Category: Normality

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.
– Trillian (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

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Eagerly Await

Twenty twenty is finally behind us. Still, New Year’s day is just another day on the calendar. Regardless of when the pandemic ends, I am most looking forward to traveling internationally.

First, of course, going back to Taiwan to visit my families. Next on the lists are

Vancouver, BC – we really liked the city and it’s the last city we visited at the end of 2019.

Anywhere Europe – last trip to Europe was in 2016 to Abisko, Sweden. Berlin would be a great place to go after reopen.

New Zealand – of course.

Aside from leaving this bubble of quarantine, I look forward to the physical interactions with others, a hand shake, a pat on the back, or an embrace.

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Point of View

Riding an Uber to the San Antonio airport for the early flight back to Chicago for the Thanksgiving week. The drive was freely sharing his opinion of the current state of the election.

“The Democrats are turning America into a socialized country, because that is what they want”

“Look at Venezuela, that’s what happened”

“They are taking my guns away, but I am not a killer”

How very unfortunately of the human nature, every election campaigns always turned into spreading of negativity. Let’s rise above the negativity and find the best in us. Let’s reach for the higher standard.

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1461:1

Probability factor 1461:1, normality restoring.

We were in San Antonio moving into my apartment on Election Day. For a few nail biting vote counting days, we see decency prevailed. On Saturday while walking around the courtyard of the San Antonio Museum of Art, the word came in WE WON! Normality is getting restored!! We still have a long road to go, but normality will be restored!

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San Antonio

Took the night flight to San Antonio. This time, with Shin-Shin. We finally made the trip to San Antonio together to see this new city that we will be the residents of.

We will be apartment hunting this weekend, around the Pearl area. When I was here in September, walked by 120 Ninth and was impressed by its marketing when researching it. Later found a few troubling reviews, like thefts, break ins and rooms got rented out for Airbnb. Found a few more newer apartments in the area through an Yelp user, who was apartment hunting in San Antonio in June and wrote reviews for all the ones she went to. Her preference seemed to match ours nicely. We will be looking at Jones & Rio, Southline Residences and Can Plants this time around.

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Phoenix

Run to the rescue with love / and peace will follow – River Phoenix

What a speech, the best of humanity. It felt like it was the Joker giving the speech on that stage; the awkwardness, the sadness, and the final part where he turned to walk away while the last syllable was still in the air. What an amazing actor. Reminded me of a scene in Hotel Rwanda where Joaquin played a videographer, Jack. When the Europeans were being evacuated, it was raining, and a bell boy held up an umbrella for Jack. He pushed it away and said, please no, we don’t deserve it.

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First Flight, 2020

Missed air travel. First flight in 2020 to visit the Searchspring office in Denver.

Forgot all the rituals for getting through airport security and ended up leaving my belt at the airport. Oh well. Glad that I am taking flight again.

Missed seeing colleagues in person and having live debates in front of whiteboard. Joined Searchspring since May and finally seeing some of them in person for the first time.

Missed being able to interact with the world without feeling the world is closing in. Everyone is wearing mask, taking reasonable precautions, trying to function and live in a world shadowed by the pandemic.

The world is burning. Flying over Denver, all I see is the layer of haze from the smoke from Portland.

It’s really sad seeing the world like this. How did we ended up like this?

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What the customers want

HBR Ideacast Every business can be a subscription business
Gym membership is subscription to a healthy life style. That is, it is not the membership for owning the treadmill or gym equipment. What gym members really want is to be fit. For company selling boilers, instead of adding subscription for the maintenance and repair of the boilers, how about the subscription for hot water? If the equipment needs to be updated, we update the equipment. Hot water at the turn of the faucet is what the customers really want.

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Endeavour

While the world is burning, a new milestone in space travel was achieved today. Crew Dragon Endeavour docked with ISS at 10:29 ET on May 31, 2020.

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Class Divide

The financial cost of lock down vs the potential cost of death. Why lower class workers are more eager to reopen while people earning higher wage are more willing to stay lock in. Also the difference in the type of work. Lower wager work are more likely to require physical presence while higher wage works are more likely to carry out remotely.

References:

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Liberalism

How far will we go for liberalism. How much are we willing to tolerate for liberty. We want to do whatever we want as long as what we do doesn’t affect other people’s life. Without respect and empathy this mind set is sending us down a distructive path.