Ping Pong

I think I know what's going on!

I think I figured it out.

It's a literal example of trying to fix the movie by yanking the screen.

It won't work! Change has to come from within. I have to first change my thoughts, feelings, and attitudes first, and only then my reality would change.

I have choices. I could focus on the negativity that has happened, or I could focus on all the good things that has happened. I could reliving the past, or I can actually stop doing that, live in the moment, and not expect anything for the future. I can be free! I can be free from my past tormentor. I have the power to create my own reality. I have the power to stop trying to fix the movie by yanking the screen - because I am the director of the movie. I am in full control, I am in full power! I cannot affect other people's movies. Those are theirs. But I can stop giving a damn about them, and just make sure that I enjoy MINE as much as possible! Thankyouverymuch! :)

R

Recovery

Hi everyone,

It has been a while :) Yes, I have been busy-busy-busy. A bit lame, though, as it is no different than being a driver who speeds up despite running out of fuel because he doesn't have the time to fill up the gas tank.

The gas tank went to "E", indeed, and I did catch a cold/sore throat/fever combo. While I felt miserable when it first hit, I realized that this unwellness is actually a blessing in disguise. My belief states that something won't happen if it is not meant to happen, it won't happen! In other words, if my higher self wills it, only then it can happen. Hence, why this experience of unwellness?

I feel that it's firstly and foremost a manifestation of negative emotions. These days I become more aware of the strength of emotions in creating and manifesting my reality, and in the past weekend I was battling a lack of love. It secondly is also a manifestation of the lack of appreciation toward rest and downtime - I have been trying to live a hyperproductive life since my graduation, that I feel guilty resting and doing nothing. However, thirdly and more importantly, it turns out that there are wonderful things I learned after being inflicted by this unwellness.

This unwellness made me realize how caring, kind, and flexible my coworkers are. I have people offering me medicine, food, or just checking in with me in general. The senior analyst in my team allowed me to leave early if I wanted to, and the associate in my team even called me first thing in the morning, just to check in how I was feeling! I am really grateful to be working with such a kind, caring, and flexible group of people.

When you have sore throat, you intuitively look for things that can cool down your throat. To my surprise, the pear I stole from my office's cafe did the job really well! It makes me even more grateful for the abundance of free food in the office. I also learned that I am still able to do my job really well, despite not being at my 100%. I am still very productive and able to stay focused, which I am really grateful for. More importantly, this unwellness actually propelled me to do things that I would not normally do! The soul needs creative expression, and hence it definitely took delight in me exploring soupy food options (ended up getting this cheap but delicious bowl of pho, which gave me a lot of energy), and googling about sore throat actually compelled me to buy ice cream. I ended up trying Halo Top's vanilla bean flavor! Can't believe that there are so few calories in it, but are really tasty - definitely helped soothe my throat a lot. :) In the process of going to Whole Foods to get the ice cream, I stumbled into a bunch of restaurants that I've always wanted to try - Johnny Rockets (fine, I've definitely tried it before), Lenwich, Hale and Hearty Soup, and the list goes on and on. Panda Express has been my go to, not because I particularly find the dishes there mind-blowing, but because it is convenient, fast, and cheap.

I have forgotten the joys of exploring restaurants, in my attempt to live my life in turbo and in my attempt to save money. It's totally fine to splurge occasionally, and treat yourself! I forget the joy and the wonder of eating by yourself in a new restaurant, just to sit down and chill, while genuinely enjoying good food and your own company. This experience actually reminded me, rekindled the adventurous spirit of mine! It also highlights the beauty of living in New York, Midtown Manhattan to be specific, where all flavors and cuisines are available at your fingertips. It doesn't hurt that I'm getting paid well too! :)

Having said all that, I am the most grateful for this particular lady friend, who actually showed 100% kindness, patience, caring, and compassion when I was unwell. She came to visit me in my apartment, and brought me porridge, medicine, and her mom's baked treats! She gave me kisses and hugs, despite me telling her not to. She texted me before I go to bed, and when I wake up, just to make sure that I am feeling better. It is such a luxury to have such a goddess take care of me. I am really grateful that she chose to come over to take care of me, even though her parents just came to the city to visit her. Despite the cold weather, the fatigue after work, and the stairs leading into my apartment that she has to climb. Thank you :) I am grateful, always!!

It is impressive how the universe and my higher self uses a multitude of ways to allow me to discover deeper things about my life and this world. Here's to always looking at the bright side :D

-R

Inspiration

Today I went to Phi Beta Kappa's New York networking and reception event.

