Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

Food for your thoughts:

So I was chatting with a friend the other day, her MSN name for that day was:

LIFE is like getting raped, sometimes there is no use fighting it, so why not enjoy that brief moment of painful pleasure

So I said to her, “wow, interesting name…”, and she replied, “oh yeah, but that’s not all”.
“What else?” I asked, and she replied:

WORK is like gang-rape, you do one, and another one, and another one, and another one…

For those of you who are not familiar with rock climbing, here is my definition of the difficulty of each grade:

• 5.5 :Anyone who has a little body strength can do it!
• 5.6 - 5.7: Rookie climber
• 5.8: You need to know what you are doing
• 5.9: A damn good climber
• 5.10: You are a Pro!
• 5.11: Welcome to the elite group!
• 5.12: You are out of your F#$#@@& mind!

I have been climbing since Feb, 2005. However, I only started climbing seriously about 2 months ago. Since I can’t do a single pull up or more than 3 push ups, I normally stay away from those over-hanging routes. They just look impossible to me.

Time has come to the point that I have to conquer my fear to get on an over-hanging 5.9 route in order to move on. That route shown on the left is a required step before I can learn any lead climbing (a different kind of climb every serious rock climber has to know). Last Thursday, I put my fear aside and went for it. I fell countless times, hung on the rope like a hopeless little monkey swinging back and forth and couldn’t’ get back on the wall. A few people had to gather the ropes together to get me back on the rock… I got to the top at last only because my team wouldn’t let me down. Oh, boy, what a disaster.

Yesterday, I went for it again with even more fear. I tried to focus entirely on balancing and positioning my body. Surprising, I didn’t have to pull myself up while I was hanging there. I just took time to find the body balance, use fingers to hold on and have my legs to do the rest of the work. It’s amazing how much difference it makes when I twisted my hip a bit here and there. For the very first time, my fingers started to feel the pain instead of my arms. And I went all the way to the top without much of the trouble.

I stayed on the 5.9 routes the entire night and finished every one of them. I finally can announce myself as a 5.9 rock climber! HA!

Use your mouse and drag the person around. Pure physics, yeah? It doesn’t look like a true 3-D model. But hey… this stuff is cool!
Thanks to Paco for providing the link!

During those good old hotel times I spent in downtown Denver, I got to witness a persistent chase between a young investment banker Lisa (alias used) and my buddy Paco(alias used), a software engineer whom I used to work with. Lisa lived in an exclusive apartment on the top of the hotel we stayed. Paco is a huge football fan, so you sort of can figure that whenever there was a game, he’d be sitting in the hotel bar watching the game. Guess what, the next thing you know, Lisa turned herself into this huuuuuuuge football fan and sat by Paco nights in and nights out until Paco couldn’t take it anymore.

Paco left Denver a few months later and went to Atlanta for a new project. Andy (alias used), a new hire from Atlanta came to Denver to continue the work and stayed in the same hotel. Andy happens to be “Mr. healthy” who usually spends every night in the gym from 8 to 10.

One morning, Andy came in and said, “Guess what… I think a girl from the hotel apartment really likes me. She is an investment banker…Blah blah blah.. “
“Lisa???” And I told Andy Paco’s story.
I didn’t think Andy was taking me seriously at that time.

A few days later, Andy started to panic,
“Christine, Lisa followed me everywhere. When I stepped out of the gym at 10pm, she was stretching by the front desk! I kid you not!! Who would be stretching by the front desk after the gym is closed???”
“Hahaha… told ya!“
I just can’t help but laughing…

I usually go to the same gym to workout and one night when I got out of the gym at around 9:45pm, I saw Lisa doing all kinds of stretching and warming up by the front desk.
“Lisa… the gym closes in 15 minutes. What are you doing here?“
“Oh, just hanging out…Did you see Andy?”
“Oh, Andy got hurt earlier when he was playing basketball… “
“Oh, maybe I should check on him…. “
“Well, that may not be necessary …”
It took me a while to talk her out of that idea.

The next morning when Andy came to work, he just went ballistic,
“Guess what! Lisa called me at 11 last night wanted to come over and give me advil. What the f$#@! This is creepy! Doesn’t matter how pretty, how smart or how nice the girl is, this is too creepy!”
“Hmm, desperate lonely Investment Banker, I guess… “

Andy is leaving Denver in 2 weeks going back to Atlanta since the project is wrapping up. Paco is still down in Atlanta. The last thing I heard about Lisa is that she is ready to move to Atlanta sometime this summer. As their good friend, I gave both of them some good advise, “OK, now since there are two of you in Atlanta, split the workload by half, maybe you can finally share Lisa’s needs and not feeling too overwhelmed. Yeah?”

