Not a complete list
Online
I am aware of eBay, Etsy, PoshMark. But I learned couple new ones.
Curtsy : our 14 year old (when she was still 13, but almost 14), bought a nike puffer jacket
Depop (wikipedia, just realized it’s a subsidiary under Etsy) – our 14 year old tries to sell her Lululemon shorts from Plato’s closet (too big)
Offline, brick-mortar
Plato’s Closet: seems heavily gear toward teen and 20 to 30 years old younger adults
What doesn’t kill us can only made us stronger — German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — his original words are: “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”
Five years ago today, 01-23-2019, Wednesday, I was laid off from the company I worked for about 3 and half years. I saved the below email in my Gmail account.
Hi Minjie,
You mentioned to me this morning that you had a work computer at your home. I wanted to let you know we’ll be sending you a pre-paid box for you to send it back in.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks!
…………
That being said, if you were working for the federal government and recently got laid off because of Elon Musk’s DOGE’s purge, and if you like to talk to someone – I am available.
Potentially I can provide some advice re: how to get back to your feet quick. I can buy you coffee, do mock interview during lunch (I will pay), and pay your Uber ride fee, if you have an onsite interview and need Uber/Lyft.
In my career, I navigated layoff situations a few times, and I was able to find something relatively quick mainly in the area of software development. I understand right now it’s a very tough job market in the USA. But it’s still possible to find something. I am a strong believer of 树挪死人挪活。I believe layoffs are usually blessings disguised in curses. Somewhat like divorce during a truly horrendous marriage.
Reference: I talked about more about layoffs here in my 2023 blog post.
I was fairly active online, including on LinkedIn. I started on LinkedIn on fall 2008, about 16 or 17 years ago: mainly for job and networking purpose. But recently I noticed a minor problem I had after I posted my Calendly link. And I liked to get back to the LinkedIn post and edit it: unfortunatley there is no good UI to get to my post. As you can see, the google caches the wrong linkedIn post (probably same month).
Mar 6, 2024 — How to create an #appointment #button in #LinkedIn without #premium sub. I put my #calendly link – https://lnkd.in/gAWsYrPM (this is the link goes to my Calendly link) as a link in my …
I also thought about maybe I posted the link at another person’s post as comment. I looked manually and didn’t see my name there.
After some struggle, I finally found the place in Calendly that I can turn off the meeting invitation.
My lesson here IS: post or comment on LinkedIn less. One reason is it’s impossible to go back and edit (endless scrolling) to get the old post. Another reason is because LinkedIn is usually for work or look for work. Saying too much there may not be a good thing for work or when I need to look for work 🙂
PS: this reminds me of a similar thing. Once, to be precise twice, I posted my children’s piano teacher contact information in a FB group, as I was under the “wrong” assumption that he was interested to have more students. And he found out it’s me and told me to delete the post (comment to be precise). I did. But at first it seems I only deleted one post. Later he told me he still got calls, and I searched the FB, and deleted the other post (or comment). Comparatively speaking, FB is better than LinkedIn in terms of search capability.
对过去的留恋可能是人之常情，尤其是对上了年纪的人（大概过了50岁的人可以说是上了年纪？），还有一些曾经辉煌，现在落魄的人。
有一个例子是鲁迅笔下的祥林嫂。实际生活中其实这种情况不少。我感觉我自己有时候也会说/想：想当年，我年轻的时候，blah blah blah.
最近 formerly executive assistant at square, sorry I could not find her profile on LinkedIn now, as I unfollowed her recently. Due to LinkedIn’s algorithm (or AI), it seems quite hard for me to find her again (refer to my recent blog post re: LinkedIn’s search-ability).
PS (02-09-2025) I gave it more thought: I think self pity (e.g., 祥林嫂) and similarly self victimization are probably traits or characteristics of narcism. I didn’t read the psychology behind it. Pure guess on my part.
(Update 10-28-2025) Self pity is the trait Charlie Munger talked about quite a bit, and he thinks that’s one of the most destructive traits.
Value Trap
This just reminded me of one thing or one phenomenon in the stock market or stock trading: value trap. Sometimes I got into it. The past price of stock just reflects the past. Nothing more. But sometimes, people think it a stock drops suddenly and drops a lot, they will think it’s a deal, and rush to buy it. And I have done that many times too, like today I bought some PayPal stocks. And I quickly realized it could be value trap, just like the Polaris Inc stock that I traded a while ago.