Simply put, it's an event for a bunch of nerds like myself. PBK (as I only recently learned) is an honors society for liberal arts students who graduated at the top 1% of their class. I didn't know why some of my white friends were making a huge fuss about getting such honors, but today's event opened my eyes.

"PBK cannot be given, cannot be bought, cannot be stolen, and cannot be endowed to someone. PBK can only be earned, and only through hard work can one earn PBK."

Sure, there are a lot of things that money cannot buy, but it only sank to me how much meaning I get after knowing that I had obtained something money cannot buy. Sure, it may be an elitist piece of paper worth nothing, bla bla bla, but I guess this is something I can happily (and proudly) say that I have accomplished. I guess I really love the idea of meritocracy, and it still lives strong in me :)

Work has been interesting, and I have been loving my colleagues. I am grateful, immensely so, to be in New York. This is such an exciting time to live, but at the same time, I am aware that there are still plenty, plenty of interesting things out there to pursue, long ways to go to continue developing myself.

As such, going to such events is helpful because it reminds me one thing: I need to stay inspired.

Man cannot live on (rice) bread alone, or so they say. I want to continue loving my job, I wish to continue contributing to the firm, and I want to be ready for my next one. So today, I brought home three takeaways from the speakers: 1) It would be cool if I improve tremendously my communication, expressive, and negotiation skills. 2) It would be cool if I get a mentor, who I respect, admire, and inspire me. I hope s/he is ambitious enough and I get infected by that passion. 3) It would be cool if I spend my time to develop the vision of what I truly want and where I truly want to be. As it was said: If you can't see it, you won't be able to be it.

A bonus takeaway is to learn to take "yes" as an answer. It was said that the only reply to a "yes" is a "thank you!". :) It's funny how these high achievers have the same problem - they are all exceedingly harsh on themselves.

I am grateful to be here, right now. I think this is a great time to live, with me being young and healthy and productive, living in New York City where everything happens and access to resources is easy, where my family is loving and healthy, my parents still very young and thus there is no pressure to settle down or get married. I can take my time to develop myself, to meet new people, and to learn as much knowledge as I wish. I am grateful that I make more than enough money that I can save, and I know, that I will have significantly more (and that there are more in store for me too). I left that meeting excited, I would love to continue working on my trading/options knowledge, business cases, statistics/comsci learning, finance and networking, real estate, and whisky (or red wine or sushi)!

Thank you, and I love you. I'm going to continue giving it my all!

Summer Break

Hello readers, apologies that it has been a while - too long a while, in fact, since the previous update.

I have graduated from Amherst and am currently typing this post from London's Heathrow Airport, in what marks as a conclusion to my (almost) two months' worth of summer vacation in California, Hawaii, and Europe. I unfortunately am in no mood to be terribly reflective - thus let this post be a summary of my graduation trip and my first ever adventure in Europe.

Fast-forwarding to the Europe trip, I took a red-eye from JFK to Paris' Charles De Gaulle Airport on June 21st. We then rented a Mercedes-Benz and drove to Dijon and Lourdes (France), before flying from Toulouse to Madrid and Seville (Spain). We made time to drive to Sagres (Portugal) before my sister and I flew from Madrid to Zurich (Switzerland). I finally went on to fly into Schipol (Netherlands). I had the opportunity to visit Leiden, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam before catching a flight to London today, July 7th. I am grateful to have spent a total of 17 days in the Schengen territory.

A few takeaways:

The travels has been exhausting but immensely rewarding at the same time. Sure, it may not have been life-changing (I have yet to discover my purpose in life..?) but I have felt inspired and challenged with the exposure of different cultures through my travels. From getting lost in the Louvre, slowly sipping Tinto de Verano paried with Hamon Ibericos, to marveling at the jubilant lights of Amsterdam, I understand why travelers around the world continuously strive to visit the continent.

Unsurprisingly, traveling has made me much more interested and motivated in the quest to master more foreign languages. I started my trip by visiting France and Spain, two out of the very few countries in EU where English does not get you too far. My younger brother is studying Spanish in Seville, thus we happily let him do most of the translating/guiding during the Spanish stretch of the trip. However, in France, especially in Dijon, his Spanish is as useless as my Japanese. Nonetheless, we somehow got by! I also had the pleasure to sit down next to an amicable, Rolex-bearing Spanish senor during my flight to Zurich. He was headed to Geneva for a pharmaceutical conference, and happily chatted me up as we drank the airline's complimentary red wine. He spoke rudimentary English, but he was really well-traveled and happy, and we somehow could get our points across and understand each other pretty well! Now I'll begin my new chapter aspiring to improve my Japanese and traveling more - hopefully picking up a Romance language at some point in the future.

