Author: stlplace

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School Fun Life Life Tips

A run group for LMS 7th grader kids (or 6th, 8th grade kids, or kids, siblings in similar age range)

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Any questions please let me know || Mobile: 314 540 2721 || Email: minjie.xu@gmail.com

(Update 11-18-2022) We ended the daylight saving time for the year. The sunset is usually at about 5 pm, thus 4:30 pm starting time will give about 30 minutes time. More importantly, the weather is becoming a bit cold as the winter sets in. I think we will pause the run / walk for now. I will thinking about and we can discuss what’s the best suitable activities in the winter months.

(Update 09-30-2022) Last Friday the shower ruined it. Let’s resume today, it seems the weather will be nice. Of course with #stlwx, weather forecast is really hard, as it could change in 5 minutes 🙂

(Update 09-19-2022) We had 3 kids + myself for second run last Friday 9/16. I ran a bit but the girls mostly walked. I understand this past Friday we have hot balloon race at FP and other activities for some LMS 7th graders. || We plan to run again this Friday 9/23 at 4:30 pm, same location. Looks like we will have two 3rd graders joining us 🙂

(Update 09-12-2022) First run was a success! We have 9 kids: eight 7th graders and one 2nd grader (sibling), and a few parents (grand parent?). The boys are more determined 🙂 || We plan to run again this Friday at 4:30 pm, same location. Looks like we will have two 3rd graders joining us.

(Update 09-08-2022) We plan to run at Malcolm Terrace park (11370 St Paul St, Creve Coeur, MO 63141) on Friday 09/09/2022 at 4:30 pm. Everyone is welcome to join. Bring a water bottle, or a towel for wiping sweat, and note the restroom at the park is open.

(Original) I moved the “running” discussion from the FB Ladue parents community group here. I said 7th grade because my daughter is a 7th grader. The runner2runner program cutoff is 6th grade. At 8th grader I noticed LMS has a program for cross country. Our intention is NOT to compete against other programs.

Note this group is open to everyone in the community in this age range; so please feel free to forward to anyone may be interested too.

Goal – our main goal for our kids is to get some exercise and also have some fun. The main goal is not to prep for a competition or for a race. This is organized by parents and we don’t have formal accompanying materials such as “Girls on the run” etc. If our kids can breeze more fresh air and get close to nature more, that’s a big win for all of us.

Venue – I am thinking Malcolm Terrace park (a trip from the parking lot near the playground then back is about 1 mile, 80% of the trail is not paved); Venable Park (0.5 mile per circle, paved trail). Another park I can think of this the Tilles park trail (paved). Stacy park can be a choice when the renovation is done. I think we (coach Huang and parents) can jointly decide the location. My thinking is we take baby steps to get started. The reason I am thinking parks or tracks is I want to avoid running on the roads with car traffic.

Time – we need to agree on a time slot (or 2 time slots) each week, and hopefully with two time slots it will make it easier to get the busy middle schoolers / parents to participate. I understand pretty much everyone is busy: due to other extra-curricular activities. At this time it seems Friday afternoon is a decent compromise for some kids. As of 1:40 pm 09/06 Tuesday it seems we have at least 5 kids, 3 boys and 2 girls for Friday afternoon run. We will likely have some grownups joining us too.

Items needed – running shoes, if possible (also depends on where we run, trail running shoes, we can talk more later), water bottle, running shirt / shorts / pants suitable for running. Most important of all though, is an open heart and mind to participate.

Coaches
Jiansheng Huang: proud Laude dad. His older daughter (LHWHS alumni) graduated from medical school at Wash U this year and is starting her first year of fellowship. His younger daughter is currently a senior at Ladue High. Coach Huang ran a few Marathons including Go St. Louis, Chicago Marathon, NewYork Marathon, and he qualified for the prestigious Boston Marathon in recent years. Mr. Huang will teach all things around running including prep and cool down, safety etc, and he will likely lead the pack during our run too. Note: coach Huang will show up once we get more serious about running. He probably won’t show up if we just walk.

Minjie Xu: yet another proud Ladue dad (Serenity 7th Spartan, Sophia 3rd at Spoede). Minjie started running (or jogging about 5 years ago, with the main goal to keep weight in control (and be healthy and fit). So far Minjie ran 3 half marathons in St. Louis area (1st run was a week before pandemic shutdown in March 2020). Minjie will likely run and walk at the end of the pack to keep things in check.

It will be great to have mom(s) participating, especially if the most participants we have are girls… 🙂

Thanks and please let me know what you think.