As usual, I went for a climb with my group after work today. After a few hours, we all decided to bail out earlier and grab a few drinks. One of us is only 17, so she asked for a glass of water and a few slices of lemon. As she finished squeezing the lemon juice into her water, she started dumping sugar in it… “What are you doing?” I was really curious. “Making a lemonade!” The girl was kind enough to let me take a sip. Wow… that was one good lemonade she made. You can’t actually tell the difference between this self-made under age drink vs. the real margarita on the rock just by looking at it! Best of all, it‘s free! Next time, when you are out there trying to save a few bucks, try this under age recipe. Not bad!

Wrap your brian around this little puzzle Apparently this is an IQ test given to job applicants in Japan: “Everybody has to cross the river”.

The following rules apply:
Only 2 persons on the raft at a time.

The father can not stay with any of the daughters without their mother’s presence.

The mother can not stay with any of the sons without their father’s presence.

The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member if the Policeman is not there.

Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft.

To start click on the big blue circle on the right.

To move the people click on them. To move the raft click on the pole on the opposite side of the river.

Depends on what you are asking, right? Want to fund your next dream vacation? Absolutely. What about Jennifer Aniston’s house? A million can get you started. If you want to rely on it to retire? Hell No!

Our retirement system got really f#$%ed up lately. Our parents are probably the last lucky generation to get both social security and company pension. As the traditional pension keeps vanishing and social security running dry in thirty some years, we are on our own, my friends.
So, let’s see how much you need to “live happily ever after”.

A few assumptions first:

1. If you make $50,000 a year and still want to keep the same income when you retire
2. Annual withdraw rate can’t exceed 5% so you don’t run out of your principle
3. Inflation rate is 3% per year
4. You retire in 30 years

You need $121,000 yearly income in 30 years to have the same buying power, which means, you need to have a nest egg of 2.4 million dollars when you retire. For those hot shot young consultants out there, 4 or 5 million may not be an exaggerated figure.

It’s better to save now than feeling sorry when you get older. cnn.money.com has pretty cool calculators to figure out exactly how much you need to save/invest every month. Check out the million dollar calculator and the saving calculator.

I think the “pay yourself first” concept is a really effective way to force yourself into the saving/investing habit. Setup auto withdraws, then feel free to spend the rest. Again, living under your means is always the pre-req, yeah?

Hope everybody can retire early and comfy, if not rich.

If you have never heard of Ghibli Studio or Hayao Miyazaki, I hope you heard about the Oscar Best Animated film “Spirited Away”. I admire Miyazaki’s work so much that I made extra effort to visit his Ghibli Museum last year when I was in Tokyo. This weekend, I finally had time to watch his 2004 production Howl’s Moving Castle in the theatre.

Wow, what a fantastic film! This is probably the best Ghibli production of all in my opinion. Although I was little shocked to learn that this film is based on a western novel which is normally not Miyazaki’s style, surely I wasn’t disappointed. Once again, the amazing artwork and the visual wonders he created had my jaws dropping the whole time. Finally, he created a young handsome ADULT male character in this film. (Anyone who recalls his previous works knows he always had some little 8 year old boys running around and falling for the 10 year old girls)

Miyazaki’s films are always visually stunning with bizarre worlds he created that are beyond imagination. From the floating castle in the Castle In The Sky to the bath house in Spirited Away, it seems that there is no limit when it comes to creating fantasy lands.

Howl’s Moving Castle is like an animated poetry that will keep you fascinated every time you watch it. You will love this one even if you are not a big fan of Japanese Animation.

I spent a few minutes and took the MIT blogger survey. As a reward of my time, I get to see the data MIT has collected. I found a similar survey done by BlogSearchEngine back in Dec, 2003. It’s very interesting to compare the results. Anyway, a few highlights based on this year’s MIT’s findings:

• Top reasons to write blog: Keep a personal journal, keep in touch with people, and write comments about today’s news and events.
• Most people have only been an author for less than 2 blogs in a given year.
• Most blog sites receive quite a lot comments, at least about a few per week
• Most blog sites are established after 2002
• Most people only post a few entries per week. Only 14.3% people post a few per day.
• Most blog sites have less than 10 readers per day.
• An overwhelmingly large portion of the blog sites (> 94%) only have 1 author. Very few have multiple authors to publish on the sites.

I noticed that no matter how correct I am, if I tell a guy he is wrong and I am right, it’s guaranteed the conversation will absolutely go no where. Even Oprah is educating the women not to tell a man he is wrong no matter how ridiculous his thought or action is. In her full length article featured in the June issue of O, some psychologist suggested a tactical method for woman to resolve such conflict. The method can be summarized in the following haiku format:

Start with “You are 100% correct.”
Followed by a sentence to state your correct thought.
Then ask something from the man.

According to the psychologist, the man will be happy enough to do what you ask when his most ridiculous thought received approval from you.

Ok, let’s put that method to use. So, let’s say if my friend Cyco Miko (a guy) tells me, “Yuna, I think the sun rises from the west”. I should say, “Oh, you are absolutely correct. But I prefer the sun rising from the east. Now can I have your Acura RSX please?” I suppose I can ditch my CRV and live happily ever after with his RSX???