I am also grateful to be able to spend a substantial amount of time with my parents and two siblings. With my work in New York that starts next week, I'm not sure when exactly I will next be home, or see my family. Thus it was great catching up and relaxing with my folks. I'm pretty sure I bored them with my push to visit a lot of the art/historical sites such as the Louvre, the garden of Versailles, or Amsterdam's Rijkt Museum, but its always nice to have some family time. The best family time I had, however, was in Hawaii together with my younger brother. We skydived, ate Hawaiian pork, and drove through the island singing along to aloha music.

May I always be inspired to travel!

No More Mr. Perfect

Hey readers,

It's been a while, kind of? I had a wonderful time in Chicago the past weekend, and I have been catching up (and cooking on gas while at it) on school work. Even though I was tremendously sad and frustrated that my code never compiled properly during the competition, I had two great encounters there (on top of El Jefe, Deep Dish, Millennium Park, etc..). First was a trader from Structured Trading named Jeremy, who asked me to run by him my algorithm strategy for options market making. He liked my strategy, gave me some great advice, and asked for my resume and for me to keep in touch, etc.. I think I almost got a job ;)

Secondly, I visited 3Red's office for a poker tournament after the competition. Although I did not win, I did meet an interesting trader who goes by Amin. We had a great discussion about his observations, which includes how when one gives up, surrenders, and stops giving f****s, life would magically turn around for the better. I ended up recommending him a book (Abraham Hicks' Ask and You Shall Receive), and he also recommended me a book titled No More Mr. Nice Guy.

The biggest takeaway from No More Mr. Nice Guy is that trying to be perfect and flawless, and trying to please everyone in order to maintain good relationships is just going to bring your frustration in the end. I should remember that it is okay to stand up for myself, it's okay to be less than perfect, it's okay to let other people know if I am upset. The book author argues that it's probably better (and healthier) to express whatever discontent/negative emotions and then letting go of them rather than keeping it bottled up and pretending that everything is fine in order to gain and secure other people's approval. (Again, this is a form of insecurity - that you need to always maintain perfect, great relationships and always be super nice and so on so forth in order to be approved).

Tack on the discussion from the blog post in Nov 2015 titled Approval - which reminded me that one of my spiritual friends back home has already touched on my desire to be perfect and to keep perfectly harmonious relationships, and how they are holding back my progress. Also, this summer, one of my spiritual friends again reminded me that it is perfectly fine, perfectly okay, to disregard everything, put yourself first, and stand your ground, even if it means that you are crashing into different things along the way. In fact, perhaps you might even have to do that every once in a while to maintain other people's respect.

I did just exactly that when I expressed my frustration at my computer science professor and one of my teammates today. I felt that they did not understand where my concern came from, which is the lack of proper communication and not following through things that have been agreed upon. What escalated my emotions were that the response from the said professor was less than respectful - she was focusing on defending herself instead of hearing me out. Therefore, frustration grows into anger.

I am always a firm believer in communicating openly and clearly, with logic and facts first. However, I am human too - unfortunately I have yet to evolve into a being that is completely immune from frustration and anger. And hence I expressed it, and I am grateful for the opportunity to express it. It was a form of communication, a form of self-expression, and it is brilliant that I am finally learning to express myself. I am learning to fight well, to hold my ground, and to put myself first. I showed courage.

Now, of course I am hardwired to not feel great about being angry, about being overly worried if I would harm relationships, make myself look bad, etc etc. Also frustration and anger thoughts are not great because they make you feel not great, and these thoughts probably attract not-so-great thoughts too. However, I increasingly believe that I was responsible for attracting such scenario, and that event was necessary for my own emotional growth. I also needed myself to reaffirm that I am going to put myself first.

It is okay to not be perfect. No, not even no more Mr. Nice Guy. Say hello to no more Mr. Perfect.

Besides, why so serious, anyways? We're all but actors in the world stage :)

Now it leaves me with an afterthought, one more piece to reflect on: Was putting up a fight the right response? Can putting up a fight ever be one?

I shall assess it by considering what my self-principle says about putting up a fight, and considering what the actual outcomes are. Thereafter I would be able to adjust my self-principles accordingly. Putting up a fight just because I feel like it feels so whimsical. It also feels that way when one becomes emotional in response of disrespect or other people's emotions. However, my self-principle remains intact: I need to stand up for myself, otherwise who will? Answering the question of necessity: If putting up a fight and getting emotional are necessary means to an end, then unquestionably doing so is justified. If they do not, then they are less justifiable.

