Categories
advice and tips Life Tips

eSIM app for travel

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I am aware of two right now. They provide cellular data for travel. I haven’t personally used them yet, but may try out later on as I see fit.

MobiMatter (official website; reddit)

Sally (Reddit; heard it from Teacher Mike YT video 1st)

And one to avoid: I bumped into this junk 易博通 eSender last summer, when we were traveling in China mainland and HK. We were hoping to get a mainland mobile phone number for 网约车 rider share car services. After spending some money and back and forth with the customer service, we realized it’s a scam. We found it because they advertised heavily on WeChat.

Other choices:

International roaming

T-Mobile roaming: heard good things about them. Quite a few friends used their international roaming in CHN.

MintMobile International Roaming (minternational pass): their price is quite competitive. Last year I used their pass for my summer trip. This year I may not need it as I am not going to Canada and HK this time. (Update 06/02/25) I still bought the 10 day pass with data due to technical difficulties of connecting to gmail via other means. One thing to note: it cannot be used as hotspot for the MacBook. So in other words, I still need to find other ways if I need to use Gmail on my MacBook (not super critical if I have Gmail on my iPhone).

And I already got a China SIM card. Btw, MintMobile made Canada roaming free since summer/fall of last year.

Side note: from iPhone 14 on, the iPhones sold in the USA no longer have physical SIM card slot (they have eSIM instead). Meanwhile in CHN, a physical SIM card is still needed for a mobile phone – that’s one reason you may consider bring an iPhone 13 or older if you travel to CHN. The reason you may need a mobile phone number is it’s required if you plan to get a Uber 网约车 in CHN. Taxis sometimes are not available and many taxi drivers drive for 网约车平台 too. In that case the two eSIM apps may not be sufficient for you. Because all you have is a mobile phone number outside of CHN which will not work for 网约车。

Note: I still receive spam calls on mint mobile when I travel – and they call during the night, the carrier could not mark them as “spam likely”. This is true for China Unicom SIM card too (the spammers call during the day).

Verizon TravelPass: much more expensive than MintMobile

Note for all the options above, you can get to Google etc. without doing anything special, just like you are in HK.

VPN: obviously you still need your own internet, usually it means Wi-Fi. This may be handy if you need to get to YT or Netflix, because you would likely burn through whatever your data plan fairly quickly if you stream.

Categories
Music

钟晓京Jamie

Reading Time: 3 minutes

She is from Beijing. I am guessing she is born in 1980s: aka she would be about 40 now (baidu 钟晓京超女几岁了). I came across her at Bilibili, 钟晓京翻唱苏芮80年代经典歌曲《跟着感觉走》. This is the song that I listened in high school and college. || Update 09-01-2025: Jamie mentioned she was at 3rd grade in year 1993. Assuming she was 8 then, she was born in 1985.

Some background

(Sina Blog) 代表北京的传奇超女－钟晓京 (2006-07-04 22:09:20). Also Baidu pages (generated by AI). Please note Jamie is a music industry executive and she also graduated from 北外 Beijing Foreign Studies University which is considered the best college for English majors at my time.

Platforms we can find here

Apple Music – 钟晓京

Bilibili – 钟晓京Jamie: you will notice her English songs got most playbacks. This is understandable because that’s also her strength: she graduate from Beijing Foreign Studies University 北京外国语学院 and passed 英语专业八级。

YT – 钟晓京Jamie: right now she listed all English song she sang (as cover 翻唱）。Personally I think she can put up her Mandarin and Cantonese songs there too.

Douyin 抖音: 钟晓京Jamie：北京歌手，毕业于人大附中、北京外国语大学英语系，英语专业8级。曾就职于国际唱片公司。直播内容：中英粤及其他语种经典歌曲，流行、摇滚、爵士等多种风格。This is the platform that she is most active (I believe). Probably for many short video creators Douyin is also most lucrative too – we got to eat and and sometimes bring bacon home. She probably started her solo/creator career about 5 to 10 years ago, and this again confirms this old saying: many roads lead to Rome.