Minjie Xu

mobile: 314 540 2721

email: minjie.xu@gmail.com

PS: note other kids in age range in the nearby schools in the community, my only ask is whether you can help look for outdoor facilities for the kids to run safely (outdoor track etc). We will likely start on the parks at the beginning though, at least this is my thinking.

Other running groups or resources for the kids

runner2runner: for kids from 1st grade to 6th grade (peachjar flyer here).

GirlsOnTheRun: in addition to run, there are some talks (or accompanying materials) They have two levels: 3rd to 5th, and 6th to 8th.

Let Me Run: boys equivalent of Girls on the Run above.

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School

Middle school after school activities

Reading Time: 4 minutes

A.k.a., the enrichment opportunities, as they usually call it in the elementary schools. For middle school, though, they usually have more choices than elementary school. This is the Ladue Middle School current offerings. Note the Science Olympiad itself has 20+ subjects / events, and it’s mind boggling to say the least. Also note I was taught in the motto of “学会数理化，走遍天下都不怕“ (this is google translate: “Learn mathematics, physics and chemistry, travel the world without fear”, not perfect translation, but I think the readers got an idea 🙂

When I was a middle schooler

The after school activities reminded me something I did and liked when I was in middle school, we call it 兴趣小组。I recall a few groups, such as aerospace, computer (started at grade 7), physics (started at grade 7 as well). In theory we should have math competition too, but our counselor + math teacher is one of a kind, he essentially make the whole class (or most of us) do the math competition, at least at the first round. I had fun doing basic programming using computer similar to Apple II (we had one Apple II, then other similar computers). I also had great fun in my physics club field trip at then 宁波高专 or 宁波师范, note my teacher 姚仁汉 is one of a kind, and he passed away in recent year. I did okay in Math. At high school I continued the math competition, because my math teacher at my 1st year of high school really liked me, and encouraged me to do more. It got extended to the 2nd year, and I even did some math competition training in the summer between the 1st and 2nd year (I think it was again due to my then math teacher liked me and he made the recommendation, I vaguely recall his name is Chen Bing 陈斌 and here is one of his article), offered by another good math teacher. But I kinda wondered off after that, because I did not like the style of the math teacher for my 2nd and 3rd year. I think similar can be said for physics, the only difference I do have a lot respect for my physics teacher.

Today’s challenges

Back Serenity’s after school activities, she did a few easy ones (lower frequency for meet, or extra time to work on projects) last year, as this was her first year at middle school, we thought take the pace. Now this year we hope she can do more. I don’t necessarily want her to compete in the math competition, or for that matter, in the Science Olympiad. But I do hope she can get some of the exposure I can when I was in middle school: it really can be anything, and I do understand she does a lot music related activities (choir and percussion) outside of the school. I am trying to get her some STEM exposure.

One thing I noticed is because we are at a very good school in the state, with good reputation in the STEM area, that also raised the bar. In other words, she may not get opportunity to represent the school because the competition could be tense. I am not overly concerned on that. I think in this generation, the me generation or the iPhone generation, some of they probably don’t care much about competition anyway. And also, ultimately we are only compete against ourselves. Be the better of ourselves. Resist the temptation of binge watching Netflix, or doom scrolling TikTok, YouTube, twitter, facebook (put in your favorite social media stream there). As long as the kids are productive, and learn something everyday, as parents I feel good about. I don’t this is the time to be their lives’ highlights yet. They have long road ahead of them, life is a marathon, not a sprint, as the old saying goes.

On the flip side of all this technology advancement, I also saw a lot more opportunities that kids can learn. The Youtube video and google search are two very popular choices. And some curated content sites such as thekidshouldseethis, and Khan Academy are excellent choices too.

Signs your kids (or you) may have too many extra-curriculum activities

I recall years ago, when Serenity was still a toddler, or a preschooler. One Saturday morning, when we were at Thies farm Pumpkin Land at Maryland Heights, I got a call from my eye doctor office. It was about my wife’s and my annual eye exam. We totally forgot about it. Two things came out of it. One is I realized that we were probably overwhelmed by child raising and work. Although looking back at the time we only had one kid, and maybe work is taking too much effort and attention. Another thing is I realized that I need to put everything on google calendar with reminder. I think I was using Yahoo calendar then and I was not sure I put the eye doctor appt on electronic calendar (not to mention reminder).

