Categories
Fun

Running, jogging and walking

Reading Time: 5 minutes
The four pieces medal for 2019/2020 SnowBall series: it’s 40 years anniversary of the series

I like to run when I was in middle school, for two reasons. I was not too bad at running, in fact I won a few track medals for 200 meters and 4×100 meters relay. I failed pretty bad in the 800 meters race (in my grade, one grade has 4 classes). But I am probably one of the fastest running 800 meters in my class, and I felt good about it 🙂

But I don’t always like being woken up and run in the winter mornings. It’s called 早锻炼。I don’t always dislike it either.

And 早锻炼 is still encouraged in college, although it’s mostly involves wake up, walk near the soccer field, wave to the 学生干部 who does rollcall, before heading off to student canteen for breakfast. Once, I recall our counselor who is a lady and she was only 4 years older than us, and she came to our dorm in the morning and tried to wake us up and go to the morning jog, and I was not up that day. The teacher’s name is 张圆圆, and I regarded her as a big sister: at one time I recall she asked me if I know another mutual friend of ours (and her dance partner). But unfortunately I learned in recent years that she passed away due to illness.

My weight gain over the years

I think back in year 2011, I hiked in the trails in the Power Valley with a friend. It was at that time that I suddenly realized I was out of shape after I looked at the photo of myself. I was 40 years old then, and our older daughter was born one year earlier.

It took me some more years to start running and joggling in the hope of control my weight. In year 1997, when I came to the USA, I probably weighed 105 pounds. Fast forward to year 2002, I gained some weight, probably at about 135 pounds. I lost some by doing Tae Kwon Do at World Martial Arts Academy between year 2002 and 2005 (mainly 2002 to 2004). I went to the location at Telegraph road, near highway 55 and 270.

Fast forward 10+ years. I finally decided to give running a try in year 2017. It went to the J for swimming sometimes, but I gained some more weights, probably at 155 lbs (pounds). I recall one of my college friends could not recognize me when I was in Shanghai in summer 2016 (both due to my aging and weight gain). I could barely run 200 meters in year 2017.

Races in Saint Louis Area

STL Race calendar

Note the Frostbite and Snowball Series

Frostbite series is organized by the St. Louis track club, and they have a short and long series, and has 5 races spanning over 10 weeks (2 weeks between races). The race is always held in the Forest Park on a Saturday morning.

Snowball series has a distance slightly longer than the Frostbite short series. It’s also held on Saturday mornings. The day doesn’t conflict with Frostbite. So in theory a person can do both series. I ran Snowball series before pandemic.

Races I have run over the last 5 or 6 years

I run mostly school, community related races; including once girlsontherun with my old daughter (when she was 2nd grader?)

I also did trail run (Bootlegger and Cuivre River state park) a few times. Sometimes in snow.

The only race I won something (JCC labor day 5k run, it seems the record below has some error?)

Again I did the two series I mentioned above: the Snowball (before pandemic) and Frostbite series (post pandemic).

The longest distance I ran is half Marathon: I ran 4 times so far, once right before pandemic shutdown (03/07/2020) and it was also the only time I ran with 2 hours 30 mins. I signed up the same race for March 2024, and my 1st goal is to beat the 3/22/2022 time (12:56 minute per mile). A bonus is to run the race under 2.5 hours.

My races results over the years

Athlinks (google social login, goes back to year 2018). Results are shown below. This seems included most of my races. The most important column is probably the pace: mile per minute.

page 1

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page 2

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page 3

Two more websites that have my race results: both are not as comprehensive as Athlinks above.

raceroster (my FB social login, goes back to year 2019)

RunSignup (results goes back to year 2019)

That probably summarized most of my races. I have many memories from races, mostly are fun ones.

Incidents

I saw two incidents happened right before my eyes at Creve Coeur park. Once in the snow ball series, the snow was melting, and a small portion of the paved trail (under the 364 extension bridge) still had quite a bit of water (maybe a foot in terms of the depth). When I ran there, I was thinking: gosh, now I am like the horse that had to cross the water. And I saw a gentleman who may be a bit older than me, fell, and blood coming from his legs. The full length of the paved trail is about 3.6 or 3.8 mile, so all in all, this is not too bad. I don’t think the runner’s life is in danger in anyway. It’s just looked a bit scary when we ran through the 10 meters or 20 meters of the water.