By Chinese I meant Mandarin Chinese. First, please note in this list I am not going to comment on those 键政 (literally translation: keyboard politicking, or discuss politics via keyboard, link here is from Wikipedia). Not a complete list. Will be updated from time to time. There are a few special topics such as finance and cooking, and I may add below or create separate post.
Good
(Update 05-25-2025) 行者东谈西说。Here he talked about when/how/why he started the YouTube channel (自媒体). My impression is he is based in SH, and he is very much grounded re: his content. He has background in media and design, and he wanted to create good documentaries.
Jeff科技视角: he talks a lot on technology, and sometimes he touches stocks too: such as this recent one on NVDA, and PDD. I believe Jeff is a Chinese guy who lives in Canada, and he has direct experience in the IT industry. In fact IT is probably still his day job. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he said: such as this one on AAPL (Apple Inc). He touches some interesting topic such as this one – 【第284期】从内地“奋斗逼”整顿香港职场说起
Teacher Mike 麦克老师: I noticed him during pandemic (the lockdown). He is American, and he married a girl from Shanghai, they lived in Shanghai then. They came back to the USA in year 2023. He is a YouTuber and he talks English to ESL learners. His mandarin is also very good.
This is his most recent video – I decided to go back to Shanghai – he has a nice tip on the Saily app (a cheap/economy international data roaming app by NordVPN, available on App store).
刘伟元的旅行: he is actually from my hometown (Ningbo, Zhejiang province, China). He is a travel vlogger (video blogger). This is his self intro: 大家好，我是刘伟元（旅行频道）单人单车骑行中国，自己拍摄视频，自己手机剪辑视频
无团队，无签约，希望大家能够喜欢，不要忘记订阅我喔每天中午更新旅行日常（我们视频中见哦）. He has strong Ningbo accent in his mandarin – which reminds me of my old friends in Ningbo. His recent 冬季騎行川藏中線 trip is extremely difficult. Personally, I’ve never been to Tibet. I have been to Jiuzaigou (Si’Chuan province) once about 20 years ago. This is one video – 冬季騎行川藏中線，道路結冰天黑被困雪山山頂，半夜被狼聲嚇醒 – YouTube
Since I am on the travel, I recall seeing videos from 阿軻在路上AKe on the road and this one left me impressions – 古巴最后的华人，曾经10万华人为何只剩下不到100人，发生了什么？【Last Chinese in Cuba. And I haven’t watched a lot of new videos from his channel since then though. I could watched his video on a south America country (not very well developed) but could not find the video though.
北美天馬行: a Chinese couple, who are a few years older than me, retired and are traveling full time now. They also make some money from YouTube.
TheDerekShow: I like Derek. Derek is from Tian’jin, and he talked about common topics among Asian/Chinese Americans. Sometimes he will share stories from the audience (with permission and privacy). Here is one – 作为亚裔美国人，怎么看待DEI 多元化？平权行动会变成少数人的特权吗
20岁了还没去过星巴克: I used to watch his YT videos quite a bit, especially during pandemic. I watched less recently. Don’t know why. Here is one taken in Australia.
Okay
罗小曼在西安One day in Xi’an: this is actually one of the first China YouTubers I watched (also during pandemic), but I got tired of them for two things: 1) They talked a lot about going aboard, but they never did (not even for a visit), it seems to me they are just talking about it; 2) They started to monetize via selling product in the video. The products are somewhat like “snake oil”.
Bad
Mike是麦克 : initially I found out he has some decent knowledge on China car industry (he used to be a technical od engineer in the Internal Combustion Engine powered car industry. It seems his original business is in the investors immigration arena. I understand there are many rich Chinese people want to get the US green card: demand is not an issue. The main thing here is not actually providing best service (this is similar to the financial service, or financial advisory sector), but on sales and marketing, in other words persuade potential customers so that they would believe his company (or himself) is most experienced or qualified to providing immigration consulting.
The main reason I realized his YouTube channel is bad: it seems to me he has no moral ground when he pumps cryptos (this video) and/or betting on Nvidia earnings.
If you know me in person, or if you are in my WeChat stock group chat, you may know both are big no-no for me.
