Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

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 .

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.

I haven’t done a photo blog for the longest time.. Here comes 2006’s first photo blog - LA 2006 Auto Show!

I was fortunate enough to catch the show while I was visiting the city in January. I am not very auto-savvy so I can’t really remember what these funky cars are.

When I was visiting a high end show room, a few Mafia looking guys were checking out those ultra expensive cars with wings. I thought that was quite amusing.

The lady and the car

They only let the potential buyers check out the cars. These guys sure look like mafia to me…

Anyway, check out the LA Auto Show album. If you know what those cars are, leave a comment and enlighten me.

I took a leave of absence in Jan from my professional blog company b5media to deal with my real job. Finally, I was done with my slavery real job so I picked up my slack and started blogging for food again. Turns out, all of my proposals back in 2005 got approved so I now end up with 3 professional blogs to keep up with. That’s why I haven’t been able to do anything fun on my own site. I kind of regret that I am taking on too many blogs too soon…When I am under pressure to post on schedule, the used-to-be-fun blogging doesn’t seem so fun anymore. Well, let’s just see how this goes…

Here is a list of the posts I did on those sites in the last a few days. I am also introducing a new site I will be writing for: The Play Gadgets. It’s about video game gadgets. I am rewriting my template files to include these blogs on the side bars too. Hopefully you guys will still be enjoying reading my stuff …

Posted on Feb 22: Universal RF adapter/switch for all game consoles

Posted on Feb 22: Lazy guy’s gift guide
If you are one of these guys who is clueless about what to get for your lovely lady without breaking your bank, here is your guide.

Posted on Feb 21: Men And Calendars
Why men hate Valentine’s Day and why women have to have gifts on those dates.

Posted on Feb 16: Worst Pickup lines you can ever think of
This is my usual brew-ha-ha of the day…

Posted on Feb 15: Housework and Sex
Why neat home can lead to better sex life for the couple.

Posted on Feb 22: Why Women Make Less Than Men
Well, simple. ‘Cause we don’t ask for it the way men do

Posted from Feb 14 through Feb 21: Lessons learned after qutting my consulting career
Lesson 1: Learn to say “I can’t do it”
Lesson 2: Break that Agreement
Lesson 3: Learn to believe it is not my fault
Final Lesson: Make Changes Today

One of my peers in Raleigh, NC set up a blog site to track his journey and progress to achieve financial freedom by reaching 2 million dollar net worth mark. (Thanks to Matt for the link). He has currently accumulated $216K and he is only 29 years old. Impressive, yeah?

Here is his Jan tracking chart of his wealth. (ESPP is our employee stock purchase plan)

I just had some time to read his stories. I must say that his example is definitely inspiring which I can relate quite a lot.

I personally believe in saving and investing by living under my means and paying attention to personal financial educations. Thanks to my mother and The Richest Man In Babylon, I started saving and investing when I was still in college. I must say that another reason why I was able to walk out of my job was because of my financial capability. Even if I couldn’t find a job for a long while, I know I am taken care of and I will not worry about money.

2million (he didn’t use his real name of course) also started out as a broke student and able to accumulate this much wealth. I am sure every one of us can do the same but the key is to start RIGHT NOW.

I strongly encourage you to read his site. Here is the URL : http://2million.blogspot.com/ I also copied his financial history story here for your amusement:

I graduated with a BS degree in Computer Science in December 1998. I was just like any other college student, broke, but I was blessed enough to have the support of my parents to pay for my tuition and basic living expenses while I worked to get my degree.

Rather than entering the workforce like most of my graduating peers, I opted to stay and get a MS degree in Engineering. I was luckily offered an assistantship at the university which gave me free tuition and a stipend (roughly $12,000 a year). I was again blessed to have my parents agree to continue to pay my health insurance premiums during this time.

While in graduate school, I purchased my first car, a newly used Nissan Sentra. I put $5,000 down (my life’s savings) and I received a loan from my parents to pay for the remaining amount (roughly $7,000).

In addition, while I was in graduate school, I started a dot com business with my brother. We spent several years and roughly invested $8k of my savings in the business which we finally shutdown and sold off most of our assets in 2004 for a sizable loss.

In August 2001, I finally entered the real world and have been working at IBM ever since. I began paying close attention to my finances after reading The Millionaire Next Door given to me by a professor towards the end of my grad school career. As I entered the workforce I realized my limited financial means at the time would limit my choices in the future and I wanted to do something about it.

Since 2001, I have made steady progress in my increasing my net worth. I paid off the car loan from my parents and purchased my 1st house in 2002. In 2005, I rented out my house and I am currently looking for a new home.

I left graduate school with a signing bonus and moving allowance that accounted for the majority of my $14k net worth in July 2001. As you can see I have been steadily improving this number to a more reasonable $216k net worth today. Hopefully this streak will continue for many more years.