For the benefit of my personal growth and my future self - wouldn't it be cool if you grow to the point that you can always keep your cool but hold your ground, stand up for yourself, and calmly dissect your opponents? Wouldn't it be cool if I can just calmly go about proceeding to explain my concerns or misgivings with the express aim of getting toward the goal? And this is for myself, I want a self like this - it does not stem from the desire to gain anyone's approval whatsoever. Meanwhile, I shall duly note that it's alright not to be the Mr. Perfect - and it's perfectly fine to express emotions as I work toward becoming a better version of myself.

Peace,

Rendezvous

When I was meeting my spiritual adviser (and most importantly, friend) back home this summer, she was giving me some advice on talking to women. She told me to be creative in my ways in approaching them and talking to them. When I asked her what she meant by "creative", she gave me an example:

"For instance, let's say you are in a cafe, and the person of interest is sitting there. You can just say, 'scuse me, you mind if I sit here?' and sit yourself right across her."

---

I started this morning feeling slightly anxious and emotionally drained. I found a great book to read by Abraham Hicks, and decided to ditch everything else and read the book while sipping a cup of Starbucks' green tea latte. I would typically get my car and drive to the Starbucks in Hadley, but it was snowing pretty hard, and therefore I decided just to walk to the one in town. I got my green tea latte, paid, and stood up waiting for my drink before looking for a seat.

Guess what: She's waltzed right into the store, marked her place to sit, and bought her drink. You bet I asked if I could sit right across her. Later on I learned that she was out of allowance, and the only thing she could buy is Starbucks because she had the card. And it was her last dollar too. And you bet I took her to lunch, and you bet I had a great conversation with her :)

And now I wonder why I sometimes I believe that coincidences exist.

Wong's Garden

Because I know my priorities.

---

About a year and eight months ago I finally bought a car after convincing my parents for a long time. Driving was not only essential to getting around in Western Mass, doing so is also one of my greatest escapes. Often, I'd take a personal sojourn for no reason whatsoever, other than enjoying to stepping on my gas pedal, rolling down my windows, and blasting my music.

Having a car also helps a great deal in my quest of finding the perfect restaurant that serves the perfect General Tso's (or one of its variants). The perfect restaurant has to be:

• Far enough from the college so that I can enjoy the drive and know for sure that I won't run into anyone else I know;
• Near enough from the college such that I don't starve to death before arriving and I don't have to spend too much money on gas;
• Serve great tasting General Tso's or one of it's variants for cheap, but being served by non-Asian waiters - so that I never get judged for speaking broken Chinese or for ordering an Americanized Chinese food;
• Never be too crowded so it does not feel awkward eating alone, nor do I feel disturbed when recharging and reflecting about life; and
• Serve free-flowing tea and water, which I can sip as I think about life.

I discovered such a restaurant in Belchertown, a neighboring town about 20 minutes away from Amherst College: Huge portions of food is about the only downside the restaurant has. Wong's Garden thrives on take-outs, and therefore it is never crowded (I confess to be rather nervous during my first visit - the restaurant was empty and I was bracing myself for mediocre food). I have yet tried their General Tso's, but their Wong's Garden Special Chicken is something I swear by. The waitresses are kind and polite, they never tell me that as an Asian I shouldn't order Americanized Chinese food. And I always feel comfortable sipping my tea and writing on my journal long after I signed my check. I am going to severely miss this place when I graduate and move out.

On a side note, I asked myself why I enjoy being by myself, and why I have a need to be by myself. The answer I got was because it is only when I am only with myself, I can be myself. I can be true to me, the way I really am. I feel happy because I feel authentic. Being myself liberates me.

The dialectic continued as I asked if and how I can be myself when I am not by myself. The response I got was to calm myself down by knowing what to care and stop caring about the rest. It was a great reminder to quieten the noises - I have been living with my mind and emotions agitated, and it exhausts me. I have proven that I can be calm, that I can care less, and still be really sharp and socially functional. Maybe caring less makes me even more socially functional. Calming down, trying less hard, caring less, and enjoying and living more. 

MA2W

Whenever I drive back to Amherst from Boston, I meander through stretches of single-lane roads. As night falls, I particularly enjoy rolling down my window, sticking my hands out, and blasting some music. I will then put my headlights up and channel my inner rapper. Sure, I will dim them when oncoming cars pass by. But if my flickering does not dim theirs, I know how to take my hands off the steer and throw gang signs. Imagine what goes through their heads:

"Look at this Uber guy, does he think he's 50 Cent or what?" (I drive a black Honda Civic - an Uber X classic.)

Time to invest in some shades, blings, and a bloody coupe I guess..