Around November 5 of last year (year 2024), my 10-year-old’s #Robox #AdoptMe account got hacked, and most of all her virtual belongings were gone. My thoughts in Mandarin Chinese via YT.
(Nov 12, 2024) Some random thoughts on the security online including the kid’s Roblox games and adults FB activities. A few weeks ago, I was a bit surprised to find out my younger daughter’s #Roblox account was hacked, and all her virtual goods and points in her AdoptMe game were stolen. I had some responsibility because she used my Gmail as the registration email and I didn’t promptly go to her account shortly after I receive an email alert that morning (someone in Kazakhstan logged into her account).
On Nov 11, I realized one post in one FB private group that I am an admin, was actual spam, about 10 days after I saw it. The scammer was trying to sell some t-shirt (spirit wear), from 1st look, appears to be legit. But after some reasoning, I determined it was a scam. I banned the offender along with 2 more similar offenders.
A few weeks ago, during the winter break, I enabled the two-factor authentication for her Roblox account, after another incident in which someone tries to break into her account when she was playing the game on iPad.
About 14 or 15 years ago when my old daughter was new born, I saved some money and put it into her 529 plan. About a year later, I wrote this blog post Some questions about 529 plan.
I haven’t put in much new money into her 529 plan since the early days, and for our younger daughter I did open an account for her, but I only put in couple hundreds dollars. I know I know: but it’s not because we favorite one daughter over another. It’s mostly because the money is tight, and I think 529 plan had one downside: the money can only be used for higher education (college etc.). For me flexibility is important as I was also thinking about retirement – I mean quitting my 9 to 5 job, and potentially do something else I would enjoy more: and potentially with a smaller paycheck too.
529 plan had some change to the rules recently. This is a big one: You can now transfer some 529 amounts to a Roth IRA.
Note I am late to the Roth IRA party too. Actually I opened a Roth IRA (my first) at Robinhood App last year (after the tax day). So my one year anniversary will come up this April 🙂
College cost, along with healthcare cost and housing are top three most expensive things Americans pay in last 20+ years. If there is anything we can alleviate or do, we should.
Traditionally I am under impression as in America 18 year old is considered adult (or beginning of adulthood), American parents share some college cost with the kids, in general or on average. I have seen two extremes: parents pay all; parents pay nothing. I also saw two kinds of students too: those who work hard and do their best; those who quit and had to drop their classes or get an “F”.
There is no one size fit all for the college cost (sharing cost, or not) among all the families. For me personally, I would try my best to pay off my kids (I have two) college cost (tuition plus living cost). Anything they earn: scholarship, part time job are icing on the cake.
That’s the main motivation factor behind my investing and uber driving (or other side gigs, ideally $500 an hour consulting will work out better 🙂
FAQs
Do I have to open 529 plan in my state (the state I live in)?
No. See this Answers to Questions about 529 Plans in Different States for longer answer.
What state plan do you recommend?
Ohio 529 collegeadvantage plan. Sorry show me state 🙂 Also you may want to look at the answer to the next question.
What are the best 529 plans in 2025?
Forbes thinks those are the best.
What if my kid is already in high school?
Better late than never in terms of saving. However, you do need to think about the investment options, your tolerance for risk and market volatility, etc. I know for my better half (my wife), she is pretty much risk averse, and hates volatility. So in those cases, you may consider the bond investment options vs. stock mutual fund.
Travel Mishaps
One of the most memorable moments in 2024, for me at least, we already checked out the hotel in HK and got on the taxi to the airport, then our 14-year-old said, “I left my hoodie in the closet”. We already checked out thus cannot go back to the room directly. Had to use a concierge service. It seems took forever when we waited there. The real time is probably 20 to 30 minutes. We tipped the house clean staff who retrieve the hoodie 100 HKD. Same for the taxi driver. Adding them up it’s probably $20: I think we paid that hoodie a bit over $20 at the Plato’s Closet. But it’s not about money. I remember this because my wife was furious (more than anxious) when she and our 10-year-old waited in the taxi. The younger taxi driver drove fast to the airport (we did make sure we have enough time even with this mishap).
Presidential Volunteer Service Award (PVSA)
One of the proud moments as a dad: our 14 year old Serenity received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award 
on December 31, 2024. Pictured below: she is receiving the certificate, the congrats letter from President Biden, and the Gold award pin from Rick Skinner, who represents the United Way of Greater St. Louis, the verifying org for this award. We (my wife and I) are thankful for all her teachers, from toddler program and pre-schools (pre-K), from Kindergarten to high school at the Ladue School District, her coaches and teachers who helped her in her extra curriculum activities: for teaching her the right things. I know sometimes I didn’t teach her or show her the right thing 
. Her friends over the years too. Thank you all! And we hope she keeps up the attitude and efforts 
My Panic Moment
I had my share of moment at work. One evening, I was acting as the technical lead representing the development team during our production deployment (rollout). I noticed an issue after the system engineer made the server configuration changes and restart. I quickly realized why: instead of adding a few parameters in the middle of the server start configuration, the system engineer did a replacement – in other words, he removed all the parameters from the location where we intend to replace until the end. And he repeated for multiple nodes/servers without confirming any node/server change with me 🙁
This could potentially cause longer outage as we planned, and could drag out our change windows from 2 hours to 4 hours or more. Luckily, the junior system engineer called his colleague who is much more experienced, and he came out and fixed the issue in under 20 to 30 minutes and saved the evening 🙂
The lesson for me here is making sure always backup the server configurations – earlier I did make some backups (not all) after my project manager suggested. Always be open minded and listen to colleagues even when I think it’s probably not necessary at the time – because we never know it could be handy down the road!
I’m talking about the unlocked iPhones. Because I don’t think the carrier promotions are “cheap” in the sense they usually make the money back from the monthly fees, and then more.
I can think of a few places, some are probably cheaper, but I am not 100% sure about the quality (especially the battery life for the refurbished iPhones). Below are the two places that I trust.
New iPhones at Apple, SE and 14 are two cheaper choices. Personally I think 15 or 16 are probably the better deals.
If one has the Chase sapphire or freedom credit cards and has some Ultimate Rewards (UR) points to spare, from time to time they have promotions for Apple products in the redemption center. It’s another way to get brand new iPhone. Note this may not be the most cost effective way to burn the UR points. But if they do promotion: it means 1 point is worth 1.25 cent during the redemption. If you travel, and could use the UR points, try to use the points there as 1 point is usually worth 2 cents or more there.
Personally I have used UR points for a few iPhones in last few years.
Refurbished
In the order of quality guarantee (top to bottom).
Refurbished iPhone at Apple: it seems they don’t have a lot of iPhones in stock now. Most are the larger or pro models (which are usually more expensive).
Other two places I am aware of refurbished iPhone: eBay and Amazon.
This somewhat reminds me of the preowned certified Toyotas I bought in year 2013 and year 2022.
Insurance
Do we need insurance? I usually insure it by myself (you may read this post if you have some time). Personally if I need insurance: I would buy from Apple instead of the carrier.
But this again reminds me of the one time I bought the “extended warranty” for my 2012 Toyota Sienna (preowned certified) from the dealer. Most of those are not necessary. In the case of iPhone, no pun intended, buy a good case from Amazon is probably the only insurance you need.
Comparing iPad Air and regular iPad – Update 01-04-2025
deals (dealsea iPad) – I end up bought the 11-inch iPad Air from Amazon. It should come in about 10 days and I plan to use it for Kindle, Apple Intelligence etc.
And personally, I am not happy with Mercy Go Health
First some background. There are 3 urgent care places near where we live. In the order of opening:
St. Luke’s urgent care (next to a CVS).
Total Access Urgent Care (TAUC): an independent chain that has no affiliation with a hospital; they have X-ray and can run common tests/labs. I’ve been to a location where they have the CT Scan machine. I talked about them quite extensively here.
Mercy Go Health: they opened it almost across the street from the St. Luke’s urgent care.
Scenario: in Labor Day weekend our younger daughter S6 got sick. Tried to take her to TAUC, the appointment time is about 5 or 6 pm when we looked for appointment. In other words, it’s about 6 or 7 hours away. So, I took her to the St Luke’s, our 2nd choice. The estimate wait time was one hour or more. At that time, I decided to try out Mercy Go Health.
Two things I was not happy about:
Lesson for me: Next time, I will probably go to Total Access Urgent Care. For kids, I think I would also consider going to a pediatrician first. They may have longer wait times, but I don’t want to waste my time at Mercy Go Health.
Earlier, I talked about this a bit here too.
Next, I may talk about “not all doctors are equal” too.