Years later, over the summer, I heard a story from a mom that she gave a music director last minute notice about a schedule conflict for her kid, and the director was not happy. This made me thinking how much activates that I want Serenity / Sophia to have. Ideally no such conflict, or very few / rare 🙂

PS:

I realized over the years, I was probably over-zealous on Serenity and Sophia’s extra curriculum activities: this includes sports and things like math (extra math). Math is a very common headache, bottle neck for many kids and families here. I will need to set the right expectations, set priorities, regroup and so on. Serenity is actually doing fairly well on a few things she likes: choir, percussion, just to list a few. I don’t necessarily need to see her winning a chess championship, play the guard for the school basketball, or soccer team, or winning medals at the Science Olympiads to be even prouder dad (I am being sarcastic, self deprecating to myself). For that matter, I did not necessarily achieve all the above I just mentioned, when I was in middle school. Also I also recall one of my bosses once said, don’t try to be someone else, just be yourself (I have quite a few disagreements with him when I was working here, but this one stuck 🙂

On the other side of spectrum, my wife probably get ahead of herself on Serenity’s math. I think she wanted her do one of two things, both are hard. 1) Math acceleration, basically jump grade (跳级) on math; 2) Participate in math competition. I also speculate her emphasis on math and to some extent on science was probably due to her own lack of confidence on the two subjects. She chose 文科 (liberal arts) in high school, basically did simpler math, and did not do science (physics, chemistry and biology). Now she wanted her daughter to do the opposite. Sounds familiar? Yes, last I recall there are lots of Chinese American parents who did not go to ivory league colleges, wanted their kids to go when they grow up 🙂

Categories
Software development

Meet the Teachers

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Community night, open house, curriculum night,… the bottomline is, they are all “meet the teachers” night. It’s not as hard as “meet the parents” (I recall there was a movie with that name).

Because of pandemic, last few years, meet the teachers have mostly virtual or drive through, to avoid large crowd etc. And I certainly understand that. Now that it seems things are gradually back to normal, meet the teachers are in person again, which is cool or dare I say, better than the virtual or a few minutes “hey bye” at the parking lot etc.

I noticed Serenity 7th grade Spanish teacher’s new approach, she said instead of the kids memorizing the vocabulary: she removed as much constraints as possible and encourage kids to use the Spanish as much in the classroom as possible. In other words she allows the kids to make tense (past tense etc.) or grammar mistakes. I am familiar with the previous approach she mentioned, because that’s essentially how we learned English in our middle school when I was in China (1980s). In my middle school we wrote the English words everyday, as our counselor said that’s the only way we can remember the spelling. He said this is like a snowball, because on the 1st day we wrote the new words encountered during the 1st day, and then on the 2nd day we need to write both the 1st and 2nd day’s words, and so on. Pretty soon we will have a large sheet of paper. But sometimes we cheated, because we know the counselor wouldn’t examine each page carefully, and one crazy way I learned is one kid wrote via two pens at the same time, in other words, he wrote twice as much if we assume he could wrote as fast.

I think the social studies class is also fun. So instead of memorizing, she asked a lot questions, and encourage kids to research and discover knowledge. The most unusual class, at least I never had when I was in middle or high school, is the industrial technology class, it looks almost like a carpenter shop and it has lots of useful tools, for kids to make things like a wooden clock (I am guessing they buy the electrical quartz clock and battery and put it inside the frame). I also like the leniency policy in Math in which the kids got to retake tests to improve their scores.

The definition of core and elective sort of reminds me of similar categorization in my middle school. I like it here in general. In China during my days English was important course, in recent years, partially due to politics, English was downgraded in terms of importance. Time changes.

I noticed by walking back and forth the classrooms Serenity goes daily, I got half circle of my movement and exercise rings done 🙂

Last but not least, when we are done, I took bus again back to the high school parking lot. Our hard working bus drivers were still waiting and driving. Then I also realized it’s evening time and the teachers and administrators sacrificed their leisure and family time too.

Categories
Life Life Tips

Separation anxiety – parents version

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Background: I went to a boarding school when I was 13. I saw my parents once a month. Society was much simpler then but the change was in the air and in the ground, Ningbo was opened up in 1984, and I saw a lot of earth moving around me. Although foreigner was still rare to come across and our vice provost emphasized “don’t listen to Deng Lijun’s Mimi zhiyin”. I had a fairly strict teacher (counselor), and I could not fall asleep 😴 💤 during 中考and 高考but all in all I survived. I think I had an easier time compared to today’s iPhone generation [微笑]

I thought of the separation anxiety from parents perspective. This summer we dropped off Serenity at Cub Creek Animal Science camp at Rolla, for a week. This is a sleep away no iPhone camp. And in the first two / three days, before I got her email, I was restless. Everyday I checked Bunk1 app and website many times, in which the counselors uploaded their daily activities photos. I turned on the notifications. I also wrote note to Serenity in the bunk1 app or website. Later I learned she did receive it but she has no time or device to reply it from the app. The line for email was long and she had to hurry and that’s also why she only wrote back once.