Facebook: Jamie Zhong

Instagram: jamiezxj

WeChat: 钟晓京Jamie (she does go live 直播 on WeChat sometimes, at least once a month). She mentioned the WeChat audience is slightly older than the audience at the other platform (Douyin).

(Update 07-7-2025) During this morning’s WeChat live, Jamie made an interesting observation, that is over the time, people change the way they consume the pop music, and also due to that, they change their preferences of the type of pop music they listen to as well. Nowadays people tend to listen to music that’s easy, vs. say Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you”. Because a lot of times people listen to the music as a background (noise). I will put more precise words from her if possible.

Btw, the price to ask her to sing a song is about 500 Yuan (what they called “520” stands for I love you in Chinese), or $70. It’s not too expensive, but it’s not too cheap. I imagine Tencent (WeChat owner takes a cut, probably at least 30%?). Also, Apple is probably not taking a cut here.

Btw, I did google search on this too – did people change the habit of listening to pop music

(Update 07-11-2025) Jamie commented on WeChat live that 小斗 (she meant Douyin, because WeChat and Douyin are competitors on the video/live front), is already in 工业社会，by that she meant the analytics for broadcaster (live show host), while WeChat is still at 农业社会。Good analogy. I guess that’s one reason the singer I like (you probably know whom she is, if you read enough of my blog posts), also goes live on Douyin sometimes. A second reason “why someone goes live only on Douyin”, I can think of, is there’s an exclusivity between the show host and Douyin (Byte Dance). Note this is nothing new, as we seen similar things on Spotify or Apple in the west.

Keep in mind I am 2nd class citizen there as I don’t have an account with Douyin. To log into Douyin, we need the Douyin app, but the app is only available in the China app store (including HK).

Jamie also commented YT: 翻唱的歌拿到的广告费大多数要交版权费。一个矛盾是如果是自己版权的歌，一般流量就低，也就没啥广告费。

My comments: Jamie is a straight shooter. She would say what’s in her mind. That obviously a double edge sword: it has both pluses and minuses because usually people don’t want to hear anything negative about them.

PS:

I wrote another two singers, and this is the 3rd of the singers series, the first two are: Liang Jingru 梁静茹 aka Fish Leong and Ayen 何璟昕. We know Fish Leong learned quite a bit from the famous Jonathan Lee (李宗盛), and Ayen 何璟昕 (links to Wikipedia, full disclosure: yours truly made some contributions to her Wiki page recently), is also quite unusual in her career path, she grew interest in music in middle school and high school, but she chose to attend a college in Beijing, major in digital media and arts (Engineering degree), and she launched her music career during/after college.

The key are: you got to love that thing, and you probably need to be decently good at it. The latter also depends on the the competitive landscape and the business overall of that field: for example, I consider myself a decent programmer, but not a 10x dev, but I still made a decent living because the field is fairly lucrative (at least in my 24/25 years career, this may change due to AI etc). But music industry is more competitive. So were the creator and short video platforms.

Categories
advice and tips Life Life Tips

Getting old

Reading Time: < 1 minute

sucks 🙁

I wrote on this topic from time to time: and I found a few below. May not be a complete list.

01-21-2006: Senior moment (I think I was wú bìng shēn yín 无病呻吟 here)

04-24-2023: Getting older

05-19-2025: Food, sleep and health

Also, probably something I didn’t write, but I vividly remember, in year 2011, sometime in the summer/fall, when I was working as contractor for the UniGroup, and I happened to know a friend from China. We hiked at the Power Valley trail one afternoon after work. During the walk, I suddenly realized my body shape is typically middle-aged man, with the “inflated belly” and so on. I was 40 then.

But looking at the glass half full angle, I am getting wiser. And from the swimming point of view, there is a lot of room for improvement for me 🙂

I swam 800 yards at the J Chesterfield yesterday. It’s probably a record for me, at least my Apple watch says so 🙂

PS:

A tweet thread re: side effects of GLP-1.

Btw, I googled “berberine” and found this article interesting – “When it comes to science, don’t look for expertise from graduates of the University of TikTok.“

Categories
Life Life Tips

If I know I could possibly die there

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I won’t go there. By that I mean a statistically meaningful possibility: I am not a statistician but personally I think 0.1% and above is meaningful for me.

