa Dynasty) when the old emperor stepped down and a new one was appointed. The name was met with solid approval in its strength and unity. That's actually really important, the name of a dynasty. 

MJ and I are going to be ending our own personal dynasty in LA. (The Lee-Yan Rhymes Dynasty?) by moving to Durham, NC (headed there this weekend to look at apartments, which is always fun because I get to see the best of where other people live and all the amenities that everyone offers). Time to come up with a new dynasty name for this new adventure that we're going on! 

What will the future bring in terms of defining time? Will it still be defined by who is President? Or will it be technological dynasties taking over like the "Mars Dynasty" of sending people to Mars? 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan 

Red-eye flights (적목 비행, 红眼飞行, 赤目飛行)

Over the last couple months of working in New York City (and commuting back and forth between New York and LA), I've gotten pretty used to red-eye flights. And I didn't even have to take business class! The whole appeal of business class is to try to lay out and get some sleep, but I get decent sleep in the economy cabin. Something about moving steadily in a car or a bus or a plane, any moving vehicle really, that allows me to sleep peacefully, complementing my natural superpower of sleeping almost anywhere, anytime.

The trick to doing a red-eye flight and getting the maximum value out of it, of course, is the following day AFTER the flight. Anyone can pull an all-nighter or go straight through, but it's quite another task to have to go to work the next day, especially a Monday morning, notoriously one of the most difficult days of the work week. There's a reason they call it a red eye, it's cuz your eyes are bloodshot from getting no to little sleep the night before, have no to little energy, and are still adjusting in some cases to a new time zone.

Keys to braving a red-eye flight:

1.) Get plenty of sleep the day BEFORE taking a red eye flight. "Fill up" on sleep so your body has reserve sleep time in the bank to last through a rough day; nothing worse than getting 2 really nights of sleep in a row.

2.) Don't be enticed by those free movies on flights. Sure they're enticing, you've had a long weekend and watching a movie would be a nice unwind to the weekend. But you're wasting valuable time scrolling through the channels to find something you like! There's a reason red eye flights dim the lights almost immediately once the flight takes off, so people can get to sleep and take advantage of every precious second of the flight. Don't wait for snack service, beverage service, or anyone to alert you that it's bedtime. The ideal situation is to pass out in your seat before the flight takes off, and be awakened by the jolt of the flight landing at your destination. Not even once waking up to pee.

3.) When booking a flight, book it to 11:55PM or sometime close to bedtime, not 9:00PM so you're ready to fall into your seat and sleep. Also beware, especially on Sunday nights (the most common time for red-eyes), the airports are pretty packed.

3a.) Corollary to No. 3: booking flights is like the stock market: obviously booking early and fast is the best way to go, but if you can't do that because of an uncertain schedule there's also times prices actually go down. Jump on the opportunity to buy low, because ultimately just like the stock market, flight prices will go up over time 100% of the time, right up until the time of the flight.

4.) Cut Monday's work day short, go home early and sleep.........for like 12 hours. It'll make all your trouble worth it and have you refreshed ready to go on Tuesday morning (and you may even have some sweet dreams during those 12 hours because your body missed the awesome feeling of sleeping the previous nights- it's like withdrawals from drug usage). Monday's like a sacrificial lamb that you feel like a zombie for.....but no one likes Monday anyway, and you got away with not having to pay for an extra night of hotel and lodging!

5.) Difficult to enact, but to combat the zombie state on the Monday after a red-eye, talk to co-workers or anyone you can get the attention of, to stay awake. It's probably the only time I suffer from not drinking any coffee, but co-workers can keep me awake, or at least make the time go faster. People don't talk to one another enough anyway, at work or at home or anywhere really; I went into the breakroom today at work and 12 people were sitting at different tables all just staring into their phones, dead silence except for tapping of fingers on phones. That's not what human life should be like; we are social animals, and not in the social networking site kind of way. Engage in a conversation, laugh, tell a joke, that'll mitigate jet lag and a case of the Mondays

I got red eyes down so much I even have mastered red eye buses and red eye trains! 2 weekends ago when I traveled to Toronto from New York, I got off work on Friday night, got on a bus, and woke up on Saturday morning in a different city in a different country (however, red-eye buses make pit stops sometimes that slows the momentum of the womb-like state of sleep you get on a plane and forces me awake periodically. Pity.)


While MJ takes 6 months to read one book (she's finally finishing Pachinko), I moved on to another young adult series called "Scythe." Did I mention I love young-adult books? Some adult novels are just too sophisticated, lengthy, use too many metaphors, and appeal to the literary experts too much for my taste; young adult books are much easier reads and use less duanting vocabulary but can have just as good of a story and message. Scythe imagines a world where scientific advances have gone so far that people don't die and instead need to be "gleaned" so that there is a controlled amount of people on earth. The scythes, like the Grim Reaper, are in charge of gleaning people. It's a great look into human morals and a futuristic world where we might have a similar problem, the way health advances are progressing these days. Apparently the first person to live to 200 years old has already been born. It's me! Just kidding. It's not me. But maybe it is me! I feel healthy!

Also, cookbooks (who knew!) can have pretty good info about food. I read the NY Times Bestseller "Thug Kitchen: Eat Like You Give a F*ck" and it's got great info like brown rice is so much more nutritious than white rice. But I think people already knew that.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

Have some left to spare (여유가 있다)(剩餘) (余裕を持っている)

I came up with another reason I'm so stingy with money! I like to have things left over, or room to spare. Nobody likes to be stretched tight with no room to make mistakes, and that's exactly what happens with most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, without any savings leftover in case of emergency. It's this pressure of not having money that I wanted to relieve, that if something did happen and I needed it, I could have that money. (Like playing video games I always tried to save my special power for when I really needed it, or when playing Monopoly the board game saving some money to get past other people's hotels, etc.)

In my Korean learning software they even have a sample sentence for this! It's called 요즘 경제적으로 여유가 있다. (I have money to spare these days).

I personally think that people in the U.S., actually are too spendthrift in their use of discretionary income. I walk down the streets of New York, for example, and I see a lot of shops people don't need: smoothie shops, jewelry stores, ice cream shops, nail salons (MJ never goes to nail salons, only hair salons to get her hair done. Thanks MJ!) These places are open because there are enough customers spending their money there. I'd like to think that all these customers are well off and have money to spare, but statistics show that's not the case, it's the people at the lower income levels who spend at these places and waste a large portion of their paycheck on these places, never being able to build up any savings and then going into difficult levels of debt that they can't get out from under. (There are even bankruptcy lawyers you have to pay to get OUT of bankruptcy, it's really a sad sight). I feel like there's an idea out there for helping people improve their financial literacy, like right before you make ANY purchase you put the price of the item into the app and it matches what you make, what you've already spend, whether this item is a good deal, your overall profile, etc., and gives you a rating of whether it's a wise purchase or not, a rating between 1 to 5. Not to say I don't overspend on stuff sometimes, I just went to the store the other day and got a gallon of water for FIVE DOLLARS! Just plain water! It was one of the biggest ripoffs I've made, and I'm appalled that store sells that item for so much. It's totally a way to trap unsuspecting customers who make a bunch of other purchases and don't pay attention to all the items, and $5 doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, except if you overpay here, and then you overpay for gas, for toothbrushes, for fruit, and THEN you have to get to the necessary expenditures like rent and health insurance, etc. It all adds up. (I'm pretty darn sure I've said that on this blog before).


Anyway, I got a charlie horse last night after doing some uphill runs the day before. Did you know what a charlie horse was before reading this? It's a rarely-used term, and even native English speakers like myself might not know if they haven't heard of it, like there are words out there like "ad hoc" or "Pyrrhic" victory that I'm still just learning nowadays (never stop learning). Anyway, a charlie horse is when a part of the body gets pulled too far and cramps up, and it usually happens at night when sleeping and you're body's trying to recalibrate. For me, it usually wakes up me due to the pain, it feels like I'm dying for about 3 seconds, then it subsides quickly and it's back to normal, and I have a sore calf the rest of the day. MJ has had it too, although probably not from too much exercise like me (MJ always promises she will exercise more but......other tasks get in the way). It's basically the body saying, your muscle has no more room to spare! And it fights back with some pain. Solutions: drink lots of water before going to bed, also stretching before and after exercising helps to give a little extra room.

Conversely with having money to spare, I actually give myself no time to spare for some reason. So many times I've been just in time to make it to work, to a flight, to a meeting, to a party, never thinking to leave early and give myself some time to spare. I guess money and time are different concepts in my head, and I always think there's an infinite amount of time. Especially when setting an alarm clock in the morning, I always give myself a tiny window of time to wake up, put on clothes, get ready for the morning, and it'd have to be perfect to make it on time, and as most people know, mornings don't go perfectly, especially waking up.

Also, trading stocks with the idea of always "having a little money to spare" is a terrible idea. The stock market doesn't care how much profit you preserved or if you're at a loss, but I've invested with some of that in mind because it's my money, like my children. It's called being "scared money," and as a famous rapper once said, "scared money don' make no money."

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan

入鄉隨俗 (When in Rome, do as the Romans do)

This past weekend I went north of the border! But just to Toronto, which is very similar to an American city. The closest city to it is Detroit, it is south of many American cities like Seattle, a lot of its stores accept US dollars, and a lot of Yankees like myself cross over the border on weekends to visit. For me I had a special reason: The NBA Finals were taking place there and I was jazzed to be part of the experience of an NBA Finals city as well as what the Toronto Raptors call "Jurassic Park," a gathering before games (and I mean WAY before games) to party and celebrate excessively. They handed out "King of the North" paper crowns in homage to Game of Thrones, there was singing and dancing on a makeshift stage, everyone was in great spirits. I was reminded how friendly everyone in Canada is. Eh, mate?

Crossing the border into Canada, however, was not so nice. They seem to have a very strict border crossing process, and they won't do the minimally invasive procedure but a more thorough interrogation of asking where you're going, where you're staying, when you're coming back. Nothing too difficult, especially since MJ used to have to go into the "black room" upon crossing through immigration each time, but enough for me to take notice. But, as the saying goes, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Do NOT do what my Mom did, which is laugh at the immigration officer dismissively as if her questions were in poor taste, as a result of which we had to get all our luggage out of the car in a full search, as opposed to just being waved through. Lesson learned. Also rules in Canada: apparently fries with cheese are a thing, it's called poutine. Just go with it, it can actually work out well for you. Also, turns out when buses make rest stops on the way from New York to Toronto, they drop you off at a restaurant that tries to rip you off. When in Rome, prepare for the Roman prices by stocking up on non-Roman goods (buy at a cheap store before you go) before you get run over by Roman cons. Also when going to Rome (or other non-US country), figure out how your phone works in terms of WIFI and phone service. Turns out I could play a lot of podcasts on my phone while still in airplane mode! Huzzah!

I'm usually pretty intimated when I go somewhere new: I feel like everyone's big and scary when I start a new job, or when I go to a new dodgeball tournament, or when I join a new circle of acquaintances I've just met. Who knows what they'll think of me? It's a good rule of thumb to follow, though, to just go with the flow of the new society, be accepting and try to understand the new environment. Also, I have to remind myself that everyone's not that scary once I get to know and understand them, and that they probably think I'm big and scary, too, so I have to make myself more gentle as well.

Places like Canada have their own rules, but concepts like marriage have its own rules too. I think both MJ and I went into marriage having our own ideas about marriage, and neither of us had a complete understanding (probably me less so) about what customs and rules marriage brings. Marriage is more fluid, too, because there's no set rules, the rules are what the 2 marriage partners agree for them to be or at least negotiate for them to be. I thought that she would be totally fine with incorporating my friends and family and my whole lifestyle into her way of living, and the truth is that's really hard and difficult to expect of any newlywed. Luckily, MJ has been able to adapt quickly living in Rome (aka Bobby's World) and has adapted pretty well to the rules, or at least gotten used to them. I think in a lot of relationships (especially marriages) one side has to move to Rome or at least make more changes than the other partner does, and in our case MJ had to adapt to LA, hanging out frequently with my family, driving my car, talk about the things I wanted to talk about, hang out with most of my friends, so it's more of a sacrifice for her. I hope when I have to move to MJ's world (Busan/Korean or some other land I can adjust as well to her way of living).

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan