2015: Taking stock, and looking ahead...

I have come to enjoy this little ritual of mine, to read my year-end entry of my journal of the previous year(s) about taking stock of the year, and to look ahead. In ways big and small, it allows me to reflect on changes on both personal front and the larger world, keeping a hopeful eye to the year ahead.

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Losing a parent is never easy, and I've come to learn that. I loved my dad, and when he passed away, I felt like part of me (the better part) has died with him. No, I'm not depressed, and I've recovered from grief in the months since his passing. I'm only so grateful that there was much fond memory that I have of him, so that every time I think of it, I would make the food that he liked to cook for the family, and me in particular, since I shared a love of the many dishes with my dad, including salty/spicy squids, steam fish (and its skin, and fish belly part for fresh-water fish, and back of the fish for salt-water fish), the many soups, and congee (with fresh beef or sliced fish). I learnt so much from him, the work ethic and discipline in life, the wider perspective in things. More importantly, he's a good father, a family man, patient and understanding, allowing me to do the things I want to do without ever doubting my ability to achieve them, giving me the space and independence to go out and pursuing things without undue worry. Unlike my mom, my dad was the "me-worry?" type. His easy laughter was always infectious to me. And I learnt how to cook rice on his first teaching when I couldn't, for the longest time, understand how mom did it. My parents teach things in very different ways, and dad had the ability to appreciate how kids need to learn it, he could always show me the "tricks." I missed him dearly. 

I have thought I would become more religious with his death. Afterall, my whole family is religious, and they are all praying for my "salvation." Thankfully they let me take my time. I was hoping I could feel dad's presence after his death, but somehow I didn't feel anything. Somehow I feel like that's the end of it, and the light's out like an extinguished candle. 

I'm glad that at least mom is still holding strong and active. She's adjusting to the nursing home life. With dad's gone, there is no more bickering, and mom seems curiously peaceful about it (though she looks sad in the first few months since dad's passing). Perhaps it's just as well.

It seems like suddenly the kids' milestone is upon us, when one day I realized they're all taller than me already. They are about to enter the rat race. That's something I don't want to contemplate too much on right now.

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With the first rate hike by the Fed since 2008, I'm just so glad that I've wrapped up the refi of the property that was previously still on an ARM mortgage. Now that all of them are on 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, and the cash outlay on that front is known, I can at least rest a bit more easily without having to worry about further rate hikes which will surely come in 2016 and beyond. 

The other thing I'm happy to have wrapped up before the rate hike last week, is the re-balancing of the property portfolio, cashing out on some of them while keeping the solid ones. I don't want to be too overweight on real estate or in stock market.

No doubt those who rely on the easy money policy from the Fed and China are not going to be happy about the tightening in US policy and the softening in economy in China, but one should realize that it's not necessarily a bad thing to have ups and downs as part of the economic growth. The up and up trajectory between the late 1990s (with only a small blip in 2000 due to the tech bubble burst) and 2008 is simply not sustainable in the long term.

With those in place, I should be able to switch my focus more on the job/work front which I very much look forward to doing in the coming year. That should be exciting.

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There have been so many world events that worth noting, but I can't help looking at the horrific Paris attacks last month and the worsening refugee crisis in Europe that has no end in sight. Discrimination against Muslims in wholesale fashion is wrong, yet it's hard for average citizens not to cave in to that tendency. I really don't see how that can be resolved without first stabilizing Middle East, in particular, Syria, and Iraq, Afghanistan. 

In comparison, Russia's invasion of Crimea seems almost benign and peaceful; afterall, there are indeed a lot of those people in Crimea who identify themselves more with Russia than with Ukraine. How ironic.

With all these geopolitical crises, the bailout of Greece (yes, again) in mid year looks decidedly like soap opera. Afterall everyone knows that EU would not let Greece fail, and Greece would not drop the use of Euro so that one way or the other, Greece will have to play ball (which it did, eventually and as expected).

Will 2016 bring more peace and quiet? I kind of doubt it. China's mini-aggression in South China Sea will continue. China's economy will continue to slow, and most likely on an accelerating rate, sending shivers to all other countries that have come to depend heavily on the China trade. Greece economy will flare up again, no doubt. There will be many more millions of refugees (genuine or economic ones) rushing the shores and borders of EU, to further test its limits, resources, and patience. The seesawing of all the military conflicts in the Middle East will continue, with radical groups continue their social media campaign (thanks to the insistence to "free speech" by all the social media companies and Google and Apple that implicitly lend them a helping hand in recruitment).

On the domestic fronts, White House will change guards in 2016, with the presidential election. At least US economy should continue to limp along, with growth in jobs, GDP numbers, but not in wages. Some things, though, will remain unchanged, including broken infrastructure. Inequality in income and wealth will continue to widen. 

Are there any reasons to be hopeful about the wider world? I do hope so, but somehow I'm holding my breath. When can I exhale?

On student stress, and high parents expectations...

It's hard to be a parent, but I guess most of those who are a parent themselves would attest to that. You might think it's hard when the kids are small, but to me, it's actually more manageable. As parents, you can have much more control the environment and even the outcome. You can decide on group daycare versus nanny versus stay-home, 24x7. You can decide if the kids should have vaccine shots. You can decide where to move to for schooling. You can decide if kids should go to public or private schools. You can decide where to go for the next vacation, and kids will tag along all the same. You arrange for all the playdates. You can decide what they wear (since you're buying), and what they eat (since you're cooking). You can decide what activities kids should do, and drive them too. Surely there are aspects that parents need to work at, like the financials, the work-life balance thing, the works. But those are things parents can work on, and decide. (Well, I'm sure a lot of people might disagree, arguing that even just the work situation can be out of an individual's control, but hey, you can always look for another job.)

Wait till the kids get older, and you'll feel it when that sense of control will slowly slip away from your fingertips. It might not be a bad thing, in some ways. Kids get more independent. Kids can get to choose more, and parents will acquiesce. Parents might still push, but kids will push back. Increasingly, the society will push back too. Case in point, the school debate in Princeton, New Jersey.

No doubt there's a cultural aspect to it, in which Asian-American parents (particularly first-generations parents) expect the world from their kids, pitched against the largely liberal-minded (if you can call it that), mainly white American parents who want everything to be fun and game to their kids, with the slightest hint of stress as a bad thing. Anything short of a hurt feeling or bruised ego must be banned.

I am the first to admit, I'm partial to the debate. I'm asian, I'm a first generation parent to my kids born in this country, I was raised in Asia even though I've lived in US for decades now. Having lived and studied and worked in US and four different countries over three continents does lend me a certain perspective on things.

Believe me when I say to you, you don't want to be brought up under that Asian system. True to God. I was brought up under that "stuffed duck" education system (as the Hong Kongers call it), ie. you just stuff the duck to fill it up, never mind how the duck feels, never mind if the duck needs the food, never mind if the duck can actually absorb anything. It's more about the process (the stuffing, the grades, the exams) than anything else. It's almost sad to admit to this, but I have always thought the system works perfectly, even though I hate most of the teachers, I do love my school. I hate the learning part (because that's what the teachers stuff us), but I love my friends in school. It's like, you can be patriotic and love your country, but you hate the government.

That kind of dis-associative thoughts never really crystallize in my head until much later in life when I have experiences in other forms of systems.

As it turns out, I was pretty good in that old Asian system. I excelled in tests/exams because I like the adrenaline rush. I have a pretty good memory, and I learnt to beat that system. I never bothered to study because there's no point, the teachers didn't want or expect you to. You get "A" or 100% full mark when you can regurgitate texts from books. You don't need to understand the text as long as you can do brain-dump well. It makes the teachers' job easy in grading because if you quote the full text from textbooks, it would be full mark. To game that system, I would always do last-minute all-nighters on the night before the tests or exams, crammed as much from the textbooks into my head (the short term memory of my brain), then dumped everything on the paper, and voila, you're gold.

I'm sure for anyone who reads the above way of "learning," you'll see the problem in it rightaway. There's no learning involved, there's no understanding in the materials, there's no initiative (because everything was driven by what the tests/exams demanded of me, nothing else). I got good grades fairly easily even though my mother would get upset at me. She would see me loitering around most of the time, then all-nighters the nights before exams, and she oftentimes couldn't understand how I got the good grades.

It wasn't until I graduated from high school and moved away from that system, when I started college overseas, that I realized the huge pitfalls of the "education" that I've received. Good grades notwithstanding, I felt so inadequate because I never developed deeper understanding of anything that I should have mastered. I didn't have sufficient initiative to push myself forward since the western system expect me to push, and I didn't know how.

Catching up with the 12+ years of prior schooling in the few short years in college is hard. I cannot tell you how stressful it was. But no, I never once considered quitting or suicide, because they were not an option (I have told myself that much, without anyone telling me so). I've decided that the college degree is what I've wanted, and I'll make it happen, no matter what.

All the while, I have to work multiple part time jobs during college in order to pay my own way. (No, I never asked my parents to fund my college.)

So, you see, I know a thing or two about stress, and about dysfunctional educational systems too. I've had first-hand experience of education systems in four different countries, all of which are different. If there's something to say about adaption, I can add a few footnotes to it too.

Back to to the NJ parents' debate about the schooling change/reforms, I can totally see the fault line.

On the one hand, there are the Asian-American parents who feel that even though it's an excellent public school district, the superintendent is introducing the changes to make school/learning almost too easy. They are always pushing their kids to go for AP classes, extra-curricular activities like music and math, without which, the thinking goes, their kids would have less chance of success in this foreign land (even if their kids might be born here, and are as much an American as the next white kid). Every chance to gin up the kids' chance must be seized on. Expectations and the bar must be set high, because anything otherwise is not an option. It is the constantly under siege mentality that I don't think any white American parents who themselves grew up comfortably and didn't have to compete too hard (against 1.3 billion people of your own kind, perhaps) would never appreciate or understand.

On the other hand, there are the largely white liberal American parents who worry their kids are under too much stress, that there's too much work, that schools are no longer fun, that johnny and jane are not eating well, so much so that things must be too difficult for them. These are the parents who are equally adamant as the Asian-American parents, and who would not hesitate to jump right in to lower the bar, just so that their kids, all kids, can get through the hurdle. Afterall, isn't that saying goes, that no child should be left behind, that every kid is a success. If that is indeed true, and if any kid feels like they can't make it, the altruist impulse must be to stop the game, and wait for the kid to catch up. Well, won't we all feel good in the end (!!).

Dramatization aside, I'm sure everyone sees the problem here. On the one hand, one group wants to raise the bar higher so that only the most discerned kids (their kids, hopefully) will get through, while another group wants to lower the bar so that every kid will make it to the finishing line. Can there be any middle ground?

Before we get to the middle ground discussions, one has to acknowledge a few facts and understanding:

• As noble and altruistic a goal as it is, not all kids will succeed, at least not by the same standards to everyone anyways. In a society, you need doctors and lawyers, but you also need car mechanics and coffee shop workers, and kids don't follow the same path, nor do they need the same cookie-cutter kind of education or training. Some people are never cut out for academics, much as some people are not cut out to be soldiers. Should we push everyone to the frontline in a battle because we believe everyone should be a soldier? Of course not. Some might want to drop out of regular school and learn a trade. Does that make them less of a success? Well, if you measure everyone by how much they earn, then yes they are less successful. But should we define success so narrowly? As most, if not all, liberal-minded folks would agree, one has to follow their heart and choose a path that makes them happy in life, and if these kids are happy to be a tradesman (albeit earning less), then they are as much a success as the next CEO who might be earning millions in compensation. Unfortunately our society these days have conditioned (brainwashed, even) everyone to thinking that EVERYONE has to get a college degree and go for white collar desk job to be successful, so much so that every other kid who does not want to follow this path is labeled a failure. This is just so wrong.
• How much stress is too much? Nobody can tell exactly, since everyone's threshold is different. While no one wants to see any suicide to happen, is it really true that every stressful situation would lead to that one conclusion when a kid will take his own life? I don't think so. I can't recall how many times I felt almost suffocated (literally gasping for air) with pulsating heartbeat when I thought of the hurdles ahead of me during college, the amount of work (and the self-learning that I had to do before I could do those work), and how little time I had. It could be said that the one driving force in me, was the fact that I really do want this (to finish the college degree), and I'm generally a stubborn person. And so, I kept going, and I slowly learnt to master my own system to deal with stress, to multi-task, and to prioritize the tasks. I have to learn it myself, in my own way, in my own time. My parents could not have done for me, however much they might want to help. No one can, and no one should. 
• Parents need to understand that kids have to learn to deal with failures, as much as how they need to learn to deal with stress. Parents cannot do the learning for the kids. It is oftentimes the parents who cannot deal with the idea of failures that they push the kids forward (as the Asian-American parents do), or pull the kids back (as the liberal white American parents do), worrying that their kid cannot compete, that the kids will feel bad and hurt their pride/ego. 

With that said, I would only say a few more words, and no more.

There's almost no point pushing your kids to be just as academically good, but be a "square" in everything else. Getting into a brand-name college might give your kids a leg-up in johnny's first job, perhaps, but three to five years after graduation, there won't be much discerning difference anymore.

The kids need to be doing the pushing, ie. that driving force (of what they want to pursue), need to come from the kid. It cannot and should not be coming from the parents. If the kids don't have that, they would languish later on in life.

At the same time, we can't be lowering the bar of expectation every time a kid says "work is hard." What kind of message do we, as adults, send to the kids by removing every chance of hard work so that they expect everything else in life to be easy and a piece of cake? I still recall the tremendous amount of satisfaction and pleasure when I finally made it through one of the most difficult classes in college, all on my own. I felt like I could take on the world, if I could get through that, and I did. I would not trade that feeling for anything else. Those liberal parents should take away that chance of push and hard work that johnny should be doing, so that he would learn to stumble, stand up again, and make it on his own terms. As a student, that kind of learning and discipline would benefit the kid for the rest of his life.

So, where's the middle ground?

One has to ask, with this very excellent public school system being around for so long, why is it that suddenly everyone thinks it's broken and needs to be fixed? Why do the kids need more work, or less work, today when kids from decades past didn't and those alums all did just fine?

Is it that the middle ground should have been more choices? Why does the school superintendent need to take away the work, effectively lower the expectation of the kids to make things easier? Why can't there be different track, where kids can choose their pace, the same way one can choose between taking (or not taking) AP classes? Surely if those white American parents want less stress for their kids, their kids can opt for the less intense classes, whereas if the Asian-American kids want to push, they can opt for the AP classes.

But of course we all secretively know the answer to that, even if no one wants to admit it outright, when we see the kind of passive-aggressiveness of so many liberal white Americans in general. While they want to make things easier for their own kids, they realize that their kids will be at a disadvantage if they don't take AP classes (for example). In order to maintain the status quo, they cannot allow any other kids to get ahead (the Asian-American kids, in particular) so that their own kids can catch up. And the only way for that to happen, is to change the rules of the system, alter the rules of the game in their favor.

You can see now, that I'm a fairly aggressive person, and I'm not a pushover. Hence, I have a particular distaste of passive-aggressiveness. I see all these being played out in my kids' current school system as well, although not as acutely as those in NJ.

Given my own experience, I do constantly remind myself that I need to step back, to let the kids learn independence, to allow them time to find their own internal driving force. As I told them many times before, as they get older, I'm not going to do the pushing anymore. I do have certain expectations of them, and I do know their ability (of how far they can go), but the rest (what they want to do, where to push it) will have to come from them. For parents, this is a constant learning process to letting go, and to have faith in the kids that they'll push through ok somehow. My parents had the wisdom to let me take the driving seat and decide what to do, I can only hope I learn to have enough trust in them to let them drive. It's not easy, and I'm still learning the rope.

On the appeal of Donald Trump, and the angst of American voters...

The GOP primaries are coming up shortly, and I find pretty good entertainment from its primary season. On top of having a real entertainer (Donald Trump) in their line-up, the GOP has every other man (and woman, in the form of Carly Fiorina) seeing themselves as the next US president when they look themselves in the mirror every time, never mind whether they are up to it or not. While a few losers (hello, Bobby Jindal) admitted defeat, there are still some ten of them refused to admit to the fact that they're just wasting their own as well as everybody else's time. Early on, I have thought Jeb Bush might be the one, given the name stake, the money machine and establishment solidly behind him, and the relatively moderate tone in his rare speeches at the time; but no more. Now Bush is just decidedly an also-ran, giving way to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Who would have thought, even just a few months ago. No matter, Trump is still sitting at the top, seemingly unfazed by any attacks to him about his outrageous acts, speeches and positions; in fact, the more outrageous he sounds, the more support he seems to get, perhaps even from the disillusioned Tea Party voters.

I would be the first one to admit, I'm totally turned off by Trump the entertainer, what with his very fake hairdo, very artificial tan on his face, and the very outrageous speeches. Oddly though, I find certain part of my inner self saying, there is certain appeal in what the guy is saying, or at least what he represents. No, I'm not saying at all that Trump represents the little guys completely, but he's willing to go out there, and say the politically incorrect things that most people have on their mind but are unwilling to say it due to etiquette, or politically correctness. Even Trump's manner and tone, the crassness that this guy has come across, the decidedly low-classness (billionaire notwithstanding) would mirror a lot of little guys whose voice has long been ignored by establishments from both the left- and the right-side of the aisles in Washington. Remember the 1960s movie Network? Trump has succeeded in channeling that famous quote "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore." That's what all the Trump supporters have wanted to say.

I have no doubt that there's sufficient disillusionment from the left, of Obama's Audacity of Hope campaign slogan that has fallen way short of the false hope that Obama has sold to the voters. While he might be the first black president to take the White House, his impact is really largely symbolic. He is not really that different from any other Democrat's president (say, Hillary Clinton). Under his watch, the livelihood of the blacks hasn't changed much; in fact, given all the incidents underlying the Black Lives Matter campaign (if you can call it a "campaign"), it's really just same old, same old. Yes, he pushes through Affordable Care Act (dubbed as his namesake ObamaCare), but it's nothing about healthcare reform that it's claimed to be, which at its core, is simply a health insurance change, rather than healthcare coverage change. While ACA doesn't affect me at all personally, I can certainly appreciate the anger from those people who are forced to seek and buy insurance coverage, or risk paying penalty, particularly in those states where the plans available from the so-called health exchange are getting pricier due to insurers exiting poorer states.

There has been much talk about the explosive growth of student debts in just the past decade and a half, and Washington failed to act on it to ease the load. Why? Because politicians in both parties are all in the pockets of lobbyists whose interests are in protecting the investors' interest (hello, Wall St) rather than the voters.

And then there is widening gap in income and wealth. To be sure, government policy shouldn't be about redistribution of income and wealth, but there is nothing that helps in leveling the playing fields. All everyone wants is quick fixes. GOP wants school vouchers, rather than fixing broken/failing public schools. Democrats wants to give more money to teachers unions, but no guarantee of results. Nobody wants to test the students, saying they alone can't fix failing student performance. So, what do we do? Instead of testing every students to find out where they're at (as demanded by No Child Left Behind Act), Obama is throwing the baby out with the bath water by repealing NCLB and rebranding it as Every Student Succeeds Act. And what does it do? You can still test the students but no one will be held accountable to the test results, hence why would anyone care? Yes yes, education is hard to fix, education requires long term vision and investments, precisely the kind of things that US seems totally incapable to do these days. Is that why every other voters get angry? I know I would.

Same goes with issues in affordable housing. Democrats and liberals in general want us to believe that in order to lift the lives of poor, the quickest way to fix it is to let them live side by side with the wealthy. The thinking goes, that would be an immediate resolution to allow poor families and children to have immediate access to better schools and facilities. No one wants to do the tough job of fixing poor neighborhood. What ends up happening is, the well-to-do feels squeezed and the poor feels envious. Is there any wonder why no one loves the "poor door" arrangement in New York City, even though the poor fight over each other's bodies to get their hands on it like it's a lottery won already? It's only going to benefit a small handful of families while the rest of the dilapidated neighborhoods continue to flatter, yet politicians can claim they are doing something to help the poor without even trying.

And don't get anyone started on the economy which is picking up speed, so much so that the Fed feels prudent and comfortable to raise the rate, the first hike in eight years. As impressive as it may sound, in this two-speed economy when the well-off class has been doing quite well already and can surely handle a 0.25% hike, everybody is still waiting to see their green shoots, particularly in states that are not on either coast.

While US and Europe have been wallowing under the weight of the Great Recession, China has been flying high. Even with the slowing growth in China in the past couple of years, its economy has come a long way so fast that it's been the World No. 2 and is set to overtake the No. 1 position by US as the world's biggest economy in coming years faster than anyone might think. While the Chinese in general feel a sense of hope in their future (matched by the aply named China Dream slogan), with the diminishing world dominance, the American Dream looks decidedly broken. The stature of being an American doesn't count for much anymore in the world stage, even as a tourist these days. Who are we to lecture others about human rights (or abuse), civic society, government structure, ideology and more? When you're going downhill, you lose the rights to gloat about how good you are, because others have shown that their alternate form of government and society can do just as well, maybe even more so.

This is on top of all the disastrous major military undertakings overseas, in the form of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the heedless foreign policy that aims high and shoots low. George W Bush would say democracy to be the cure of all evils, Obama openly praises Arab Spring to give powers to the people, all these are but ideological talks without understanding what that would really do to a society. So, one by one, stable (authoritarian and oppressive, notwithstanding) governments were toppled, the aftermath of which US has not prepared for. In their stead, power vacuum is created in every other country in the Middle East, allowing radical terrorist groups like ISIS (even worse than AQAP) to spring up, displacing residents with civil wars. Is there any wonder millions are rushing the shore of Europe in the refugee crisis this year? The Paris attacks were horrific, but it's just a matter of time that it happens. No one wants to imagine that to happen in US, but the San Bernardino shooting should be another wake-up call to show how easy this is to be carried up, planned by just a few nutjobs.

The list goes on.

It's in the news, day in day out. Is there any wonder why voters are anxious, angry, and feel vulnerable? It can be just as upsetting when average Americans are told we're just fine, that things are really alright, that economy is good (even though you don't feel it), that our kids can really compete in the global marketplace (even though more jobs are being shipped overseas), that we are all over-reacting, that we should open our borders even more (even though a lot of voters are already feeling overwhelmed by competing for jobs locally), that we should pay for more refugees to come in to show our goodwill (even though a lot of classroot voters can't even put food on their table or pay their bills).

These are messages that Donald Trump is saying out loud that no one wants to say it and his anti-establishment message personifies, because to do so is to admit defeat (that our economy is bad, that we're losing the No. 1 position, that we're too poor to tell others what to do or listen to us, that some developing countries are living a better life than we do, free speech be damned because politically correctness is killing the "free speech" in this country anyways).

It is thus that I'm not surprised to see that, as anecdotal as it is, even a Democrat voter is going for Trump. While I don't think Trump has what it takes to govern a country, he would have no trouble attracting sufficient protest votes to tell both GOP and Democrats that voters don't want either of them anymore. And while die-hard libertarians and Tea Party voters might not warm to Trump, he would appeal to their contrarian spirit to, heck, upset the status quo, for a change.

On de-cluttering, digitization (and disappearing) of our footprints...

The other day when I was walking around the block, I came upon a few boxes of "free stuffs" that people put on the street, the stuffs that they intend to throw out that someone else might find interests in. I found a few things of interests. In them, I found a couple of old books, old prints hardcover books that were from the 19th century. There were inscriptions in the front pages, notes of gift to some friends, one of them had notes from a god-parent to the child. 

I don't really have any needs for these old books, but for some reasons, I felt compelled to take them, almost as if I felt the needs to save these very old artifacts from going to the landfill. Part of me too, felt soothed when holding something so ancient in my hands, it feels so real when I touch those yellowed pages and tattered covers.

And so, when I read the New York Times article about de-cluttering, I truly feel for it.

Articles like this are almost always written by older folks feeling nostalgic about a fast disappearing era where there are physical artifacts to touch, to feel, to keep, to past down to the next generations, the same way I would have felt for those old books. The larger social trend though, is moving in the opposite direction.

I bought my first Nook for my kids more than a few years ago out of necessity. In the past, whenever we go on road trips, my kids would load up on books, borrowed from library. That works out fine since they could bring as many books as they want and put them in the car. (They usually bring 25-30 books each time.) That won't do when we go overseas as it becomes too cumbersome bring all those physical books. The Nook was almost a godsend since they can bring as many e-books as they want, and they can read on their own device. These days, they've built up their own digital library of hundreds of books, and they can read them anywhere, anytime. How else could you bring the complete Sherlock Holmes collection, and all the Jane Austen's books, and all the books with you all the time? There's simply no way it can be done physically, and digital copy is an elegant solution to a practical problem.

The kids love it because they have become used to all things digital. While they still read physical books from school and library, they are used to having everything else in softcopy. I'd actually argue that all those studies that equate kids' academic performance to the number of books at home are rather outdated because those studies simply do not have the empirical evidence from homes that have gone digital. In other words, for kids that are older, I don't think they read any less than on e-books than they would otherwise have with physical books. Well, not for my kids anyways.

I would say though, that it would still matter for very young kids to learn reading with a physical book, read by some adults to them physically. That makes a much bigger impact when their very young brain is still forming and needs to learn from touch and feel. But, that's a different story.

There is no doubt, however, that my kids would have missed out on a connection to a past era when there will no longer be any physical artifacts to be had. These days, we don't write letters, we don't buy books, we don't keep the physical stuffs. The home is so clear of everything, it's like a neo-minimal furniture showroom, with nothing on the shelf except a few pot plants.

Even this journal that I'm writing, this blog that I've really just meant for my kids to read, a journal that I would otherwise have kept and written in my long hand, would evaporate in the ether, should blogger.com cease to exist. All that it takes, is for someone to pull the plug on this blogger.com server, and all these years' of journal entries will be gone. 

I sometimes feel ambivalent about that kind of minimal footprint. There will come a day when I pass away, and there will be very few artifacts that connect back to me, except these binaries. I generally don't mind it, but I'm beginning to think that I should really discuss this with my kids, of how their generation would treat this subject. Do they really need - or want - physical artifacts to remember me by? If so, maybe I should start building a collection for some time capsule for them someday.

On public discourse of breastfeeding...

It's been some years since the birth of my first child, and I'm still astounded at the never-ending war over breastfeeding. Indeed I'm almost rather taken aback by how prejudicial the public discourse has become, as if no common ground (as if new mothers need one) can be found.

We all know about benefits of breastfeeding, it's:

• Faster
  There's no need to clean the pumping gear, or wash baby bottles. For 15-20 minutes of feeding time, you could be looking at at least twice that long (probably even more when you're expressing breast milk for later) taking care of all the preparation work for other alternatives (pumping, feeding, washing up, freezing/defrozing).
• Cheaper
  Lactating mothers are eating anyways, and baby formula can be expensive. As babies go past six months and are growing fast, you can burn through a box of baby formula in no time.
• Easier
  You don't need to bring pumping gear with you, and as long as the baby is with the mother, the milk spigot is always available and on, 24x7.
• Health benefitsIt's most natural way to feed your baby that Mother Nature has provided us for, with the most assured way to build up the immune system for the baby. Whatever immunity the mother has, it'll be passed onto the baby.
• Natural
  Breast milk provides all the nutrients and fluids, in the most perfect mix, to the baby

Most women, given the choice and circumstances, will probably opt for breastfeeding. But one should not jump too quickly to conclusion for those who can't or won't. How about these:

• There are many working mothers whose workplace does not provide for the space or allow for the time for pumping breast milk. 
• There are those too who cannot afford to not working for a living, to put food on the table for the family. Even if they want to breastfeed, it will simply be impractical to do so.
• There are those whose babies simply can't latch on. Yep, that's me, right there. I tried with my firstborn, and my second child, but no luck. For those who latch on naturally or those who have never had their nipples chewed, they would NEVER know the pain or how hard it can be for some mothers. 
• And then there are those mothers who have health issues that are unable to feed their own babies, or simply don't produce enough milk. It's not a matter of choice, but more a survival (for the baby). 

The lists go on. For me, as a matter of practicality, my attitude is whatever it takes. That means, pumping breast milk from my fast dwindling supply, that means preserving the precious breast milk by mixing breast milk with formulating, that means training my babies to take cold bottles from the fridge, and to put it back if the bottle was not finished.

Yes yes, I've heard enough tsk tsk from others, including my own mother, chastising me for feeding cold bottles to my babies. But I'm blessed with an open-minded husband who helps with all fronts. (He's approached the feeding of babies from all scientific angle, including the search for the "perfect" sized nipple for the bottle in order to reduce air sucked in by the baby during feeding which help in burping the babies afterward.) I'm forever grateful too, to have a pediatrician who is as open-minded as my husband. Perhaps his acknowledgement that babies at two months old should be able to regulate their own body temperature, was among the first sigh of relief that cold bottles are just fine for babies. (For those who care to learn about this, both of my babies only showed me their cringe of face in a flash second when they first tasted cold milk, but neither of us ever looked back. To this day, both my kids drink everything cold, and they're fit as a fiddle.)

You know what, in the end, everything is well and good. Both my babies turn out fine (even with cold bottles of 50/50 breast milk and formula since they were two months old). My husband would tell you too, that he and his brother were both formula babies, and they turn out just fine too (Ivy League'd). One of my sisters breastfeed her two kids till past three years old, but they have the usual usual kids' ailments (ear infection, asthma, fever, the works) from time to time, even more so than my kids.

My mother's generations, decades ago, all breastfed their babies, of course. It's a matter of necessity. Almost all women were stay-home moms, and breastfeeding was "part of the job." I and my siblings all grew up on breast milk. I never even had a low-grade fever when growing up, while one of my sisters would have fever often.

What does this all tell us?

I'd say, breast milk is great, if you can do it. If you can't or won't, that's not the end of the world. For chrissake, there are so many more good things that you can do for your kids through their lifetime than just breast milk. I won't get too hung up on that.

To those passive-aggressive, or outright aggressive-aggressive, sets who insist on their own brand of parenting to be THE best way to go, I'd say, just fuck off.  Most mothers (maybe with the exception of a small numbers of them who shouldn't even have kids in the first place) have the best interests of the babies in mind. It's hard enough to be a new mother, and they don't need someone else to lecture them every step of the way. This is exactly the same type of meddling into someone else's affairs that the religious set does to the women's reproductive rights and abortion rights.

More often than not, public discourse on breastfeeding is simply the passive-aggressive way for some women (I won't even bother to acknowledge men in such conversation) to brag about how they know more than other women, how they are better mothers than other women, how they should be the standard-bearers and not other women. To those, I'd gladly say too, to just fuck off.

On the demise of the iBeacon fad...

I don't know if there are that many people who remember the splash announcement of iBeacon from Apple couple of years ago, but I highly suspect if anyone outside of the industry would remember or care. It thus comes as no surprise - almost to be expected - on the news that, two years later, iBeacon hardly catches on which sounds like an obituary in advance.

For something coming from Apple, it must have doubled the disappointment. The iPhone users are a much more coveted crowd, they generally have higher spending power, they are more loyal (to their phone and Apple), they tend to embrace newer trend (afterall, having a popular app on the Apple Store is every developer's wet dream). Startups and retailers must have expected iBeacon to deliver the nirvana that they're been looking for, tracking users every step of the way, aisle by aisle, pushing coupons, news and more to them, staying in "constant contact" with them. Perfect, right?

Yes, it's perfect, to advertisers and retailers. To users and consumers, it's beyond creepy, one more step toward Minority Report.

No one wants to admit it either, but the whole online coupon fad has fully played out, as evident by the spectacular rise and fall of Groupon, falling to only 1/10th of its IPO value in three year's time.

Maybe no one wants to admit it, but everyone should be fully aware that the younger generations, the crowds that retailers most wanted, coming of age in the Edward Snowden exposé, and being much more tech savvy than their parents and grandparents, are much more cognizant of privacy concerns. While they might put themselves out there, in the age of Instagram, that's not the same as being tracked for every step one makes.

I never bought into the Groupon craze, I have better things to do with my time. Turning off bluetooth was among the first thing I did when I got my iPhone, and I never intend to turn it back on, for the sake of some iBeacon that I fully do not intend to use (or be tracked). I hate finding anything about myself online because I take privacy every seriously, and I mean to keep it that way. To that end, I'm not sorry to see the demise of iBeacon, and for good measure.

On disputes between condo owners and trustee/management...

I recently sold a condo where we've lived for the past ten odd years. Reasons are many-fold. We need more space for the kids, the price is good in this seller's market, and it's high time to cash out. Although I could easily hold onto the property and rent it out with very decent return yield, I'm just getting very tired of it all.

And so, when I read the New York Times story of the online entanglement and dispute between owners/residents and building board/management, I can totally relate to it.

In a building where more than half of the owners were absentee landlords, plus a majority owner who owns more than 40% of the units in the building, it's almost impossible to organize any meaningful challenge to upset the status quo because the existing trustees on the board were pretty much shoo-in, given the blessing of this one majority owner.

Things were not all that bad in the beginning, and no one bothered too much of anything, so long as snow is shoveled, garbage is collected on time. So everyone continued to pay the relatively high management fee, even though there wasn't much ongoing maintenance that the building should need to pay on a monthly basis. Given all the high management fees that we all paid into it, the condo association has almost no reserve, which did raise legitimate concerns as to where the money went. The budget was discussed in annual meetings, but owners were not given how much were actually spent and where it's spent, so it's impossible to discern if the budget is a good or necessary budget, or not. When questions were asked, the canned answer was always "we'll get back to you" but it never came, so that in a few months' time, no one would remember what questions needed to be answered.

It's only when a new owner started moving in, and she had more time on her hand, that she started looking and asking questions and gradually more owners (who lived in the building) started to come to. We started attending the owners' annual meetings. When reasonable questions were asked, trustees and condo managers tried either dismissed the questions as frivolous or unnecessary, with not so much as a "trust me on this" attitude to dismiss them all. Naturally that didn't go down so well.

Owners started organizing, tried the proper way to unseat the board, to no avail (thanks largely to the majority owner). Owners asked for details, and the condo management company's tactics were to nickel-and-dime every single request with high service charge to make us go away.

Owners, one by one, got tired of all these infighting. When the price is right, one activist owner after another sells. Eventually even this majority owner sold the stake in one block to another individual. After more than ten years, I got tired of it all as well, and I sold as well. The price is good, the time is right, and the new owners can fight their fight, but that will not be me.

Looking back, I wonder if it would have helped, had the owners had online tools and forums for organizing the efforts. With online forums going out to larger public, would it have added more urgency or necessity for the trustees/board to take the activist owners more seriously? It's naturally impossible to ascertain this kind of what-if.

I do learn one thing from this epic saga.

I've decided that I would not buy any condo (worse yet, co-op) in the future. I would only opt for freehold properties that I can make all the decisions. I'll be my own condo manager and trustee. I'll handle my own finances. I don't want to deal with this kind of messy infighting that I can't affect the outcome anymore.

On the conspiracy theory around Bin Laden's killing...

We all know about the killing of Bin Laden's by the SEAL team, censored by the White House. I have to confess, the news of his killing felt and still feels good to me. Not that I'm bloodlust, but this is the big-bad that had brought us 9/11 and thousands killed on that fateful day some fourteen years ago. George W Bush bungled the hunt of this guy, and it's a good thing that Obama finishes the job, but at least we should be glad that the job is finally done.

And so, when I read the New York Times article alleging that the "truth" about the Bin Laden killing might be more than meet the eye, I thought it's just about how everyone might be trying to fine-tune their position for and against going in for the kill, particularly those like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in this pre-election season. I have not expected the Rashomon type of split reality, with different people now peddling their stories (books, essays, movies, public statements, you name it) while challenging the versions of reality from others' stories.

I knew about the couple of memoir books (like the ex-SEAL's first hand account of the events) and movie (Zero Dark Thirty). But I was not aware of the 10336-word essay from Seymour Hersh about some conspiracy theory behind the Bin Laden killing. For what it's worth (and I'm glad the publishing of this essay was done online so that it has not wasted any papers that the essay is printed on), all the supposed lies and deceit, the conspiracy theory and the alternative "story" that the essay is trying to spin, is decidedly underwhelming.

Where should I begin...

No doubt that, with four years of his life spent on digging stuffs up, Hersh is more than eager to juice us every little minutiae details, inconsistency, half-truth, and outright lies about the official version from the White House. Cover-ups make even better story, and usually that sells. It is thus that I'm surprisingly uninterested in the minor details of this whole operations.

Do I really care how America came to locate Bin Laden, that it's supposed to be from some walk-in informant interested in the $25m bounty, rather than painstaking intelligence gathering by CIA? Not really.

Do I really care if Pakistan knows about the operations? No, I don't.

Do I really care if the SEAL's have standing kill order of Bin Laden that would take no prisoner? I'm glad they did the kill. That should have been the first goddamn goal of the whole mission because, heck, why would we want to take Bin Laden captive and then having to attend to all his needs with some five-star treatment since doing anything otherwise would have brought all those human rights lawyers jumping up and down, all while wasting taxpayers money on it that can be better spent elsewhere.

Do I really care how the body of Bin Laden was disposed? Well, if I don't care if he's killed (and yes, I want to see him killed), then why should I care if he gets a proper burial or not (which I don't)?

Do I really care if the White House juice up the story? Everyone loves a good story, and the White House version isn't as dramatic as the one in Zero Dark Thirty anyways. So, maybe Obama isn't that bad a screenwriter when it comes to wanting to look like a courageous leader making gutsy choices (that George W Bush failed to make), but one would argue that anyone in Obama's shoes would have done the same.

Everything else, like the corroboration with the Pakistanis in ISI, is just business as usual (horse trading in geopolitics). No one is interested in those either.

All in all, that very long, very verbose essay from Hersh just feels tiresome, all with the hope of finding a story behind something that no one really cares much about anymore. The main objective to kill Bin Laden was achieved, that's what everyone is focused on, and that's what matters. There might be differences in accounting for the how, but never the why. 

Hersh argues so much about the truth. but his essay's heavy reliance on conjecture and accounts from "one retired official" and not much validation is not that confidence-inspiring. Maybe some days more details will filter out, but we have to ask ourselves, if we don't care about it now, not even the supposedly "shocking" truth from Hersh, do we care for much else (eg. whether Pakistan has tipped off US on this operation and the whereabouts of Bin Laden)? I highly doubt it.

On Chinese medicine and Nobel Prize...

I'm sure anyone who has used Chinese medicine in the past would pay particular attention to the Nobel Prize this year to the first Chinese (from mainland China) whose discovery of an ingredients forty years ago has become the mainstay to standard malaria treatment that has benefited countless lives.

It's easy to see why proponents to Chinese medicine construes the Nobel Prize as an endorsement of its significance, cue from "clinical trials" from its two thousands years of history. Equally curious is how opponents of it can quite easily find fault in Chinese medicine too, the most obvious ones is Dr Tu Youyou herself who made her significant finding forty years ago, but was never able to replicate the success since then. It's not hard to see why.

When a Chinese medicine doctor is effective, he can be really effective. But there's no "quality control" at all. As a patient, you can't automatically assume that one Chinese medicine doctor is just as good as the next because - surprise surprise - it doesn't.

A lot of criticism rests on the fact that the way Chinese medicine is learnt and practiced, is very much a one-on-one person-to-person knowledge transfer. Traditionally the trade-craft was only passed to male heir in the family. Secret recipe was always guarded jealously like top national secrets. (Sadly this is not just in Chinese medicine, but also in other trades practiced by Chinese, like famous chefs in restaurants.) You can call it self-preservation, you can call it selfish. Regardless, the result is the same: Knowledge is never meant to be assimilated or spread, otherwise success cannot and will not be guaranteed within the family, or so the thinking goes. Hence the criticism of Chinese medicine being so unscientific because it's so unrepeatable.

Some would argue that's not the case, exhibit A being the classical texts that contains all the medicinal details. Yes, that would be indeed the case, but traditionally those medicine books and texts were not meant for public consumption, they were meant only for apprentice or designated heirs of those famous doctors of old.

~~~~~~

I observe this in a rather first-hand way. Some years ago, my dad suffered from intense back pain that he could never find an effective cure. He tried all options, including western medicine (drugs), therapy, and even some chinese medicine doctors in Hong Kong and Australia, all to no avail. Western doctors proclaimed that the only thing left to be done, is a major operation to fix the eroded disks which was no guarantee that it would not recur. And then some acquaintance referred him to a supposedly famous doctor in a coastal Chinese region near Hong Kong, who was (and still is) the head doctor of the provincial hospital.

As a last-ditch effort, my parents went there to seek treatment. Due to concerns of hygiene and lack of facilities, they had to bring all the medical supply themselves, including syringes and even gauze pads.

Miraculously after an intense regiment of treatment of a month, dad came back with a back all cured. There was no more pain or discomfort. The issue had not recurred either in the years since. More curious was the fact that the doctor could never offer an actual diagnosis, all just a notion of "weak back." Everyone marveled at this chinese doctor's skills. Since then, my dad had personally referred countless other patients (friends and acquaintance of his who had a garden variety of ailments) to him and his hospital, and he loved my dad for it. And why not? After the cure, he solicited personal donations and gifts from my dad (cars and vans, meals, gifts, money) in the years since, and my dad willingly provided, though my mom had grown resentful of how this doctor could so shamelessly ask for all these personal gifts to benefit himself. It's highly unethical, to say the least.

Perhaps as an semi-indictment on how chinese medicine is practiced, this doctor is a particularly good case in point. He was very good at it, skill wise, and he's benefited hugely personally since he solicited personal gifts from all his patients. That seems to be the "norm" that all his cured chinese patients have come to expect to cough up, on top of the huge fees that his hospital would charge to all these overseas patients.

One would expect he would start some R&D to expand his reach, but that can't be further from reality. Instead of any R&D, he passed all his knowledge to his only son who, when he came of age, was appointed by him to be the head doctor of a new wing of this provincial hospital, while the father continued to be the head doctor of the old wing of this same hospital. The son was sent to Beijing to pick up some new skills. He's busier than ever taking in new patients, easily seeing hundreds of patients in a day. Yes, you might find that implausible, but I've visited that hospital once and saw how he would get his patients all lined up, literally, and he would do the procedure on each of them like an assembly line in factory, all of these patients would pay his fees personally. Again, there's no R&D, there's no residents in training to learn his craft. All the skills retained between this father-and-son team. Period.

You can call me cynical but I see it as it is. These doctors who might be otherwise skillful have absolutely no interests in teaching others the skills or promotion Chinese medicine for the benefits of all. All they focus on, is to concentrate the knowledge among themselves so that no one can replicate their success. Sadly to say, they are hardly alone, I've seen other chinese medicine doctors behaving the same way too.

As anyone would know, some of the basic premises of science include the study of a subject matter through scientific methods, test of hypotheses, to ensure the repeatability of results. One can hardly find such vigorous body of study in chinese medicine. Perhaps it's little wonder the Nobel selection committee specifically puts out the disclaimer for this Nobel Prize to Dr Tu that this is an endorsement of her contribution, but it's not meant to be an endorsement of chinese medicine.

~~~~~~

As a side note, some years later, it's almost quite certain that the doctor (the father) who treated my dad had quite decidedly led to the hastened death of one of my sister's friends. Incidentally she had had migrant headache for many years. My dad, out of his good nature to want to help, recommended this same doctor to her. She obliged and went back for treatment over the course of three weeks.

His diagnosis of her was some vague notion that she's "weak" in female anatomy. His prescription? She needed to eat more good food (chinese herbs) that would dramatically encourage her blood flow and protein. (This doctor almost always feeds his prized patients with placenta collected from the delivery room of the hospital.)

She stayed the course, came back, and died within a month. It was not known until the autopsy that she had suffered a growing brain tumor (that caused the serious migrant headache). Apparently she never suspected that, and this doctor, for all his skills, pulse reading and such, never knew it either. The conclusion was that, the changed diet could very well have hastened her death by providing all the nourishment that her brain tumor needed.

My dad was sorrowful about her death and the eventual finding of the brain tumor that even a mediocre western doctor might have suspected and found out from a CT scan or MRI. Other chinese medicine doctors had mentioned that the pulse readings should have shown irregularities as well. No matter, that doctor never even noticed or suspected it. After her death, my dad stopped referring anyone to that doctor. It's a painful lesson to learn, and it's such a shame that our friend should have to die from it.

On an outsider view of the FDA approval to opioid use on young children...

I read, with feelings, the recent report on the FDA approval of powerful opioid use (on drugs like OxyContin) on young children.

Thankfully I don't have any personal experience opioid use, or from any immediate families or friends. There has been such explosive increase in use of drugs of any kind on young children on ailments like depression and ADHD that I don't doubt at all the very genuine and real concerns from opponents of this FDA approval. Substance abuse from opioid drugs like OxyContin has approached epidemic scale in some communities that drug abuse will take hold from all demographics that can spread like wild fire.

This has brought back memory of one incident, perhaps my closest (however remotely) encounter of such dilemma.

~~~~~~

Years ago when my son (firstborn) was born, he's suffered high fever two days after we checked out from postpartum. We rushed to the ER of the regional hospital (one of the best in the nation). Since he was less than a week ago, ER mandates him to stay overnight for tests and observation for four days. The doctors, and particularly the nurses, had been very kind and helpful who set up a bed for me to stay with my baby at all times. (Thankfully all tests came back clear, and it's suspected that he's probably just very dehydrated since he's not getting enough breast milk from me which we have since moved to formula and he thrives on it since.)

We were in a room at ER with two beds, one for my son. The second bed laid a child probably less than two years old. On my first night, I called the nurses' attention to that kid whom I worried she might be having trouble breathing, as I heard very strong wheezing sound from across the curtain petition. The nurses checked on the kid accordingly, and assured me that she's doing fine. Or so I thought.

The next day, I saw the family of that young child streaming in at various hours of visitation to see how she's doing. There were a lot of flowers, they stayed until the visiting hours were over, they were obviously a loving and caring family to her which is always a comfort to know. The family also talked to the doctors when they made their rounds, and checked on how she's doing. They were assured repeatedly that she's doing fine.

It wasn't until the very early morning of the day after, that I realized that the child was not doing fine. A team of more experienced doctors and their residents came in. There must have been at least twelve of them, scrambling for the standing room around the bed of the child. The curtain petition was pulled open during the day, and I got to observe from the sideline.

It turned out, the prognosis was not good. I never heard what the actual ailment was, apparently there seemed to be a foregone conclusion that the illness was terminal, hence there wasn't even any discussions among the doctors and residents what the underlying cause might be. No matter. The doctors were more concerned about pain management (that seemed to be their focus on her palliative care at that point). They knew she's in pain, at all hours. She's immobile, and seemed to be in some semi-comatose state. There was only one argument remained for debate, which was "how to manage her pain."

One group of doctors suggested the use of some strong painkillers to ease her pain, while the rest of the group raises very serious concerns that she would become addicted to the painkillers (which was almost a certainty that all of them agreed). The residents didn't say much, probably because they were still in training and were not experienced enough to voice any opinions, one way or the other. They had discussed long and hard, but eventually, the proponents won out. They decided on giving her the very strong painkillers to ease her pain because, as I recall quite clearly what one doctor said, "she most likely won't live to see her teenage years," hence the subsequent issue of lifelong addiction would almost be moot.

The discussions and debate were spirited, but one thing I came away with it, was that, none of the doctors knew the absolute answer. No one ever could. All they could do, was to choose the lesser of two evils. In short, they really had no idea what the eventual addiction might be like for this kid, should she be so lucky to live a longer life than expected.

When the kid's family visited that afternoon, one of the doctors who was in the morning discussion group broke the news to the family that they (the doctors) had decided to use the powerful painkiller on her. This would alleviate her level of pain, and she'd be more comfortable. The family did not object.

What I find rather surprising, is how sure that doctor sounded when he delivered the chosen course of action to the family. He did not voice any concerns or apprehension to the family about any doubts of subsequent addiction. I suspected the family might never know or find out until years later. I couldn't recall if this doctor was the proponent or opponent of the painkiller use, but his deliverance of the news, his I-know-best attitude leaves no room for anyone to remotely doubt that this doctor might ever have any slight doubt at all.

For the next two days when I stayed in that same room with my son and the sick girl, when I continued to hear her wheezing breath (particularly at night), and to this day, I often wonder if that's really "for the best" or not. Is it really a better option for the family (and the kid too, if she ever had a say in all this matters that concerned her so deeply) to be happily ignorant about the consequences? Nonetheless it's a turning point for me, that I can't take a doctor's word for it anymore, that I would always get a second opinion, that I always do my own research. The illusion that "doctors know best" has all but completely shattered.

Those were the days before OxyContin burst onto the market, but the debate about the use of powerful addictive drugs on patients, particularly young children, remains the same. It's easy to have a blanket statement on preventing the use of such highly addictive drugs on children, as a matter of course. But as I think back on the intense debate by those doctors, all of whom were debating with the best interest of that child in mind, yet they could come away with such opposing conclusion, even though the facts that they used were all the same, one can only conclude that there's no one right answer to all situations. Whether one focuses on the immediate short term pain relief, or longer term adverse side effects of addiction, is all a matter of where one draws the focus. It's a question of what kills you first.

In that sense, this FDA approval would have given the green light to doctors who might come down on the proponent side, though it should never be construed as the first line of defense or course of actions that any doctor should prescribe to all young children, without so much as a spirited debate as those doctors that I'd observed in that ER room did.

I do truly believe, that the family has a right to know about the pros and cons of that recommendation (of the use of opioid). Being happily ignorant should not be the default option for patients and their families. I never talked to that girl's family during those four days, never mind telling them about the doctors' debate on their child's pain management options. Sometimes I wonder if I should have uttered a word to them, to let them know that they might want to research a bit more on the option before agreeing to the doctor's recommendation. But then, I would be trampling on their privacy which is not something I would want to do.

I'm generally skeptical toward pharmaceutical companies' push of any particular drugs. Again, debates among doctors should be a default option, rather than relying on just one doctor's decision, particularly on treatment that can eventually lead to lifelong addiction. The doctors know best attitude is simply not good enough for me anymore.

On peak-earning age...

I've known this for quite some time in my gut, and am almost surprised to see the topic is finally mentioned in print, which is the age of peak-earning being in 40s, and then there's mostly nowhere to go but down. I'm somewhat disappointed at the lack of follow-up analysis on this article, given that studies have validated the fact that for most folks, their peak earning years arrive in mid 40s, and then it pretty much plateaued before the decline starts due to inflation and a stagnant salary level.

My own journey is probably a typical one. My salary rises rapidly when I started out with my career. Thanks to the boom times in economy, I was able to effectively double my salary with a few job change in the first couple of years. That was not hard since the starting salary was relatively low, and my sector was in demand. And then, I was able to get rather substantial pay raise every time I changed employers, mid career. Times were good, with six-figure salary, when I reached my mid 30s. We did a lot of traveling, though we remain mostly frugal, never falling for trappings like new cars or fancy homes. We saved religiously. Things were looking up and quite rosy.

Somewhere along the line, things change. Yes, recession has hit but it actually didn't do much to us personally. (*touch wood*) Maybe my focus has changed somewhat. Our first kid came, and I didn't push that hard on the career front. I had even declined two promotions along the way because I didn't (and still don't) feel like managing people. And my salary has almost stopped rising.

I sometimes ask myself the question, of whether the stagnant salary rise has anything to do with my disinclination to move up the management ladder. But is the reason really just that simple?

For every position, in every company, there's a pay scale. It's universally true. Some years ago, I read it somewhere (it might have been Fortune, but I can't recall now) that one has to continuously move forward. In short, treading water and staying put will not do. There's even a benchmark for it, which is that, if you have been in the same company, in the same position for seven years, and you didn't get a promotion, you don't have a future in that company, and it's about time to get out. At that point, I looked around me at a few managers and directors, and realized there's truth in that. Obviously that seven-year rule might be shorter in more dynamic sector, but you get my point.

Perhaps my problem has always been that, I'm not that much into title. When I was younger, my notion of promotion is more a title change, which I didn't have much care in it. I still don't. But these days, I realize that if there's no promotion, there won't be any salary raise, particularly when you have reached the salary cap of your current position, which in that sense, says something about that seven-year rule.

So then, I have a family, I have kids now, but my salary is not going up at all. Yes, it's sad to even admit it, but the company wouldn't even bother explaining to employees why no pay raise is forthcoming, which once upon a time, they had feigned some non-response like "it's the economy" or some such. In recent years, they have stopped pretending to care. Is there any surprise? They might even be looking forward for employees to actually leave so that they can hire someone cheaper (albeit much less experienced) or maybe even outsource or offshore the jobs altogether. It's all the better if you leave on your own accord since there's no need for severance package. Companies are playing the long game. Who has more staying power? The company, or the employees?

Now, you might say, go look for another job, dude. And maybe I should (and would).

But I'm more interested in creating opportunities for myself. What could be better if I have my own startup, have my own business, and be my own boss? That's exactly I've been doing for the past few years, but of course if you know the success rate of startups in general, you should not hold your hope up too high. For me, I mostly see this as a skill acquiring opportunity, rather than a desperate attempt to generate extra revenue.

In the meantime, what am I to do with the stagnant household income? For one, I do not value job changes as highly as I once was. With a family, mortgage, and kids in tow, stability with sure coverage of healthcare can be a very powerful option for one to stay put.  There's some comfort in that six-figure salary.  Sad, but true.

In a way, I don't really blame the employers too deeply for this predicament. Heck, if I were employer, I might even be doing the same thing myself. It makes sense to the company, though it can hurt employees, but what would employers care anyways? I don't expect unions to come to the rescue, actually in my sector, no one wants union. The sector is too dynamic to be constrained by work rules and collective bargaining. Everyone is their own man, as the saying goes, particularly in the high tech sector.

When I look on the web on current salary level, and the sector (even if it's booming again is abysmal). Would I really be doing any better changing jobs, I'm starting to wonder.

And then I realize something.

I'm focusing on the wrong thing. At this point in life, I'm interested in steady revenue over the long term, even after I retire. If that's my goal, I shouldn't be looking at just my job for that anyways; in any case, that point is moot upon retirement. And then what?

If I do not leverage, if I only rely on the savings (however much I put away from salary), hoping the stock market portfolio might give me sufficient yield to at least cover inflation, I would never retire comfortably. All the while, I'll have to pray too that my stock market investments would not get wiped out, like it did to so many others in 1987, then 2000, and then again in 2008/09. One could argue that such market downturns are a once-in-a-century black-swan event, but in my lifetime, when I have seen this three times over, they don't look so black-swan to me. Those downturns are what I have come to expect. Sad again, but true.

Oh, don't give me those craps from those financial advisors about target-date funds, yearly draw-down, and such, all of which are just simulation anyways. With my family history of long life, can I really expect my funds to afford me a comfortable life well into my 90s and beyond? I kind of doubt that. Conventional wisdom is always telling us to expect a reduced income level upon retirement; I'm sorry, but that's not enough for me, because I actually want to earn more, not less.

And I realize too that I can leverage on my good credit and savings. Yes, property investments are a long game, but good properties with reliable yields can be hard to come by. I am never one that chases the markets, so I never touch properties during those boom years between 2001 to 2007. We bought our homestead before boom time, and we're satisfied with that. I was happy enough to do short term trading because I want to stay liquid. Yes, I want to keep cash. I don't limit myself to day-trading but I can't afford to buy one stock and stay with it for two decades, hoping it might be a GOOG or AAPL in the making. I generally stay with tech stocks and this is particularly true. What's in now might very well be gone in five years. What's the point of holding them long term? The only thing that has staying power, if one has to insist on buying long term, is low-cost index funds that are not stock specific. That's one reason I don't view stock market as my savior to my revenue generating goal, even though it's a good way to generate short term returns far superior than money market accounts or bonds.

As it happens, the Lehman crash in 2008 and the Great Recession (six years and running thereafter) is godsend to me. I have the cash, I have the good credit. Properties tanked in 2009/10, and I was able to scoop up a number of properties in excellent locations that I could never dream of buying during boom times. Rentals and neighborhoods have held up in those good locations, even in the worst of times. With interest rate so low, the Fed is effectively sponsoring my purchases. What's not to love?

Surely, annual yield of 10% might not sound that much in a bull market in stocks, but if you can lock in that kind of yield in properties, with the upside of capital gain from rising property prices, it's one of the best investments, both for regular portfolio and for retirement (which is far better than annuity). If that kind of yield is locked in, over the long term, things would pretty much just go up instead of down, it beats stock market any day.

Obviously no one can profess the ability to time the markets, and if anyone tells you they can, they're lying through their teeth. Timing really can make all the difference. No doubt those who bought at the top of the market right before 2008, in subprime locations, will attest to that, and they will probably be stuck for a very very long time.

Maybe luck is on my side. As a small-time retail property investors, there's obviously a natural limit on how many properties I can take on, even with my savings and good credits. Thank goodness I got a few during the down market in the past six years, and everything is going way up now, both in rental yield and capital value. I could easily have replaced all my salary income with my rental income, going forward. I can't ask for more.

But as Warren Buffet once so famously says, when everyone's heading to the exit, that's where the opportunities are, but when everyone's rushing in, it's time to get out.

Almost seven years now, I'm cashing out some of the properties in my portfolio, re-balancing it to keep only the best ones and cashing out the relative weaker ones (which still command very good prices in an up market). Afterall, if I don't cash out, all those unrealized gains are just that, paper profits, nothing more. Plus, I want to cut my leverage now, particularly since the Fed is about the raise the rate again (finally). After going on binge buying in the recession, it's time to stay lean again when everyone is rushing back in. Yes, it's a game of musical chairs.

All that being said, a steady six-figure job can come in handy for all those mortgage applications, in building a portfolio with the help of leverage. But as those portfolios of mine stabilize, I'm itching to finally consider a job change, the work of which has become so mindlessly boring to me that I can do it with one eye closed.

The lesson I've learnt from all these is, I'm no longer under the illusion that my salary will continue to rise forever (perhaps rightly so). By branching out in investments, I've come to realize that it presents a much better chance for me for a steady income stream in the future, well past my working years and well above my current salary would ever give me.

My colleagues might wonder why I don't complain too loudly about the stagnant salary growth, and I never bother to elaborate to them what I do for my personal investments. Perhaps if they have known, they would understand.

I can only hope to say to others out there (as I have preached to my kids too) that there's no point expecting the world from your job, particularly when you're way past your peak earning years (in mid 40s), that your employer will continue do good to you, raising your salary religiously every year as if it's a matter of course, because - surprise, surprise - it just won't happen...unless of course if you're moving up the ranks all the way to the corner office and can be master of your own destiny. But that's a story for another day.

~~~~~~

PS -- I know, my story and experience ignore quite a large swath of population who might never even see anything close to "peak earnings" that they wish to ever see in their lifetime. It's indeed sad to sometimes read that $50k or $60k is now considered a comfortable middle-class salary when that salary level is lower than what I earned when I started out two decades ago. Is there any surprise why the younger generations suffer? But have we come to a point where there are simply too many people chasing too few good jobs?

PPS -- If there's any takeaway, it is that young people need to be a lot more aggressive in their career building because, guess what, once you're pass mid 30s, you'll mostly settle into a pattern, and your "peak earning" salary level will taper off at a much lower level than you would otherwise wish it to be. If you're unable to get the rapid rise before you reach mid 30s, you're somewhat doomed. Yes, sad, but mostly true.

PPPS -- Managing properties is not hassle free, and it's not for everyone. Some people hate that. More people delegate it to realtors which I don't do because no realtors or management agent will really care about the properties except tenants complain or roof collapse or something. No one will give a damn about the well-being of the properties better than the owner.

On Tinder, and the mobile dating game...

Tinder is not the kind of app that I would normally cross path with. I don't even know its garden variety of competitors in the mobile apps space, like Happn, or Hinge, or some such. When you have a family and kids and career and the real-world preoccupations that are worth the while worrying about, you don't have much room for anything else.

And so, it was, that I read the article about Tinder supposedly overreacted to a recent Vanity Fair article about the mobile dating scene (more like a "game" of sorts, well at least to some people anyways), I go and look for the Vanity Fair article to see what the fuss is about.

And boy, how glad I am that I'm out of this modern-day dating scene, because it's so screwed up, both literally and metaphorically.

Here are a few thoughts...

(a) There are a few general themes from the Vanity Fair article, like:

• Young men general enjoy it, young women almost universally hate it. 
• The sex that comes with mobile dating, is "too easy."
• Empowerment seems to be totally one-sided (in men's favor), although women claim to feel liberated and independent too (supposedly).
• Women complain about rudeness and lack of manners of men. Women complain about feeling disrespect from men. Men say they have no time for that.

(b) Let's drop the pretense, and admit it upfront, that dating with sex only and without romance is no dating at all, never mind any thought of relationship because sex alone, as transactional as it is, has no intimacy at all, and you need intimacy to start and sustain any relationship.

(c) While I don't want to appear sexist, but let's start with the injured party, ie. the women who feel injured, disrespected, used (even). The first and last message is, if you want respect from others, you have to show some self-respect, and sleeping around, the reverse (wo)manizing, is not the way to go about gaining respect from others when all you do, is to spread your legs. In the bygone era, if women sleep around with guys, they would be called names, like, sluts or whore. In the internet age, women call that liberation, feminism, whatever. Whatever you call it, it's still the same thing, and you won't gain much respect from there either. If you want respect, practice a little self-restraint, for a start, and stop putting yourself out there on the web, on Tinder and what-not, stop objectifying yourself, acting like Kim K. and expect others to treat you like a precious virgin and focus on your beautiful inner self and personality, because hey, those are not the qualities you want people to look at when you do Tinder. Period. Everyone knows that.

(d) If these young women want total gender equality, which they seem to be heading down that way, they should be realistic and upfront about what guys are and do. Can they do the same? (Sure, boom-boom-boom swipe, then see ya.) Do they really want to do that for the rest of their life? (That seems to be the path a lot of young men are heading down, but are the women ready for it? Do they really want that? It doesn't appear to be.)

(e) Nothing of all these should excuse the callousness of the part of these young men in this casual hookup game. This mobile dating scene feels like a bunch of kids, boys and girls, messing about, with no adult supervision. So, yeah, it does look like some liberation of sorts, but they are liberated to the point where they are free to do whatever, but they have no idea what they are doing, or what they want, or why they're doing it, or how they can change it (if they don't like it).

(f) If I were in these young women's shoes, I'd say, start by withholding yourself from over-exposure on the web and in the mobile space. Yes, it could be scary getting to know someone in person, but it could be so much more satisfying when you connect with someone you like and who like you back. And yes, this takes time, and sometimes it hurts (breakup, got dumped, heartbreak, the works). But as the famous saying, it's so much better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all. And I'm sorry, hon', you won't find love on the mobile apps just by swiping with your finger. It doesn't work that way.

In a not-so-perverse way, all these remind me of Last Tango in Paris. It's the attempt, in a few generations past, to probe the possibility of a meaningful relationship that starts with anonymous sex and erotica without having to know the person first, or at all. In hindsight, that looks almost prescient in the Tinder world now. Looking at how these young men and women saying how terrifying they would feel when that other someone that you're fucking but have zero interest in whatsoever somehow want to know you better the morning after.

For what's worth, in this post-feminism world (or some would call it the third-wave feminism), it certainly feels like women of the younger generations have willingly turned back the clock on a number of achievements, all in the name of Girl Power. Is it really that by sleeping around with stranger men as fast as what men can do to women, these women are achieving gender equality and empowerment? Put it another way, what does it really mean, by putting themselves on par with men's womanizing, even if womanizing isn't something that they would want to see in the opposite sex? I'd instead argue that it's a foolish notion to reverse the evolution of the civility and civilization (assuming it was indeed true that human beings are historically polyamorous, as the one of the Vanity Fair article's interviewee author has propositioned). What women should have done, is to show a better way, a higher path, for men to follow, rather than plunging in to play the men's game (of causal sex and hookup, of womanizing).

And with all these women offering their body up for sex, for free, why would anyone even need prostitutes, one has to wonder...

All of which is to say, this is just so fucked up.

On the third bailout to Greece in the 11th hour...again

Well well, what's new. Watching the Europe crisis talks about a possible third bailout to Greece is more fun than any other reality TV can offer. There are all the characters, pseudo-good guys and villains, the self-proclaimed victim who everyone views as intransigent. The drip-drip-dripping of leaks from the closed-door talks. After two bailouts and €325 billions later, the eurozone finally threw up their hands and officially opened the possibility of Grexit. How refreshing.

That the creditors are open to the idea (or at least all the finance ministers in eurozone) of kicking Greece out, plus the freezing of ELA funding to Greek banks from ECB that results in capital controls in Greece since June 29, are enough to bring the Greeks to their knees.

Never mind that the Greeks voted no in a meaningless July 5th referendum on a creditors' proposal that had expired on June 30th already, nor all the stupid talks of "democracy" in Europe (as if Greece is the only democracy that matters in Europe), neither was all the self-important talks of the dignity to the Greek people, the very real possibility of being kicked out of euro would crash Greece both financially and morally. So, they voted yes in their parliamentary vote on the latest creditors' demands that are even harsher than those laid out on June 30th. 

In short, Tsipras, along with Greece, just capitulated. Completely. 

What never ceases to amaze me, is how the Greeks seem to collectively continue to play dumb. Although most of them talk of the evil bitch in Merkel, or how the Nazi Germans still wants to take over their country, the fact that most of those in the other 18 eurozone member states, particularly those in the north and to the east of Europe, are solidly behind Germany's hardline stance obliterates whatever empty talk of dignity or sovereignty of Greece.  As long as Greece needs more money from the troika, it has to play ball.  It's as simple as that. 

As Tsipras has sabotaged his own credibility, now Europe wants him to hold parliamentary vote on the latest harsher demands from creditors to make sure the Greeks would show the world that they, collectively, would stick to the austerity measures, rather than blaming it on the government, and just swap out whatever party in power in the hope to start over (as the Greeks have tried to do when voting in Syriza in January this year).

Oh, I'm sure the deal will be done. The Greeks will agree to whatever is asked of them now, just to get their hands on the money. Three years, and another €85 billions later, it's just kicking the can down the road some more.

What's new, really.

On the ongoing Greece bailout saga...

The Greece's bailout saga is indeed much more amusing to watch than any other reality TV shows (none of which I don't watch). The blow-by-blow update of main media of the negotiations, the constant leaks to the media of details about various various characters involved (and there have been many), are truly fascinating to watch.

A week has gone by, and we have yet another oneupmanship in the negotiation.

The date to watch is 06/30/2015 (Tuesday), two days from now, that's when Greece is due to repay IMF 1.6 billion euro in borrowing. Greece, having no money left, is dependent on another tranche of 7.2 billion euro bailout to come from EU to come through, so that Greece can make the payment. Failing that, Greece will be considered in default, and its membership in euro in peril.

The troika (EU, IMF, ECB) has been in negotiation with Greece to nail down the necessary reforms and implementation plans that they deem necessary in order to bring Greece's economy back to some kind of steady state. Since Greece has been so dismal in collecting taxes, and given that six years have passed, and successive Greek governments are still unable to raise any meaningful revenue through reining in tax collection or implementing any structural reforms, there really is not much credibility left in Greece.

Given more than six years since its economy collapse and two bailouts from the troika that's worth more than three hundred billions of euro, Greece is effectively still on downward spiral. The Greek people, in essence, have thrown up their hands and said, enough is enough. They threw out the previous government and voted in the left-leaning Syriza party, on the basis that Alexis Tsipras (their PM now) promises to end the austerity mandated on Greece. I don't know if anyone in Greece ever thinks about how Syriza could deliver on that promise. But, such is the power of hope and change, never mind the details. This was January 2015.

Fast forward it to 06/27/2015. Syriza has succeeded in antagonizing pretty much everybody whose goodwill Greece would need to grant the next lifeline in the second bailout. The impasse essentially means the creditors from the troika would not budge. Greece has to either take it or leave it, about the creditors proposal on required reforms. Rejecting the creditor proposal by Tsipras outright would mean that Greece will default on 06/30/2015, and it will almost certainly mean ECB will no longer send more ELA funding to prop up Greek banks, and Grexit as well.

Tsipras did yet another stunt. He announced that he would call a 07/05/2015 referendum vote by Greek people to vote (up or down) the creditor's proposal (which deadline would have been 06/30/2015). And Tsipras recommends Greeks to reject the referendum (ie. reject the creditor's proposal).

I almost laugh when I read this latest Tsipras' stunt. What can this possibly accomplish? Being the leader and a democratically elected government of Greece, he effectively did not want to vote the blame for rejecting Greece out of euro (which is not what Greeks want). But he has been unable to deliver on his own campaign promise to push back on the anti-austerity package from the troika, and he would not admit personal defeat. So, he pushes the issue back to the people to vote on something (the creditors' proposal) that is totally meaningless because that same proposal would lapse on 06/30/2015, even if the Greek people voted yes to it.

In other words, Tsipras is not man enough to admit defeat and accept the creditors proposal, because he knows he could not sell the same proposal to the Greeks, thereby breaking his campaign promise. But he is not man enough either, to reject the same proposal because the Greeks would then turn on him and blame him for pushing Greece out of the eurozone.

Tsipras has put himself between a rock and a very hard place, he doesn't want to choose, and he doesn't want to take the blame. So, he's throwing the ball back to the Greeks to make that call. If the Greeks vote to accept the creditors proposal, the Greeks cannot blame him for pushing more austerity measures down their throat. But if the Greeks vote to reject the proposal and Greece is pushed out of eurozone (with the certain disastrous consequence of a near worthless new currency that Greece has to introduce in place of the euro), then the Greeks cannot blame him for Greece losing euro either because, voila, they make the decision, not him!

And even if the Greeks vote yes to accept creditors' proposal on 07/05/2015, the proposal would already have lapsed on 06/30/2015, so the referendum vote is totally meaningless. Tsipras has requested yet another delay of the IMF payment deadline from 06/30/2015 to 07/05/2015 to accommodate his stunt, but as the EU finance ministers (in the EC) have unanimously condemned this stunt, there really is no point for the deadline extension because it's all just a farce.

Why would Tsipras do that, if only to ensure that, win or lose, Tsipras can continue to keep his position in power in the Greek government. He doesn't give a damn about whether Greece is in or out of the eurozone now, because either way, he would stay in power.

Germany and other eurozone member states have all hardened its stance, and rightly so. The way that Tsipras and Greece have played with fire, throwing temper tantrum, and expecting to have their ways cannot and should not be awarded with what they want. If anything, everyone knows full well that even if this latest tranche of 7.2 billion euro in bailout money from the troika is to come through, it won't last that long anyways. A few months from now, they would have to go through the same farce (that they call it "negotiation"), the same reality TV performance.

It's time to wrap it up. Just go, Greece, and leave the eurozone, if you still have an ounce of dignity left in you. Putin might commiserate with you over a glass of vodka.

I'd wager a bet though, that however meaningless this vote on the referendum, the Greek people are going to blink and vote yes to swallow the austerity package in the creditors' proposal in order to stay in the eurozone and buy themselves so more time and even more funding from the troika.

~~~

PS: If Iceland is any guide to a life outside of euro, and how a collapsed economy could restart and come back again, it should provide some light to the end of the tunnel for Greece, that when there's a will, there's a way, and that Greece does not necessarily have to cling onto Germany (while thrashing Germany at the same time, ironic enough) for life support.