Another time Also at the Creve Coeur lake park, the half marathon, a gentleman, who seems in his 70s, fell down right before my eye at about 11 miles mark. Fortunately it’s right the 1st aid station is, and people rushed to help.

Last but not least, if you only interested in walking or hiking, I have a blog post on St. Louis Area Nature Trails.

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School

We like/love all our kids’ teachers

Reading Time: 2 minuteshttps://fox2now.com/news/missouri/one-st-louis-area-public-school-among-nations-top-50-in-new-rankings/

(Below was written in 05-31-2014, about 9 and half years ago, when our old daughter S was at Hope Montessori Academy in Creve Coeur. We love both our daughters’ teachers since then too 🙂

There is a cliche, saying we learn a lot from our kids (being parents). And I would like to add, we learned a lot from S8’s teachers too. Actually many times we can see teachers’ teaching from S8’s daily behavior at home. Sometimes when my partner lost patience when asking S8 to do something, S8 will say “be nice to friends”. Or other times we joked about something, she will say “mommy/daddy, no potty words”.

(Update: 12-23-2023) 

Obviously we have met and worked with a lot more teachers since May 2014. In November 2014 our S8 went to the Immanuel Lutheran Olivette for about 7 months, before she headed off to the Spoede Elementary. She is a 8th grader in the Ladue Middle School now. Note we are very fortunate that we live in one of the best school districts in the state of Missouri: the Ladue School District website: district recognitions web page; and niche.com ranking for the Ladue School District.

Our little S6 followed her big sis’ path, for the most part: she went to ILSO 1st when she was 2 and 3 years old. At 4 year old we sent our little S to the Hope Montessori in Creve Coeur. Now she is a 4th grader at the Spoede Elementary.

And I also volunteers at the school regularly, and had a glimpse of teachers/staff’s work behind the scene, including but not limiting to the work shortly before the pandemic shutdown, during pandemic (do you still remember the Zoom and virtual learning? :-), and post pandemic. I know many teachers and staff because of my volunteer work: it ranges from being a chaperon in the school (kids) field trop, serve on the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO, our PTO is SSA and LMSPA, btw), or the Math Fact Scholars (MFS) program.

To put it in a more tangible way, I have seen PE coaches putting away the tables for us post the MFS morning testing sessions. I have seen music teacher left her sick kid to grandma (her mom, btw, her mom was Spoede teacher too :-), and shuttle back and forth to make sure the kiddo’s musical rehearsal is still on. And teachers volunteered their time and their spouses’ time (and kids’s time) to help move to the new building, and organize, or prep for kids’s musical or Lego League expo (competition); after school academic and other enrichment clubs too.

Categories
Career

Background check, reference check and drug testing

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Thinking it may be helpful for me to explain all this, as I never heard about those coming from China to the USA in late 1990s. Maybe the employers are doing those in China nowadays too, but at my time, I never heard about it.

Background Check

There are background check, and sometimes there are employment history verification etc. Nowadays background check usually has two approaches: 1) The government database check, e.g., before someone get firearms, they usually need to run a check; 2) The second approach is via a commercial company (database) check. I did both. Actually recently I just did one when I am volunteering for the school.

Example 1: there are companies that do background check for employers. such as this one called Clariti (now it’s a part of GHRR). You may read this clariti background check reddit thread if needed. It seems to me they are mostly trying to verify past employment history as well. Note in the reference check, they could do similar check, if it’s just a call from HR. I do follow the instructions carefully when I do this sort of thing. Below is copy paste of some of the instructions.

Complete all fields.
Use your legal name and information and add any maiden or previous names to the additional names section.
Please provide all addresses where you have lived for the past 7 years.
Review your answers for accuracy and spelling.
If you have any questions or special circumstances you should call our office at before submitting this request.