Basically, the great Charlie Munger mentioned these many times. Here is one: Charlie Munger: Invert, always invert. He mentioned when he was meteorologist. He quickly realized in order to NOT get pilots killed; he needs to forecast snow or ice conditions accurately.

Translated in plain English, if I know I could possibly die there, I am not going there.

Quite simple logic, isn’t it? But it’s easily said than done.

And this morning, I am very sad to learn one of my wife’s cousins in China died – she was riding e-bike which is very common among Chinese people nowadays. But very unfortunately, she (her bike) was hit by a big truck in a cross section (a traffic light).

Know your risk

Riding bike or motorcycle is always dangerous, both in China or in the US. I heard from my brother that his high school classmate died from motorcycle (many years ago), his friend was probably still in his 20s. It happened in early 1990s in China, so it was more than 30 years ago. Over the years I heard a few neighbors of my childhood home died from car accidents too: in various ways, and one was riding motorcycle (e-bike) and hit by a vehicle. The other two are also vehicle related: one uncle (he is probably only 10 or 15 older than me), got off bus, and hit by another vehicle. I heard Chinese runner in Dallas, who trains for Marathon and he was hit/killed by vehicle too.

I vaguely recall pedestrian or biker got killed at the Olive/Lindbergh intersection many years ago. Once in Chicago field museum, we happened to see an exhibit related to “death”, and I recall seeing the bikers memorial project, the ghost bikes. Now I also recall from time to time I saw the mentioned bike on the roadside. Another similar memorial is the roadside flower/cross: usually for the people killed during a car accident.

我承认我是胆小鬼

Also, everyone has different perceptions of risks, and I think that’s legit too. Personally, I think I am a Dan Xiao Gui in general, the riskiest thing I did so far in my adult life is I climbed the precipice at Acadia National Park. That was year 2004, I think.

About 3 years ago, we went to the Cocoa Beach in FL and a few kids did surf class. I was quite nervous as our then 12-year-old was there, and the instructor was mainly focusing his efforts on a slightly younger friend. One instructor for 3 kids, if my memory is correct.

Car Accidents 车祸

其实在美丽国生活，因为基本上都需要开车（纽约除外），防止车祸，或减轻车祸的影响是很重要的。从这个意义上来讲，在家上班，减少开车，也减少了出车祸的机会。关于开车我以前写过一个博文也可供参考。

Safety precautions during walking and jogging in the USA

I used to walk outside quite a bit, and when possible, I will wear a yellow reflective vest during my walk. Because I know there is a lot of chances a driver who may be look at the phone or not paying attention to the road and pedestrians.

Also refer to My 1st “near death” experience – kids being kids

Categories
Fun Life

Back to swimming

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I decided to swim at the JCC last Thursday 05/15/25 as it was quite hot that day – the high is in the middle 80s. I didn’t like the sun and the warm temperature when I walk outside. So, I decided to go back to swimming at the J. I did swim at the J almost daily between 2012 and 2016/2017, as I explained in this blog post.

I switched to mostly running and walking since year 2017. And I didn’t do much swimming in last 7 or 8 years. But I decided to give swimming another try. And I think I probably swim the longest distance in my life, 500 yards today and yesterday – assuming the outdoor pool at the Creve Coeur J is 25 yards.

=================

how long is the average swimming pool in the usa (google search)

Google Search Labs | AI Overview

Pool Size Comparison: Olympic-Sized Pool, 25 Meter, 25 Yard …
In the United States, most swimming pools used for laps and competitions are 25 yards (75 feet) long. This length is commonly referred to as a “short-course-yards” pool.

=================

Actually in the first 3 days I thought the length is 50 yards. Now we are talking about 坑叔的英制 🙂

Close the ring

One advantage of swimming over walking/running is it’s much easier to close the move/exercise rings on Apple Watch (my smart watch over the years) via swimming. 500 yards plus some very modest walking is enough for me. Note in last month or so, I walked probably 6 or 7 miles a day (15,000 steps), 大概是每天走十公里左右。现在我只要游五百米就行了。

PS:

Something came to my mind today. We know the health insurance premium in the USA is quite expensive nowadays. I think the insurance I have for my family is probably $1,500 a month if I buy it from the marketplace. On the other hand, the J family membership is about $170 a month. So roughly 1/10 of the health insurance premium. If I can use the membership and keep myself away from the doctors and hospital, it’s not only saving money for me, for insurance and my employer, it also makes me happy (when I am not sick). Exercise is really the best option here.

后记：我大概想了一下我每个月交的医疗保险，我说的是市场价格，因为美国的习惯是公司/雇主出大头。我们家的医疗保险费大概是一个月1,500美元。再比比健身房的月费，大概一个月是170美元，是保险费的1/10。如果我们都把健身房用起来，少生病，不生病，那简直就是在帮公司省钱的同时，减少了自己的病痛。

I will talk about 我也曾经是体育委员 next 🙂

Categories
Fun Fun Video Music

My impression on shorts or short video

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Short videos 短视频 （short form content on Wikipedia) are getting popular nowadays.

I have some reservations on the shorts, YT shorts or anything equivalent. Below is not a complete list but let me try list some of the popular shorts platforms. My main reservations are the short durations of videos, their impact on kids’ focuses, and the relatively short time span of short videos in the internet and social media history.

YT Shorts: I know my younger daughter only watches the YT shorts when she gets my phone 🙂

Douyin 抖音 (since Sept 2026): I don’t have account for now. But I did watch two short videos today. Also, this series (or playlist) looks/sounds good to me at least 🙂

For douyin we have to have a China based mobile phone and Chinese ID. In other words the app is not open to foreigners or to outside world. ByteDance’s TikTok serves that market.

Btw, here is a famous account 与辉同行

Also a drumset performance (song: 搀扶, MV here)

The songs I listened to when I was young (from 1980s to 2006).

Two videos from Toutiao.com (also owned by ByteDance, the parent co of Douyin): 这老师火到人民日报了！高考誓师大会上，数学老师祝福语

and 大美中国走进广东惠州，山海秀美，惠州人看看！

Buiness model of Douyin (to be expanded)

抖音会员是什么 (Also, Zhihu)

This also makes me to think – maybe TikTok and Douyin 抖音 got popular for a legit reason? 抖音和TT在短视频领域称霸是否意味着字节跳动有她的独到之处呢？就像最近的DeepSeek 对ChatGPT 的冲击和影响？一般一开始先是deny, 接下去说她们肯定是抄了我们的作业，最后发现不对啊，我们可能需要抄她们的作业？😂 Because their presentation or their content or their engagement are better than competitors (say, YT Shorts, and FB Reels)?

Also the 2025 graduation festival: this has been a thing since 2000, and I recall Bilibili was the early leader.

TikTok: I didn’t use it much. But I am aware that it’s widely popular among young people, and it may have taken a dip recently in the USA due to the recent law barring the app. But again whatever ByteDance (Douyin and TikTik) was doing seems working very well with the young people across the world. And for that I think as a minimum we should acknowledge their success: I understand sometimes it’s harder for people outside of China to acknowledge that Chinese people or engineers did something really impressive. If we can do that, we can follow up with some more helpful or meaningful questions such as why are they successful? What can we learn from them, and so on.

WeChat (short videos) 微信视频特指短视频: I don’t watch much of it honestly, especially recently – besides I watch a few music videos there 🙂 One reason I watched music is to stay away from politics. As some of you may know, I am not a fan of the current resident of the WH in the USA. From WeChat I saw content creators can also create playlist. Personally I haven’t found a way to share the link for the 合集 yet, note I don’t have a 微信公众号或者视频号.

Bilibili: they have both short videos and long videos. I am not fully converted to 弹幕 yet though 🙂 (Update) I finally moved up to level 2 there, after answering 60 questions (mostly are simple questions). I tried to verify myself as HUST alumni, but I failed 🙁

Here is one example of Bilibili video. Now I also recall the difference between Bilibili and Douyin: the former is a bit smaller in terms of scale, and also, they cater to the young and educated folks, while Douyin is for everyone. They have a playlist or 合集/视频选集 feature too, here is an example.

Also: I just uploaded my 1st video.