Yesterday I saw a fellow Chinese parent wrote that they are becoming empty nesters as the 2nd kid just went to college. And for me it will be 10 more years down the road when our younger daughter Sophia is college bound. Now I think my parents may have had similar feelings when they waved goodbyes when we went to schools, and when we came to the USA.

Once in college at Wuhan, it was probably my sophomore or junior year, I told my parents that I am not going home for Spring Festival (Chinese new year). My reason is the crowdedness in the train, as explained here. My mom, who usually does not write to me, wrote a letter and urged me to return home. So I obligated. Note the train is still crowded, once I stood about 15 hours in the train on the way returning school from home, during the Spring Festival travel. I recall the train was so crowded, and there were 7 people in one bathroom (the toilet room). And once a girl walked to the bathroom, asked guys turn around so that she could use the restroom. They wouldn’t oblige. So she has to walk or to be precise squeeze through one more train cabin. I do recall one girl (she is from Wuhan university and Dongyang, one year senior than me), gave me a peeled apple when I stood next to her.

Categories
Fun Life Life Tips

Alcohol

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I started a Twitter thread on Alcohol recently.

I have not finished it yet, and I am in a bit relapse now. But I will attempt to rewrite it as a blog. Or reflection.

I think the most important thing of all, is we need to make sure we don’t get drunk often, or have our lives be influenced by alcohol. That means don’t get intoxicated often and basically we cannot learn in those times. For me this mostly means evenings.

A side note of all this is in the past I modeled my drinking habit or life style after my maternal uncle (my mom’s big / old brother). I recall his motto is he always drinks some alcohol (mostly rice wine) at evening dinner time, and if he does not drink that means he is sick. In a similar fashion I drinks the coca-cola and other sodas because I know Warren Buffett drinks 5 cans of Coca-Cola every day. To be precise Warren drinks cherry coke, and he got almost all of his daily caffeine from coke, and lot of daily sugar and calories from coke. Note Warren Buffett exercises (walks) quite a bit everyday.

The flaw of my logic above is also obvious: I am me, myself, and I am not someone else. I can learn from other’s motto or philosophy, or habit, but I need to assess if that is applicable to me or not. I think for me, I need to consume both alcohol and soda in moderation.

Note the principle above is applicable to work, to many other things in life.

My drinking history

I recall I got drunk twice (maybe more) before 10. Please don’t judge my parents, as there was no legal drinking age in China (I believe this is still the case now, but I did not check recently). I drunk during my uncle’s wedding, and during my aunt’s funeral. In China they are called 红白喜事，and there are usually drinking and food.

My wife’s option on my drinking: perhaps my daughters too. They don’t like me drinking. My wife’s mom passed away due to a car incident (the driver was drunk, note she was not the driver). My father-in-law drinks socially. And sometimes I drunk with him (again note the social part).

I think for now I will give up Whiskey (or any other hard liquors). And consume beer and wine in moderation (not everyday).

Categories
Fun Investing

Rough day and week, student loan forgiveness and math is brutal too

Reading Time: 2 minutes

First: I am happy to say the kids to back to school. In the last 2 weeks before school starts, some days Sophia really got bored, and she let me know that. She asked me to to buy the humming bird feeder, among other things.

I recall the days I shopped at Sears (hint, a while ago, not much since Sophia was born, aka from 2014).

https://twitter.com/JonErlichman/status/1563598300372254720

The stock marker of last Friday and the week can be better summarized in the two tweets below. I do understand the economy usually has cycles and the federal reserve has a tough job to balance the employment and inflation. But at the same time it seems sometimes things are so obvious and I just don’t understand how they could miss the most recent inflation cycle by dismiss it as “transitory”. They are paid to do that job. Or sometimes it’s the politics got in the way? Nobody wants to be the boy who cries wolf coming (and it turns out to be false).

https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1563262458764046337

and this one on tech stocks in particular, as they are under assault from the fed raising the interest rate.

https://twitter.com/buccocapital/status/1563549513633386497

I noticed CNBC did another special Friday evening too. Personally I no longer pay attention like I did back in 2008/2009 the financial crisis days. Maybe a good sign as I no longer tune much into the “market turmoil” and I am more calm and doing my own research now.

https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/1165005039586500608

There are tons of tweets, and controversy on the federal student loan forgiveness. Legality, fairness etc. aside, personally I think it can potentially help out quite a few people, and many of them are hard working and earned this. One interesting and probably more meaningful policy is the capping of loan interest and payment tied to a person’s income. Also the WH “this you?” series of tweets.

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1562916200866267138

And when I am searching through my tweets archive, I happened to find this one too.

https://twitter.com/stlplace/status/1528560337968152578

As I said in my previous post on compounding, the debt piled up via the snowball effect too. So anything we can do to minimize or reduce the debt, it could have impact on people’s real lives.

Separately, I had discussion with Serenity on student loan too: I said I will pay for her college.

Last but not least, I googled why there is no term limits to the legislators. It seems constitution related.

Categories
Life Tips Software development Technology

App Store unauthorized charges

Reading Time: < 1 minute

In my old job at the credit card 💳 co. I did support for a while and once I spent about 2 hours giving cardholder about 1.3 cents worth of US dollar. Today the roles reversed. Btw, Serenity said she was proud of me (assuming she was complementing I was the cool 😎 guy).

What happened

I don’t check my email that’s associated with appleid frequently because I transitioned most emails out of that one. But on Monday August 15, I noticed something is wrong with my Apple Card as I saw the suspicious purchase: $7.97 for robux, in case you don’t play Roblox, robux is the virtual currency for Robox game. On Tuesday 8/16 I saw one more purchase: $12.98 total, $9.99 for weather – (this is quite scammy as I don’t recall I never bought its subscription), and $2.99 worth of robux.

How I handled it

I contacted Goldman Sachs customer service through the dispute button in the Apple card, and they gave me credit eventually. I also changed the password for the apple id and the email (enabled 2FA). I noticed some tips from Apple regarding kids apple store payment, requirement for password, etc. This is the Apple web page that explains a few ways we can tighten the in app purchase on the devices.

My thoughts

Overall I still prefer Apple music / fitness+ over Youtube Music. Compared to Youtube (owned by google), sound quality on Apple music is usually guaranteed, while some YT music has bad sound quality. Also Fitness+ with integrated music is better than Peloton outdoor.

I wrote a twitter thread on this, btw.

Categories
Life Tips Saint Louis Technology

Back to school

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A checklist for Ladue school parents and guardians

Buy school supplies;

Meet the teacher / community night (bring school supplies if applicable): mainly say hi to teachers and staff, and for the kids to learn where are the classrooms etc. on 1st day;

Adjust kids sleep routine: from summer (no school or no camp) schedule to school schedule, may take a few days or a week;

Adjust grownup routine: from watching kids + work (or the other way), to do more work and maybe some self care (workout, social etc);

Some apps or emails that are likely relevant:

Parent Square (district and schools to parents communication), iOS, Android. Note PS has website too. But app is a bit more handier and performant. Last but not least please take a look at the notifications customization as well (especially the text messages).

MySchoolBucks (lunch money). From this school year (2022 to 2023) on the free lunch money from the government ran out. There is still the reduced fare lunch and so on, please contact the school as applicable. Note to add money to the meal account, we can do it via credit card (CC) on its website (it seems to me we cannot add money via the mobile app), or via check to school district (which I have not done it, please ask each school administrator as needed). Note MySchoolBucks (heartland payment co.) charges a credit card transaction fee.

Email Ladue Schools e-Connect Newsletter (usually weekly) and the paper Newsletter (usually monthly): district wide information such as lunch or construction, or strategic plan. The content is created by the district Communications Office.

SafeStop (instructions here, note this PDF has the code for the district, the one at the school bus website doesn’t): bus tracking, not the best or most reliable app in the world, but considering constructions in some schools the bus may still be the better choice for many families (maybe on one of those days, I can brush up my mobile app dev skills and create a better app 🙂 Btw, the bus information is here. Last but not least, it seems we only need to put in the code once for one device. || A side note, it seems there is delay of tracking the kids moved up in schools (for example, from elementary to FGC), it’s possible we need an manual update in the backend in terms of kid’s school information. || Another way to track kids, especially younger kids, is to use airtag. It seems it’s working because the main thing it needs is other nearby device’s bluetooth capability. Without today’s popularity of smartphone in the school and in the bus, I think it works most of the time.

Last but not least, for Spoede families, the portal of SSA (Spoede School Association) moved to here. The underlying software is used for the LMSPA website we well.

Categories
Fun Java Life

Coffee

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Personal opinion: the coffee from ALDI is pretty good; so was the regular half & half (creamer) from Costco. On the flip side: probably 1st world problem, the store brand coffee from the biggest grocery store in St. Louis 圣村 is not good.

Categories
China

Zero Covid

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Zero covid analogy

A hotel in Sanya #Sanya (below tweet appears since deleted)

https://twitter.com/arafsadventures/status/1559023546793242624

But there are more similar Covid Test scenes.

A building in #Shanghai Yangqu district sudden locked down: