Yuna’s Village - A Slice Of The Daily life

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My daily read site CNN Money ran an article to discuss the pros and cons of signing a prenup. Yep, a lot of people think it is insulting to even make such a request, let along sitting down and negotiating a “financial contract” with each other.

But according to the expects, signing a prenup may not be a bad idea:

For starters, talking about a prenup (whether you opt for one or not) is an opportunity for you and your partner to get your financial lives out on the table, which is never a bad idea, since marriage is as much an economic contract as a social and spiritual one.
And, it hardly needs to be said, money can be a huge source of contention between couples, especially when it’s not dealt with openly.
“(The prenup) is about having to communicate and negotiate, which will lay a foundation for your partnership,” said Shae Irving, senior legal editor at legal information provider NOLO and coauthor of the upcoming book, “Prenuptial Agreements: How to Write a Fair and Lasting Contract.”
A successful prenup is one in which both partners feel they’ve gotten what they need. So even though you have less money doesn’t mean you have less say in deciding what the provisions of a prenup will be.
The key, Irving said, is to “focus on fairness (and on) what each person needs to feel well cared for.”

Here is the link to the article

I was totally against prenup until I realize that even solid relationship could turn sour since people change. Once that person changes, everything could change. Love could turn to hate. Reasonable person could turn into monster, etc… Yes, it sounds really harsh to talk about how to split money even before getting married. But I have to agree that having such an agreement while both partners are more likely to be fair and generous to each other during the initial stage of marriage might not be a bad idea.

This is definitely a tough cookie since nobody wants to hurt his/her lover’s feeling. But I think if we treat prenup like will – a method to prepare for the unpredictable feature and understand that there is nothing to do with the love you have for each other, it might be easier for both parties to discuss the matter openly and get the finances organized.

If you think Mac is a better safer operating system, check out the following story and let me know if you still think the same way…

On February 22, a Sweden-based Mac enthusiast set his Mac Mini as a server and invited hackers to break through the computer’s security and gain root control, which would allow the attacker to take charge of the computer and delete files and folders or install applications.
Participants were given local client access to the target computer and invited to try their luck.
Within hours of going live, the “rm-my-mac” competition was over. The challenger posted this message on his Web site: “This sucks. 6 hours later this poor little Mac was owned and this page got defaced”.
The hacker that won the challenge, who asked ZDNet Australia to identify him only as “gwerdna”, said he gained root control of the Mac in less than 30 minutes.
“It probably took about 20 or 30 minutes to get root on the box. Initially I tried looking around the box for certain mis-configurations and other obvious things but then I decided to use some unpublished exploits — of which there are a lot for Mac OS X,” gwerdna told ZDNet Australia .

We all got the illusions that Mac is safer than PC ‘cause nobody is hacking it. Exactly! Nobody was hacking it until Apple made such a star of itself and invited all the attentions. Now, as Mac starts to gain shares in household computing market, the little Mac might be a whole lot worse than PC systems.

The other reason why I dropped nearly $1700 beginning of this year on a Mac system was because of its relatively stable performance. At least that’s what I heard, read and believed. Turns out, my little Mac froze every now and then and there is no damn “Control –Alt –Delete” to bring up the task manager to kill the hung process …Incompatibility is another issue. Although there are many Mac compatible software out there, there are tons don’t make for Mac users. For instance, none of the software I use for work supports Mac. I have to have a PC to get into my company’s intranet to check emails on Lotus Notes, book flights and do my expenses. Uggrrrr… I am glad I didn’t buy the iMac, instead, I spent half of my money on the ass kicking cinema display, which will very likely be hooked to a PC some day.

I was real excited to learn that my 4.5 hour Denver to Boston flight which departed at 4:21pm last Sunday had meal service. “Finally.. “ I said to myself, “I am on a long enough flight to get something to eat.” Turns out, it wasn’t exactly what I hoped for. I was given a box of junk food from cockie, crackers to chips after paying 5 bucks!

“Do you have any sandwich type of food?” It was dinner time on a Sunday and all I wanted was a damn turkey sandwich… The flight attendant smiled and directed me to the “in-flight” meal page on the Hemisphere magazine. After scanning through bunch of big words like “Newman’s Own Organic raisins” and “Fino Selections Gouda cheese slice”, I gave up the thoughts of biting a turkey sandwich.

Once upon a time in those good old days, we had hot pasta, salad and desert even in the economy class. Now I have to dream about a lousy turkey sandwich on a cross country flight during the dinner time.

United isn’t the only one selling so-called meals now on long haul flights. Pretty much all major airlines have started this trend. But to keep the cost down, they try to stick with easy packaged food such as my lousy “minimeal” box.

I won’t be surprised that a year from now, I will have to pay for the soda and the pretzel too. Till this day, I still can’t figure out why the airlines keep going bankrupted while the airports are busy as hell… Obviously, we are still flying. So where did the money go?

Ok, I know this is a weird title.. but please bear with me and you will know what I mean…

If you have seen the movie Groundhog Day, you know what I mean by doing the same thing over and over again: get up, go to work, work your butt off, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed and then start all over again.

Have you ever asked why we are living like this? For what? What is the purpose of going to work everyday doing what we do right now? Just for a paycheck? Life is so short. Is it worth while to devote our lives into these paychecks? If the job is fulfilling, then you are the lucky one, but what if it is not?

Anyway, ever since I started this new lower stress job, I started to ask these questions seriously.

I felt like being a cow in the last 10 years. I was milked by my employer day in and day out. When I got too skinny, they would threw me on a grassy land (an easier project), fat me up and then milk me again until I couldn’t be milked anymore…Now, I am on a grassy land again taking on an easier job. But how long is that gonna last?

I don’t want to get fatty and thrown back in the barn to be milked again! I want to be able to go to grassy land at anytime I want to and I want to milk myself, not by others!So here comes Yuna’s

FREE-THE-COW PROJECT!

That is, I want to control my own future. I want to be able to generate multiple income streams so one day I don’t have to work for anyone else. After years of services in Corporate America, I realized that I have no control of my life and every dollar I make ends up in someone else’s pocket. I just can’t picture myself working for a company for 30 years, hoping that my paycheck will still be there tomorrow. Last year after I received our HR announcement about the cancellation of our pension program, I completely lost the trust in our corporation structure and my own employer.

So here I am, determined to find a way to one day support myself and my family with investment and other projects. So I set up “Free The Cow” Project site to document my ideas, progress, failures and success. I actually launched the project about a week ago, thanks to Cyco Miko’s help again as usual, we pretty much got the site nailed 80%. I have already laid out the ground work and defined the 3 projects of 2006.

Many of us have brilliant ideas, wonderful dreams and incredible talents, however, only few of us succeed at the end. I realize the hard part is actually doing it. Being said, another reason why I set up the second part of Yunasville is to force myself to keep making baby steps, document the baby steps so eventually I will get to where I want to go. I wrote a post a long time ago about the Turtle Theory. Although when I wrote it, it was meant for rock climbing, however, I think the Turtle Theory applies everywhere in our lives:

Even the smallest step will get you to where you want to be.

So I am hoping one day when I close this project, I will be sitting in a beautiful grassy land of my choice and never need to go back to the barn again.

Usually I have no patience to sit through the Oscar show listening to 10,000 “thank you”s. Since I feel a bit of “anti-social” tonight, I decided to be a couch potato and eat a bag of potato chips.

I noticed that there were lots of black dresses on the red carpet this year. Check out my personal collections:

Queen Latifah in Carmen Marc Valvo and Hilary Swank in Versace.

Felicity Huffman in Zac Posen and Zhangziyi by Giorgio Armani.

Rachael Weisz by Narciso Rodriguez and Jennifer Aniston in Rochas and Bulgari.

And Yuna’s Best Black Dress Award goes to…
Charlize Theron in Christian Dior .

I am currently going through a legal case and I don’t want to get into details since it is too personal and hurtful. Basically, the person is going through some financial and personal hardship and thinks that he is entitled to a fair share of my assets so he decided to go after my money.

I have two choices. 1) Be on the Money side to fight tooth over nail to protect my hard earned life time savings 2) Settle. Give up my savings to settle the case. So that person can use the money to take care himself and his family.

I am a lame Christian. The last time I’ve ever flipped a page in Bible or visited a local church was probably in 2004. But I did learn a few things. One of them is the notion about God And Money. It reads something like “you can only choose either God or Money, never both. “

If I choose Money, (meaning the Devil’s side), I am looking at some 5 digit lawyer fees, 6 months long legal battles, seeing bunch of ugliest human behaviors such as hatreds and greed, losing sleep, losing weight, and losing the trust in humanity. I have seen my step father going through his divorce case and it was PLAIN UGLY. Every bit of the ugly aspect of human being was exposed under the day light and I never ever want to go through that.