(06/04/25) I found a tip to not see the 弹幕 , just pop up the video in the bilibili app.

(06-11-25) Just learned sometimes the platform has exclusivity agreement with creator.

RedNote: or XiaoHongShu. It got a pop recent amid the TikTok ban. The bump or pop probably faded away. But the platform itself is quite popular among Chinese users and has quite good engagement from my observations. RedNote can create a playlist #合集 too. Here is one example Ayen何璟昕国粤双语合集. Note: it’s best to open this in the app. I noticed on my Mac it will automatically download the Android apk file for RedNote app. Or you may go to the xiaohongshu website and I am not sure if the same functionality exists on the website.

From consumer point of view, I think consume in moderation is the key. But from creator point of view, short video and playlist or 合集 in Chinese is a great way to generate interest.

Business model or income

I speculate one reason artists or creators do short video instead of longer or full length videos is due to copyright laws. I am not attorney but I guess a 20 or 30 seconds clip is less likely to cause issues for the copyright owners than the full length version.

This is more from the content creators or advertisers’ point of view.

YouTube油管和抖音有哪些差别？｜Weitube

一个50万粉丝抖音博主能赚多少钱，涛哥爱拆机真实收入全面公开#抖音创作者 #涛哥爱拆机

今天是庆祝我粉丝到50万的福利视频！回答一些你们常问我的问题，感谢每一个菜鸡粉丝的支持和陪伴！#这个视频有点料

PS: I will probably translate this post to Chinese, or rewrite a new one in Chinese.

Categories
advice and tips Life Tips

Food, sleep and health

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Below is mostly for my own reference

NPR: 5 eating habits that can help you sleep better at night

Reduce caffeine during the day. I found out one way to do that is to get the daily coffee from a place such as Panera bread, so that I don’t brew my own coffee (and I tend to brew more).

Reduce or stay away from alcohol. No hard liquors (e.g., whiskey).

Reduce red meat (dinner): for that matter, control the portion for dinner. More on the timing below.

Reduce snacks (unhealthy ones) during the day. Main task for me is to buy less snacks when doing grocery shopping.

Reduce sugar.

Reducing eating leftover food: there are many ways I end up eating leftover foods. Cooked way too much. Usually it’s my wife who cooked too much 🙂 Because I don’t cook much, and when I cook, I don’t cook a lot or I usually just cook some egg, fish or shrimps and they are usually manageable. Another scenario: my wife usually put certain amount of food on my daughters’ plate, and she expected the girls to finish them. It’s not usually the case they finish them. And sometimes (maybe too many times) I came from the background of “not wasting food”, I end up eating my girls’s leftover. Similarly for other small leftover on the tables.

Don’t eat anything substantial after 8 pm, per Dr. Bonacorsi. It seems he already retired and he lives in my old neck of the woods 🙂 I also think for me, probably stop eating anything substantial after 7 pm is the goal.

Okay to consume in moderation: fruits, vegetables, milk, coffee, yogurt, eggs, tofu, sea food (shrimp and fish), and healthy bread.

Sleep

Put the phone and computer outside the bedroom.

References:

Healthy food

Testosterone is what keeps men alive and dominant. Here are 9 foods proven to boost it naturally:

  1. Avocado
  2. Eggs (with yolk)
  3. Extra virgin olive oil
  4. Brazil nuts
  5. Grass-Fed Beef (in moderation)
  6. Oysters
  7. Pomegranate
  8. Fatty Fish (like tuna, salmon, mackerel)
  9. Ginger

Another tweet thread on food to boost testosterone.