My comment: sometimes I doubt the effectiveness of this sort of background check. But we still need to respect the process though, as this is quite common step before some employers can formally onboard someone.

Example 2: I did this one MACHS Fingerprinting Background Checks website twice as a requirement for my volunteer work for Ladue School. I think first time they came to LMS and fingerprinted people on site. Mostly recently I went to this place called IdentoGo (it looks like a private company, but they work with government agencies such as FBI for background check). I go there, did my fingerprints, and they sent my information to their backend for more processing. And they also sent back information to the Ladue School on the 2nd day. It seems they are pretty efficient in terms of processing.

Reference Check

I have done reference check for colleagues and friends from time to time. For that purpose, I usually make sure I get an updated resume, and also ask my colleague or friend what should I say (I usually say nice things).

Drug Test

For my 1st job, I did the drug test via the hair sample. More common drug test is via urine sample. I did urine sample a few times in my career, all for pre-employment drug testing. Again the need for drug test also varies by employer.

Categories
Career Software development

FAQs on work: tenure, job hopping, purpose of work, and overtime

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General Rule of Thumb on the length of work tenure

A while ago, in year 2010, I got this rule from a friend. My friend spends most of time doing IT/software contractor work, long term contract though. I asked him “how long should I stay at this place because there is a senior guy seems doesn’t like me”, to be precise, he was trying to get me fired. My friend told me the rule of thumb below.

Try to stay at full time (employee, or permanent) position for one year. Stay at a contractor position for 6 month or more. Some old fashioned people may call out you as “hopper” or “job hopper” if you have a lot short stints in your resume.

And below is my recent observation and my quick thoughts. When interviewing for my current job, my big boss (my manager’s manager) did raise the tenure (short work stints) and I was prepared. “see, boss, I worked for this credit company for almost 4 years”. And I also worked for my 1st employer for 8 years. All are facts, but I stayed not just due to loyalty 🙂

What to look for in a job?

I think the below tweet (or X) summarized it well. In other words, our day job is to bring the bacon (or bread) home. 用中文讲就是养家糊口。I am discussing a related question (overtime 加班）more below.

Overtime 加班

It’s not worth it. Ideally we should avoid overtime as much as possible.

Work smarter, not harder. –quote one of my former coworker at Unigraphics (UGS, EDS PLM Solutions, Siemens Industry Software)

I have been in the US for a bit over 25 years now. From time to time, I need to go overtime for the work. From my early days in the graduate school doing research for the professor, to work as progammer for my day job. Most of times it’s either voluntary, or I have no better other choices.

I got sick when working for Mercy:

One night it’s already past 10 pm. But there is some urgent work or expectation for me to “solider on”. I was trying to fix some problems as a result from the security scan.

Later, once, I still went to work when I was coughing pretty bad. Eventually I went to urgent care due to that. It took me a while to recover from that.

Categories
Chinese articles Life

How I went to the HUST 我为什么去了华中理工大学

Reading Time: < 1 minute

(Update 09-20-2025) English version is on YT – My colleague and engineering career journey

Below is original in Chinese, written in 12-20-2023

I got this key chain from HUST probably in year 1996 or year 1993

现在叫华中科技大学（没有对钢铁学院*不敬的意思：但是在我心里我的母校一直是华中理工大学，或是华中工学院）。大家有时候自己开玩笑叫关山口技校。因为最早的时候学校的站名是关山口。我估计现在那里不只一个车站了。

我是1989年上的大学。我从小在浙江农村长大，能否考上大学对我来说是个很大的事（俗话说的跳出农门）。我的老大现在十三岁，我告诉她，如果我考不上大学，我就只能做农民。她在美国出生长大，当然没法完全理解我说的做农民的意思。

我在高三的时候理想的大学SJTU是在上海。但是那一年高考我没有完全发挥出我的水平，再加上那年春夏之间北京发生的事，我有不少同学和她们的家长希望小孩去上海。所以虽然我的第一志愿还是上海某大学，我心里知道我的第二志愿（second choice)这一次有可能会有用。

虽然很多大学不喜欢接受选了她们学校作为第二志愿的学生，这个有点像一个女孩听到一个男孩说她是候补（second choice）。NO。That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

但是对我们在浙江长大的小朋友来说，大多数人不想去除了北京上海以外的外地。我上面已经说了北京那年不少家庭不想让小孩去。这样就给其它外地高校（大学）出了个题：怎么招满她家在浙江省的招生名额。所以我说第二志愿对我来说也可能会有用。

填最后的志愿表之前，我爸爸带我去见了他认识的刘同森老师，好像当年也是他的老师。刘老师说了三个选择，大连理工，天津大学，还有就是华中理工。我妈妈在这之前，经常跟我说有谁去了北方：西安交大还是天津的大学，我现在记不清了。总而言之，我的理解去北方的话就得吃黑面包。这个有点吓人。我就挑了华工。

我记得当我接到华工的入学通知书时，还是悲喜交加。主要是担心上学的行程较不方便：我在长江轮船的博客上也有提到。四年以后，我试图通过考研再试试上海某大学，还是因数学考试没有准备好而再次失败。没有第三次，第三次我来到了密苏里大学罗拉分校（现在已改名密苏里理工大学）。看来我跟理工大学有缘。有一个原因可能是因为我们那时候有一个说法：学好数理化，走遍天下也不怕。Another reason is I was under the impression having a profession is good to make a living, something along these lines (In the blog post, How To Survive As An IT Contractor? I mentioned my maternal grandma and (actually my maternal uncle, my mom’s brother) think it’s good to be an engineer.

同时我一个人可能把理工大学给用完了，我的十三岁的大女儿现在是没有上理工大学获学工程的打算。当然女大十八变，我希望她将来至少在数学和计算机方面是相对较强的。(Update 09-20-2025) This is no longer accurate, I think she is now planning to study in Engineering, as she believe that she can make a difference in climate change by majoring/focusing on engineering. Remember the old Chinese saying “女大十八变“？I think it’s all good, btw.

*有一些钢铁学院改名，比如北京钢铁学院叫北京科技大学，武汉钢铁学院改成武汉科技大学等等。中国科技大学不是中国钢铁学院改的，她家本来就是中国科学技术大学。

Categories
401k and Personal Finance advice and tips Investing

Year end tax moves and my thoughts on personal finance and investing

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Some friends asked me about the year end tax moves, such as the tax loss selling etc. Here is a good article on the topic – Tax-Loss Harvesting: What It Is, How It Works. My take on tax: this is at least secondary maybe even more down the priority list. The No. 1 priority in the personal finance/investing is don’t lose your money. Ideally we don’t want any type of loss. Tax loss is applicable only after we lose the money during investing. If we don’t have loss in the 1st place, would it be better?

But I do appreciate the mindset of 亡羊补牢。Or salvage whatever we can (not exact translation).

Another question is what to contribute if we need to contribute to the regular IRA account. The latter is an easier question. The deadline to fund IRA is actually usually the tax day (the middle of April), so we still have time. As to investments, I only recommend the S&P 500 index funds and I explained it more here.

The 529 plans I setup for my girls

I have a fairly small 529 plan for my girls, which I started shortly after they were born (see my blog post one, blog post two, and blog post three).

With the enhancement of the 529 plans by the law passed by congress in the recent years, it becomes a tool for retirement as well. Read this for more details.

The thing I taught my 13 year old the other day, is the 12/6 compounded interest rule (snowball effect), an investment that grows 12% annually, in 6 years it will double. From 2010 to 2023, since I invested in S&P 500 index fund, and the S&P 500 index did well since 2010, the money I put in quadrupled. It was a small amount of money. But the compounded interest concept is important and we saw it in action.

Another thing many working people can consider is the HSA account. I heard it has even more benefits for retirement compared to the 529. So something to read about, think about and do something about 🙂

My free tips on PF and investing

Like many good things in life, don’t rush it. Take the time, savor the moment, think it through, before jump into the market and make big moves: Rome is NOT built in a day. So was the business empire such as Berkshire Hathaway, or the GPU, AI chip designer nVidia. They are built in decades.

Hindsight is 20/20

Look at the about 1,137% or 11 times gain of $CVNA. Below is the YTD chart of Carvana vs CarMax ($KMX), Tesla ($TSLA) and S&P 500 index. But the million dollar question is: who bought and hold the $CVNA this year (until today)?

Categories
advice and tips Career Fun Life Life Tips

How I learned spoken English after coming to the USA and started teaching

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Using Spoken English the 1st time in the USA

97年夏天我第一次来美国，我的飞机航班是东航上海虹桥(SHA) 到洛杉矶 (LAX, China Eastern MU 583), 当时好像用的是麦道11(Btw, 93年好像有一次事故），再从洛杉矶坐TWA航班飞圣路易斯(STL)。我在洛杉矶机场犯了一个不大不小的错误。我当时很想上厕所，急着从机场（入境处和海关）出来，结果一出来就拿错了行李。等我发现我拿错了，我已经出了海关，我赶紧用我的英语跟美国机场的工作人员解释，还好他听懂了，让我进去跟东航的地勤人员说上话，交换了行李（取到了我自己的行李）。这个箱子是当时上海第一百货的牌子，估计我们都是在一百买的，这个箱子实用也较便宜。这一次是我的口语第一次在美国派到用场。

PS: 大概在2005/6年在圣村的机场，又碰到一件类似的事情，这一次是Diplomat的灰色硬壳箱。对方把我的箱子拿到家以后，没有多想，直接撬锁。后来她通过航空公司陪了我大概是五十还是一百块钱(USD)：她没有拿我的东西，就是赔我的坏掉的箱锁。那个箱子今年回国才退休。Also: I have other stories with the diplomat luggage (1 and 2) back in 2007 when I tried to replace a broken wheel. So this one really last for a long time: at least from 2007 to 2023. I think I bought it before 2007 too.

Learning English in Missouri S&T at Rolla

Note the adults tend to stay or social with her/his own ethic group or friends, and use the 1st language he/she is familiar with. When I was a graduate student in Rolla more than 20 years ago, I used to have an American professor, and he made a comment which I agree: American grad students stay with the Americans, Chinese students stay with the Chinese, and Indian students stay with Indians.

I have Indian born advisor, and I talked to Indian born graduate students. One nice thing is one fellow graduate student sometimes corrected my English, and that really helped. Not many people would correct or point out. Btw, that particular grad student is now a technology VP at a credit rating agency.

At one time, I was able to translate for the professors during a meeting. I think the fellow graduate student is from Africa and he has some accent, but it’s not too hard to guess or figure out.

Host family
When I was new to Rolla, I got to learn the Stoltz family through the international office’s host family program. And they helped my English (via conversations), and get familiar with the America culture in many aspects. I still remember, the dinners, the trips to the Governor’s Manson, to Branson and the Xmas gifts.

Fraternity

At one time because I live with American undergrad everyday, and listen to their talking daily, I felt English is almost like “my native language”. Also once my “big brother” told me: you lived in a quite unique fraternity. And I agree: in the beginning of my stay there, I rode bike from school to the fraternity house every day. When the weather was bad I would call the house for help, and my brothers never failed to pick me up. That includes the rides in the snow days too.

I retook the English test again a few years later: got a “fair” grade from another Indian born professor.

TV and Movies are also a very important source of education for my Oral English. Back in those days it was mostly the Blockbuster videos, and just movies on the TV. Now it’s mostly streaming mostly from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. American middle schools and high school tv 📺 or movies 🎥
High School: Gilmore girls (Netflix)
High School: Breakfast club (I watched via Amazon Prime, free)
College: back to school 🏫 (Amazon, for a fee)

Holiday themed movies

Love Actually (a classic, watch it on Netflix before 12/31/2023)

Holiday in Vineyard (Netflix)

Christmas with a View (Netflix, going away on 1/1/24)

More

Romantic series: the Virgin River (Netflix, the series 5 just debuted and the last episode has holiday theme/Christmas celebration)

Other comedies:

Seinfeld

Friends

No Hard Feelings (Jennifer Lawrence, new on Netflix)

NPR

Most listened programs: morning edition, all things considered, market place, planet money and ted radio hour.

Listened in the past, enjoyed but no longer available or no longer listen much due change of taste or programming: Diane Rhem show, Fresh Air (Terry Gros), Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Weekend Edition.

Including BBC World Service (in the night)

Teaching

https://twitter.com/435hz/status/1730065866195095985

I taught in China. Many years ago in SH. Failed. Will talk more about that exp. later, hopefully 🙁

When I was new to Rolla, I failed in the Teaching Assistant (TA) English test – later I tried to practice oral English with a English teacher during lunch (once a week). I didn’t teach when at Rolla (again because I flunked the spoken English test), and had to look for RA (research assistant) job in the school. Later on I taught in Abacus Rolla, to a few fellow grad students, and I did okay. It was friendly environment too.

This fall I started teaching graduate course at Webster U. 韦伯斯特大学客座教授（其实就是兼职 adjunct professor 🙂 Couple funny things:

  1. I was nervous before doing this, but my wife and 13 year old daughter were quite nervous too;
  2. I think it’s giving me some energy interacting with younger folks (all graduate students are younger than me). I do interact with my kids quite a bit too: to be precise more than interacting with them, or Uber-ing them around. But most kids will eventually grow up and live on their own. That’s where interacting with young folks becoming more important: I believe that’s one reason Warren Buffett likes to teach at school sometimes, or hosting the MBA students at his company’s HQ or at the annual shareholder meeting. Also the BRK meeting, plus Charlie’s Daily Journal Co and past Wesco shareholder meetings allow both of them to interact with many people, including many young people too. That’s one secret sauce of their longetibity.
Categories
Life Life Tips Saint Louis

St. Louis Area Nature Trails

Reading Time: 3 minutes

For hiking or walking. Some are paved, while others are not. By nature I mean there are trees etc. around the trail. I am adding difficulty levels (categories) for hiking or walking. By easy, I mean it’s suitable for family. By moderate, I mean, the old or the young may have some challenge complete the whole trail due to distance, or the surface.

Easy

Gentry Park at Bridgeton: paved

Malcolm Terrace Park: some nature walk, 1 mile round trip from the pavillion (the longer loop).

Millennium Park: paved.

Stacy Park: some nature walk, newly installed in last few years.

Venable Park: full name is Dr. Phillip Venable Memorial Park.

Warson Park: Stacy Park: some nature walk, newly installed in last few years.

Chesterfield central park: all paved

Creve Coeur Lake (paved), the loop is about 3.6 miles. Gets popular in nice days (weather). Note many St. Louis county parks have the exercises equipment or station along the trail, sometimes my kids would like to play with them during the walk. The only thing we need to be careful is: sometimes an equipment could be broken – stay away from it. Don’t attempt to work on the broken equipment, and got hurt (then sue the county park division 🙂

Powder Valley: mixed paved vs gravel. There are a few short distance trails.

Longview Farm park: at Town and Country. Note the Quneey Park is not too far away, and it’s much bigger.

James McDonnell County Park: it has quite a few amenities, and it’s fairly close to where I live.

Moderate

Boot Leg Trails at Creve Coeur Lake: note this is a trail sometimes the bikers riding bikes. Most of them are mindful of the hikers, but in general try not to listen to AirPods (especially with the noise cancelling features) so that you don’t get hit by a bike. I think the Lost Valley in St. Charles are like that too.

Quneey Park: this along with the Boot Leg, are probably two popular longer trails in the St. Lous county. I recall I ran once at the park during the SnowBall series a few years ago (maybe year 2017 or 2018?). There are two popular winter run series in the STL area, the other one is Frost Bite. I am running the latter series last year and this year. Both are good. I had quite some memories over the years from the Snowball series, including once, had to run briefly in the Creve Coeur lake (paved) trail in the melted snow water: one gentleman fell unfortunately, and that’s the reason I remembered.

Lost Valley: St. Charles. We did a large portion of the trail during the rock runner morning run. Below is quote from Andy K. who is the organizer of Rock Runner

======

  • Physical Address is: Lost Valley Trails Parking Lot, Lost Valley Trail, Defiance, MO 63341 (trailhead). 
  • Technical Level Yellow as the trail includes a variety of the following: single track, gravel road, creek crossings, dirt and semi rocky trails, switch-backs, moderate climbs and descents
  • For the History Buffs among us, here is a great link with tons of information and pics surrounding the unfortunate events in the 1940’s in the surrounding area of the park. Lost Valley area history  

======

Mastodon: Jefferson County

More nature trails

I also maintain a Google doc that has more nature trails in the area. I intend to maintain that google doc as time goes. Probably hike (re-hike) some of those trails too.

During 2020 to 2022, we (as a family, many times with friends) hiked quite a few places, especially in the year 2020 and 2021 (due to pandemic, I guess the moms were worried about kids’s well beings, and they don’t like kids glue their eyes to the iPads all day). Unfortunately “gluing to iPads or computer” is the new normal now with the pandemic is largely behind us 🙁

In Summer 2022 I also joined the Rock Runner by Fleet Feet and got to hike or ran in some of the area nature trails.

PS: AllTrails has a nice website and app for the trails in the US. I used their paid app in couple years and they allow the map to downloaded so that even in the trails (a lot of times we don’t have reliable cell data), we can still have the map and GPS.

Categories
China Chinese articles Life

长江轮船🚢

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The picture is from 春节回家路上，你是否还记得那张旧船票？

再过几年，如果不出意外(knock on the woods)，我会送我的老大去上大学。希望是一所她理想中的学校。今年是我大学毕业30周年。也就是说我是34年前（也就是1989年夏天）开始去上大学的。我家在宁波，我的大学在武汉。那时候国内火车没有现在那么发达。但是那时候有轮船，有客运的海轮和长江轮船。宁波到上海一般是坐海轮或是火车，上海（十六铺码头）到武汉（汉口，忘了几号码头了）有长江轮。大学生坐火车有半票，轮船没有这个优惠。火车要相对快一些，但是有时候（很多时候）会没有座位。轮船较慢但是有床位可以睡觉。可以说各有利弊。其实还有飞机，宁波到武汉有运七(Wiki, Baidu))的飞机，很可能是螺旋桨的飞机。我没有坐过（因为机票更贵），但是我有镇海中学的同学坐过。

第一次去大学

我第一次去武汉上学是坐了两个/趟轮船，宁波到上海，上海再到武汉。我爸爸送我到上海。宁波到上海一般是坐/睡一个晚上。上海到武汉，长江逆流而上，是72个小时，大概是两天三夜。武汉到上海顺流而下大概是48小时。还有长江轮其实有两个分公司，江申号是上海的（上海简称是申），江汉号是武汉的。

轮船一般会有不同等级的仓位，一般坐四等仓较多。我有一次坐了回长江轮的五等仓。那一次好像是我表姐带着我去买票，她可能有点节省惯了，她建议我买五等仓，我就买了。

四等仓和五等仓

五等仓的一个房间人/床比四等仓就更多一些。四等仓我印象中是十二个人，五等舱可能是二十四人。还有就是五等舱是在最底层，机器的声音好像也响一些。我现在美国呆久了，我住的地方也有不少华人。我觉得华人有一点是有待改进的，那就是攀比和歧视。轮船的仓位也是有歧视的：我记得当时五等舱的同仓里面好像有上海知青一家人。男主人说：他们有些人认为我们是穷人（他用了穷鬼这个词），其实我们并不是没钱，我们只是想省钱。我觉得他的话也是有道理的。其实除了五等仓，还有一种叫散仓，就是给一个折叠床和被褥，一般可以放在船头。有一回，大概是1993秋天，我刚毕业不久，出差从青岛回上海坐海轮，没有床位，大家都坐了散仓。