If I choose God, then… well… what does God always teach us? Love. Love your neighbors, love your enemies, love the ones who hate you.. Basically, love everybody. I look at the whole situation. The person has much harder condition than I am. Yes, I will lose my bloody life time savings, but if this person (someone who I have known and cared for long time) and his family can finally have something to help them to start a better life because of my savings, then maybe it’s worth while. You love, you give and one day something good will happen to you. I may sound like the stupidest person on the planet, but I do believe in Karma.

So, I settled. I sent out the legal document to my lawyer this afternoon that I am willing to give up every penny in my stocks, bonds and cash to settle the case. Grant total is in 6 digits. The condition is that I get to keep the home I bought for my parents, the little shop they are running which is under my name, and maybe the majority of my retirement. If anyone is ever after my parent’s home and their little retirement business, I will fight until my last breath to keep my parents at where they are. So I hope by giving up my savings, the case can be settled.

Do I feel bad? Well, to be honest, I feel a bit scared. I have been a savvy saver and investor for years and I have never had any given adult life without some backup money. But this time, say if I lose my job in April, I would be knocking on my friends’ doors begging for a piece of roof and bread. That is the scary part.

But I am fully confident in my ability to get back on my feet. It may take a lot more years to get to where I used to be. But I have my brain that is filled with Personal Financing knowledge; I have a nice job that pays handsomely (for now); I am always a hard worker who never gives up; and I was a poor kid and I can still live in a poor life to start all over again.

Plus, if that person does listen to my request and uses the money to buy his parents a nicer place to live, then, something good would be done because of my sacrifice. So, I don’t feel bad for choosing God.

Ok, this might come a bit of shocking. Just a few months ago, I was SO TRILLED to work with the brightest bloggers I admire and joined b5media blogging network. Now, I don’t even have time or energy to read the posts from my favorite blog sites such as Darren’s Problogger.net.

A few of my loyal readers/friends also emailed me and hinted me that my posts don’t read the same anymore.

Well, they ARE NOT the same anymore. When I am spread thin across a few blog sites instead of just one while working on a full time job, things have to be different. A blogger has to have fun to be able to run a successful site with quality posts … I haven’t had that kind of fun lately. Everyday, I am reminding myself, “Christine, you gotta blog now. It’s time to write a few more posts. Christine, you are behind on schedule…”

So, in order to get my blogging spirit back, I have to cut down on the quantity. And in no means that I would give up my beloved Yuna’s Village. So here I am, just wrote my second resignation letter in 2006… It was a painful one because I really love this network and the people in it… I wish b5 the best of luck. Finally, I will have time to keep up with all Liz’s and Darren’s posts again.. Hew…

I was watching Animal Planet this afternoon and something caught my attention: The guy’s Y-Chromosome is shrinking and mutating rapidly. One day, this planet may not have men anymore.

It seems that once upon a time, the male DNA carried a Y-Chromosome as big as female’s X. After years of mutating (maybe you guys drank beer too much), the number of genes carried by Y-Chromosome shrunk to just 78, while the enormous X still carries 1500 genes. I finally understood why women are so much more sophisticated while guys don’t even know how to fake a few tears when the neighbor’s Fluffy dies.

The bad news is that boy’s Y-Chromosome keeps on shrinking and mutating. So after some hundreds of thousands years, the Y-Chromosome will run out of genes and poof, disappear in the thin air. And all the female people will have to fuck themselves like the wiggle tail lizards (One of the species that don’t have male counterparts).

Should I be happy that I was born in the era when the male DNA still got 78 genes to play with? Oh yeah, totally!! Imagine one day when Y-Chromosome got only one gene left… no matter what that’s gonna be, whether the “football gene”, “sex gene” or “laziness gene”, the world ain’t gonna be pretty…

So ladies, better have some fun right now while the supply of the male genes still lasts!

It’s been a while since I have the mood to post something pure lyfor fun… So let’s start with Economics 101 first. I don’t know who is the original author/version, but I added a Colorado version at the bottom, check it out….

TRADITIONAL ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies and the economy grows.
You retire on the income.

CHINESE ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment, high bovine productivity
and arrest anyone reporting the actual numbers.

INDIAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You worship them.

PAKISTAN ECONOMICS
You don’t have any cows.
You claim that the Indian cows belong to you.
You ask the US for financial aid, China for military
aid, Britain for warplanes, Italy for machines,
Germany for technology, France for submarines,
Switzerland for loans, Russia for drugs and Japan
for equipment.
You buy the cows with all this and claim
exploitation by the world.

AMERICAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You sell one and force the other to produce the
milk of four cows.
You profess surprise when the cow drops dead.
You put the blame on some nati! on with cows &
naturally that nation will be a danger to mankind.
You wage war to save the world and grab the cows.

FRENCH ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.

GERMAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You reengineer them so that they live for 100
years, eat once a month and milk themselves.

BRITISH ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
They are both mad.

ITALIAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You don’t know where they are.
You break for lunch.

SWISS ECONOMICS
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you.
You charge others for storing them.

JAPANESE ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You redesign them so that they are one-tenth the
size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times
the milk.
You then create cute cartoon cow images called
COWKIMON and market them worldwide.

RUSSIAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 17 cows.
You give up counting and open another bottle of
vodka.

MALAYSIAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You slaughter one for Hari Raya Puasa and the
other for Hari Raya Haji.
Just before that, both the cows were wandering
along the PLUS Highways.

THAI ECONOMICS
You have two cows.
You insist the cows are sacred and its bad to touch the cows.
Everyone comes to worship the cows and leaves little wooden cows for good luck
The owner of the cows becomes prime minister

PHILIPPINE ECONOMICS
You have only one cow.
So the government claims there is a shortage of
cows.
The government ask grants from other countries so
the country can produce more cows.
The other countries oblige.
The government divides the grants among
themselves, and blames the opposition of
corruption.
The people stage People Power 42! .
The government is overthrown.
Then its back to the single cow.

Colorado Economy (By Yuna):
You have tons of cows
You can’t milk them when the grass is fat’n green in summer
They pour milk at ya when snow falls in winter
More snow, more milk
No snow, no milk.

After boarding at Keystone, Breckenridge, Loveland, Copper, Vail, Wolf Creek and Telluride, I must say that Breckenridge is still my favorite spot.

I went there again last weekend trying to work on my turns. The place has some widest runs I have ever seen. If you ever come to Colorado to ski or board, go to Peak 9 for the blue runs and Peak 8 for the greens.

My next destination is Beaver Creek in about 2 weeks. I visited that spot about 6 years ago and got knocked down by a snowmobile driver and twisted my neck for about 2 months. So that wasn’t much fun. I don’t remember the place anymore, but according to Mike from Heavywinter, it’s the white trash capital of the mountains. Can’t wait!

Other posts of the day:
Dating Dames: Cat and Mouse Chase
Is it true that girls have to play “hard to get” game to get the guy?

Blog Fabulous: Sun’s iWork Program
Telecommunication works

Reposting “Goal Free Living”
I wonder why I was so stressed out on my last project. It was that damn promotion’s fault! ‘Cause I went from “no career goal” to an “important senior consultant” who must have a goal.

——————————————————————————

I headed to central Colorado with a few friends for a ski/snowboard trip this past weekend. This was my second serious snowboarding trip after I broke my butt a few months ago. Last time I was at Wolf Creek with a few fun friends and we had a blast playing with the fresh powder. Although I took quite a lot of hard falls, falling into a few foot deep snow pow was like falling onto a feather bed. It was GREAT! I even learned how to link my turns… But Telluride snow is just like everywhere else. It was packed down, icy and hard… I had a rough time on the slope. Every time I fell, my entire body hurt like hell and I felt that I broke something again… I was completely taken over by the psychological fear and ended up with a limp leg after taking a few hard falls on my left knee.

It was frustrating, disappointing and I probably exhausted everybody’s patience that day…I can’t believe learning snowboarding has been that hard for me… Well.. I am going to try again soon enough after getting some heavy duty knee padding, thanks to our pro skate boarder Matt’s help.

We hit Silverton for a night and then stayed at Ouray, both are small mountain towns that have kept the 19th century Wild Wild West type of atmosphere. I wonder if any Western movies were filmed here. Very charming places!

While the guys were sliding down the extreme Silverton slopes with a guide, the girls took an easy stroll in Telluride. I was a little disappointed that unlike Silverton or Ouray, Telluride is very much expanded into a resort town in the past a few years. I may not go there in the winter again since other closer resorts such as Copper and Breck are as nice if not better.

Check out the Telluride/Ouray and Central Colorado photo album here. Some views are phenomenal.