Joint health

Doctors Say This Is How Walking Helps Digestion 饭后百步走

Categories
Music

Songs I listened when I was in 20s

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 11-08-2025)

I have YT Music subscriptions (it’s probably a part of YT Premium sub) for a few years now. And I listened to YT and YT Music quite a bit especially since the sub. It allows me to play the music in the background. And they actually sent me a recap: the songs I listened to the most in past year etc. I believe those are the artists or musicians I listened to the most in each year:

2023: Sandy Lam 林忆莲 (Wikipedia)

2024: Fish Leong 梁静茹 and G.E.M. Gloria Tang Sze-wing 邓紫棋 (Wikipedia)

2025: Ayen Ho 何璟昕

I listened to many songs on this list 1990s-love-songs-90年代玉女歌手排行榜 too: but not the first song 最爱。The main reason was I didn’t understand Cantonese and at the time I probably only listen to the most popular cantonese song that’s being played in non-cantonese speaking regions. In other words, I listened to songs such as 一生何求。But I do remember this one’s melody – 劉小慧 ~ 初戀情人【Music Video 】

(Original)

Mostly mandarin pop (Mandopop), and cantonese pop (Cantopop). That was about 35 years ago. Not a complete list.

Sandy Lam 林憶蓮
林憶蓮、李宗盛 – 當愛已成往事

傷痕 Scar 林憶蓮 傷痕專輯: Love, Sandy (1995)

愛上一個不回家的人

CHEN Hui Xian 陈慧娴
Tao Wu Jie 跳舞街

Qian Qian Que Ge 千千阙歌

Piao Xue 飘雪

Hong Cha Guan 红茶馆

Sha Nv 傻女

Chen Shu Hua 陈淑桦
Meng Xing Shi Feng 梦醒时分

Gun Gun Hong Chen 滚滚红尘

QI Qin: Wang Shi Shui Feng 齐秦 往事随风

ZHAO Chuan: Ai Yao Zen Mu Shuo Chu Kou 赵传 爱要怎么说出口

WANG Fei: Tian Kong (Sky) 王菲 天空

Whitney Houston. I was a big fan of her in college. I remember spent about 10 Yuan (remember at the time the monthly allowance was like 100 Yuan) to buy her album “Hero” when I was in college.

This is a song “When you believe“, sung by her and Maria Carey.

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

My Plan for my old daughter’s 529 Plan

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I don’t have a lot of money in the 529 plan. And all is in the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund (Vanguard 500 Index Option).

I am thinking, if/when the S&P 500 index bounces back to the previous high (6,147.43), I am going to start convert some of S&P 500 index fund into Vanguard High Yield Corporate Option (something similar to this, I think). I will do it in the increment of 5% or 10%.

Here is 5 year chart comparison between the two Vanguard funds (stock vs bond). And the max comparison: bond start from 05/17/85; stocks from 11/03/00.

I also googled – is there a period bond performed better than stock. And some more readings for me.

How often do bonds outperform stocks?

How Often Do Long-Term Bonds Beat Stocks?

7 Reasons Not to Use a 100% Stock Portfolio

This will be a good exercise for me in terms of withdrawing from an account: converting from stocks to cash over the time etc.

(Update 05-16-2025) I did one percent conversion today, from S&P to high yield bond fund. Was 100% S&P, after today it should be 99% S&P, 1% bond.

Before and after

(05-27-2025) 98% vs 2% now

(06-18-2025) 97% vs 3% as the market close on 06-20-25. I submitted the request a bit late and didn’t make it to Wednesday’s cutoff, and Thursday 6/19 is Juneteenth holiday and no stock market in the USA.

(06-24-2025) It appears the above exchange did not happen, as I saw the below message from the account:

Exchange your assets
Your last exchange was processed on May 27, 2025. You have performed the two exchanges that are permitted in this calendar year per IRS regulations. You will be allowed to exchange again on Jan 1, 2026.

Categories
Life

Happy Mother’s Day

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I wrote this piece about my maternal grandma last week.

I still need to write another piece for my paternal grandma.

My advice as a 50+ guy: try to see your mom as much as possible/practical. I left my home for boarding school (Zhenhai middle school) when I was 12. I saw my mom once a month when I was in the boarding school (middle school and high school). Left for college at age of 18. I recall once I told my parents I was not going back home for the winter break (and Chinese new year or spring festival), and my mom (who never wrote to me before that), wrote a letter to me asking me to go back home in the winter break.

And left my home country for the US (graduate school) when I was 26. In last 2 years my mom (in China) developed dementia (and Parkinson’s disease) and I visited her in March 2023 (shortly after the China reopening post pandemic) and last summer (June/July 2024). Her condition worsened recently. And I am going to see her again in about 3 weeks.