NewSc2

Obligatory Monthly Picture (me, Will, Andre — Hi Will!)

I know what you’re thinking. That Cinco de Mayo picture looks like Will failed. (We caught him mid-blink). Unfortunately, well… all 3 of us failed. Miserably. I barely remember taking this picture. It was like, Drink #11. And it wasn’t our last. Easily the worst hangover I’ve had in over a year.

Hm, what else. Surprisingly, I don’t have a lot to say. NewSc2.com is one of my bookmark tabs. I got sick of clicking on it to see a 3-week old blog update, so here I am.

Might as well use this space to list out all the good things I’ve stuck to in 2009 (the shitty things go into my private Gmail diary }=)> )

Reading/Communication:
I’ve been keeping up with a reading schedule, and I’m pretty happy with my finishing rate. There’s maybe a dozen books that I haven’t gotten to yet, and about a dozen more that I started but put aside, but I’ve finished about a dozen in 2009 so far:

- Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
- The Art of Seduction, Robert Greene
- IV, Chuck Klosterman
- Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman
- Neatest Little Guide to Personal Finance, Jason Kelly
- Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing, Jason Kelly (re-read)
- On Writing Well, William Zinsser (re-read)

Okay, so maybe that isn’t a dozen, but it’s over a book a month. I have several more that I’ve half-finished, and will get around to (Now I Can Die In Peace, Bill Simmons and The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, among others).

I’d highly recommend the Personal Finance book (out of print, but it’s about $2 used on Amazon.com + $4 shipping) and The Art of Seduction (torrent it). Surprisingly good. Blink, well, isn’t that good. You can read the Wiki.

On top of all the reading, I’ve been listening to a lot of Adam Carolla and Bill Simmons podcasts.

Reading a lot of well-written non-fiction and listening to social/sports commentary has given me a lot more confidence to speak my mind. It’s sort of like writing papers back in the day. In high school, I stuck to a format. In college, I started to branch out and explore my voice. Somewhere in that transition, and to this day, I started to realize that top-notch writing wasn’t some magical, fantasy skill. All the articles I read for fun (ESPN, New Yorker, Slate, Economist, gaming mags) were examples of the written word from top professionals. As long as I wrote in the same voice and style as the stuff I’d been reading, I could come close to good communication.

Same with my voice. If I just fleshed out some of my thoughts and philosophies, put in some interesting anecdotes, and honed succinct storytelling skills, I could probably be an effective verbal communicator. I feel like I’ve matured a little bit in that respect in 2009.

Personal Finance:
Say, @ age 25, you save $13k per year in a 10% account. By 30, you’ll have about $100k. Save $10k every year, and continue to put it into this account. By 40, you’ll have about $400k. By 50, $1.2mil.

By 60 (retirement age), $3.2mil. And that’s all off $365k total saved. The magic of compounding interest.

The DJIA, up until 2006, grew at an average rate of 10.5% over the previous 75 years. Yes, I know there was a crash. I haven’t re-calculated the returns up to 2009, but a 75-year period is a long time, and shouldn’t affect the overall return rate by too much.

Music:
Currently going through a Trance course. I’ve gotta say, my productions have gotten somewhat better over the past several months. I was probably around a 2.5 (out of 10) in 2008, but now I’d put my music production skill/knowledge at about a 3.5. My songs aren’t that much better, but I have more arrangement knowledge. My songs aren’t coming together due to luck and random button pressing — I actually have some experience on how to approach a track.

I need to hammer out a few kinks and tricks over the next couple months, but there isn’t much preventing me from getting that 3.5 to a 5.

Hopefully, the end of the year will see me at 6 (i.e., “that song is actually kinda decent~”). Dunno how I’d get to be a 7 (”hey that’s actually pretty good!”), or 8 (”wow… I might put this on my iPod”). But I’m not thinking that far ahead. (Don’t bother asking where I come up with these subjective grades.)

Fitness:
Still continuing my weekly/twice weekly 4-mile runs, and 3-4 trips to the gym. My fastest 4-mile trail run came in at 32 minutes back in March, but I put in a 33 minute run last week.

I think I’ve been doing crunches wrong for the past 4 years. I guess I was leading in with my head and neck, and a couple people at the gym commented that I was arching my back. So I adjusted my balance to lead in with my chest, and keep my back straighter, and I was sore for like, 4 days.

Weight’s stayed pretty steady at 166 lbs.

Anything Else?
I need a haircut. Photography is coming along pretty well. Thinking about buying a second flash, or at least an off-shoe flash cord.

Oh, and I guess I did have a lot to say.

Does time slow down when memories are created?

If so, I wish I could bottle up more days like yesterday.