我第一次去武汉坐了四等仓：我记得当时同仓有几个国家排球（青年）队的几个队员，湖北人，他们说的湖北话我基本上不懂。不过武汉/湖北话其实跟普通话较接近，到了学校以后很快就能听懂了。有一个小小的笑话，有个湖北同学，我们两个可能是到寝室最早的，他说：我的“鞋子”（孩子，湖北话鞋子听起来像孩子）（从窗口）掉下去了。

我印象中四等舱和五等舱的价格大概差别是十几/二十块钱（五十几🆚七十几）。我记得火车票因为是半票大概是二十七块钱。那时候十几/二十块钱对我来说还是值一点钱的：我印象中到我大四的下学期，我爸爸妈妈大概会给我一个月一百块钱的生活费（主要是吃饭的钱，加上零花）。我倒推一下，估计我大一的第一学期，可能一个月是五十块钱的生活费。

总的来说，坐船比坐火车还是舒服很多。因为火车，尤其在春运期间，不仅没坐的位置，有时连站的位置也没有。我以前在这两个博客文章里也讲过, search for “train” (blog post 1, blog post 2)。我记得，有一次，我从宁波回武昌，从南昌转车，经株洲，最后到武昌，总共大概站了十几个小时。那时候是绿皮的火车。我记得有一段时间，我站在一个东阳到武汉大学上学的师姐（88级），她给了我一个苹果，削了皮的。

餐厅

轮船上有餐厅，当然也不会很便宜。很多时候，我应该是吃方便面的。那时候好像还流行火腿肠。偶尔有时也会去餐厅买个饭。记得有一次同仓的有个在武汉上学的师姐（比我高一级的女生，她家可能是马鞍山的），她的男朋友也会上船，她见到男朋友自然很开心。

轶事

有一次，好像是冬天，有个人跳下去了，是白天（我估计这个人不是真的想自杀）。结果很快被发现，大船掉头，放下小艇把那个人捞上来，费了一点时间。

我为什么去武汉上学

有一个原因，我家里人，主要是听我妈妈说去北方要吃黑面包（馒头）。我们南方人本来就不喜欢面包，好像有个老乡去了北方（天津还是西安）回来说的。我估计，我妈妈可能希望我上学的地方近一些。结果我第二志愿报了武汉（第一志愿是上海某高校）。因为武汉是吃大米为主的。我有个山东同学，在老家主要是吃馒头（面食）。他们一帮山东老乡在校门口的饭店吃饭，问有没有饭，结果拿上来的是米饭，很是失望。那时候在学校里，听到苏南，上海，绍兴等地的话都是感觉较亲的。

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School Fun Fun Video

The most important thing we can teach our kids

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Imagine when a kid falls and how western parents and traditional Chinese grandmas react

Is probably the confidence. From the day they start to walk. I still remember the time my older daughter started to walk. I think most parents would encourage their toddler kids to walk when the kiddos were still learning. I guess the same goes for the potty training. Now I recall we gave our older daughter chocolate when she successfully used the potty without peeing or pooing in the diaper. when we started potty training on her. And I clearly recall she asked for chocolate at her toddler daycare place when she successfully did it there.

In terms of teaching kids to walk or run, I also recall, that many years ago, in my college (China), sometimes we saw Western parents walk with young kids on campus. And occasionally, kids will fall, to my initial surprise, the western parents would usually let the kids get up by themselves, and in a way help them grow. This way of handling kids falling is totally opposite to what my grandmas would do: they would walk over, blame the ground, pretend hitting the ground, and so on.

Fast forward though, I think partially due to kids growing, partially due to our own aging, it seems we can use more patience as kids growing up. I know it’s easier said than done, especially for parents of teens, pre-teens etc.

I think the below tweet showed an excellent way the parent supported his kid. Lot of hard work, obviously. But it both improved her volleyball skills and perhaps equally important if not more, her confidence in playing volleyball.

Confidence without substance (or relevant skills) is ignorance, in a way or from my perspective. I think sometimes we all make those kind of mistakes.

Soldier On or Soldier Through

I think the confidence can also gained by trying, or in Charlie Munger’s case, he emphasized “solider on”.