I woke up around 11am and found out my car was missing (my dad took it out). So I hit up Andre to ask for a ride to the bank and Subway. (5 dollar footloooong — goddamnit no, shut up, shut up)

Went for a solo, 3-mile run afterward at the usual stomping ground (Back Bay).

Realized my hair was getting too wild, so I got it cut around the corner. Picked up a Turkish Latte at Kean’s after that (my stylist, Back Bay, and Kean’s are all within a few blocks of each other), and read a few chapters of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

I got to Klosterman’s “23 questions I’d ask a girl to figure out if she’s my type” (or something like that), and came across this one:

You’re walking around downtown Chicago. A wizard stops you, and tells you he can make you more attractive — relative to a dollar amount that you’ll pay him. Of course, you don’t believe him. So he points at a man walking across the street, and says “I’ll make him one dollar more attractive,” and waves his wand. The man’s appearance doesn’t change, but somewhere deep inside you, you realize he’s a tiny bit more attractive. He’s undeniably a little sexier. Now there’s one catch — you can only pay the wizard once — you can’t go back to him after the deal’s done, and he will never bless your looks again. How much do you pay?

This was just one question among between twenty two others, but it stuck with me a little longer than most.

Just how much would I pay? I ended up settling on $400 — an amount I wouldn’t feel too bad losing if the wizard was BSing around. But a few hours later I realized that question had many other caveats. It never details how much money would raise your looks by, say, 1 point on the ubiquitous “Scale of 1-10″, so it breaks down your answer to: 1) how much disposable income you have, 2) how much you value physical appearances, 3) your trustworthiness of strangers, and 4) plastic/cosmetic surgery.

Anyway, I dwelled on this, and several other questions, for a good half hour or so, stopped by Hi-Time Wine Cellars (also only a couple blocks away), didn’t see anything interesting, and went back home.

There wasn’t much on TV, so I channel surfed and came across the beginning of a replay of Muhammed Ali vs. George Foreman (the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight in 1974). I’d never seen Ali box an entire match before, so I made some noodles and settled down. It was amazing, easily one of the best boxing matches I’d ever seen.

Ali vs. Frazier III, the “Thrilla in Manila” was next, so I hit up Will and Andre and asked them to come over for some drinks and TV. Will left around 11 (he had work the next day), Andrew Chang came on by, and Andre left for a couple hours, only to return to Silky’s later (that’s a whole ‘nother story, which I won’t get into here).

So Andrew and I walk to Silky’s, get a couple drinks, hang out there for about an hour, and Andre shows up at 1:26am. Seriously, exactly 4 minutes before closing time. So… omg… we need to get more alcohol –

Three Matadors, Ernesto!

Okay, now take our picture Ernesto:

Why is everybody dressed up in caballeros y vaqueros outfits? Oh, there’s a chili cookoff tomorrow. Hm, whose hat is this? Oh well, Andre — take a picture!

The two of us (Andrew and me) stumble back home, and Andre parks and joins us halfway. We end up sitting outside my house, indian-style, and talk… about… I forget. Andre has the video. Stan comes over (his car’s backing up in the picture), and by now the delicious matadors are settling down. We are all jibbering about something, and Andrew keeps making me laugh:

Now that Stan’s here, we go inside to play some Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.

SSF2THDR.

Andrew continues to be hilarious. We’d devolved into speaking Mandarin (wait, actually, just Andrew), so Andrew kept saying (in Chinese) — “I’m gonna kick-kick-kick-kick your head! Wait, how do you say “fierce” in Chinese? Oh, I remember. I’m going to kick you! I’m going to use my forceful kick! My leg is made of stone! See?! Kick-kick-kick! Aha I’m so strong!”

Okay, so that picture probably didn’t capture the emotion, but the exchange should be on video too.

3am rolls around, and tacos beckon. We stumble outside, and Andrew runs up to my lemon tree, grabs a lemon, and… just… bites it. “My mouth is so sour!!! Your oranges don’t taste good Tony… =(”

I think he ate the lemon peel:

And so we get to the last picture. March 1st, 2009, 3:16am, in Santa Ana, CA, on the corner of Harbor and Hazard, at the Taqueria de Anda. 3 lengua tacos (mine), various carnitas and carne asada tacos (Stan, Andre), and a Carne Asada burrito (half me, half Andre):

Total bill for the entire day? Not including the haircut or game, or the bottle of wine I dug out from the cellar: 1 Five… Five dollar… Five dollar footloooonnnggg…, 1 $3 cup of coffee, 1 round of drinks ($11 + $4 tip), and $6 at Taqueria. Not bad.

*PS — Thanks Andre, for sending over the pics~

Found this while digging through old photos. Evan, Andre, and Me (left to right) @ Beachwood, my home away from home. Pic was taken with a Canon SD1000.

Wait for the last Sellers smile. Pretty funny video of a dog too =)

(thanks, Richard, for sending the link)