Years ago when I think of AI, I only think about the autonomous driving (driverless car or self driving car). The tech behind it is so called “deep learning“, and it’s a part of Artificial Intelligence. Now it’s all the Chatgpt and Generative AI, or in Chinese tech community, AIGC (AIG generated content) is on the rage.
Is it AI or just computer vs human? I recall I could not beat the computer on chess.com (I believe it’ just the computer algorithm behind it, there is no machine learning behind the scene) easily. Note I am not a very good chess player. But I recall Google has this AlphaZero and it beats chess world-champion. The latter probably has some artificial intelligence and some machine learning capability.
Personally I like Apple’s way of roll out AI as time goes approach. For Apple: over the years I noticed iPhone in particular would guess where I want to go, I think it probably looked at my calendar and the usage of map app. Also I like the “featured photo” and “memories” feature on the iPhone photos app very much. The other day I saw the feature photo on my iPhone was my old daughter 1st school day picture. I know Facebook and Google photos can probably do that too. But for Facebook I think I would need to upload the photo that day. Not sure about Google, because I used Android at most for 1 year or 2, among my last 13 years use of smartphone.
Apple rarely rolls out things or features when they are not ready. I recall the rumor (a while ago especially) there was talk of Apple Car. But till today there is no Apple Car been seen in the real world, which is quite different from Tesla, Alphabet (Google) Waymo and Cruise (GM).
Impact on other people’s livelihood
The main worry in addition to invasion or erosion of privacy, is the AI could potentially take over people’s jobs. One area is in the creative arena, artists, writers etc. Below is a real story.
I related question I have: how many of the Twitter Chinese porn video are made by AI, those #pigButcher style of videos. Also this one made by AI
Again, Google, Microsoft, and Meta can’t stop talking about A.I. — here’s why Apple rarely mentions it.
Microsoft $MSFT and Google $GOOGL executives said the word AI or a version of it 145 times during todays earnings calls – CNBC
AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI… pic.twitter.com/PuUS9ndIfJ
Island Way Sorbet (actually my younger one probably found this online, not sure if it’s YT shorts or somewhere else). Now I have to wait patiently for this in Spring /Summer season.
KOOSHY CROUTONS (I only bought it once, and my older daughter asked can we get it again)
(Original) I found this one Costco potato corn dog (Eat With Emily post; The Daily Meal post) at my my local Costco (U city), after seeing it from a friend. I made a small mistake when cooking it at 1st try, I put it along side with the Hamburger on the outdoor gas stove (for BBQ), which kinda burned it. Later I tried microwave, which works better. I think we probably only need 1.5 mins to 3 mins via microwave oven. Note the inside is cheese, or to be more specific, the mozzarella Cheese.
Another one is the cheese crips. I think at the local store it’s about $9 a pack. Not as expensive as shown in the online store. I found it at other grocery store too, but it’s more expensive than Costco.
Last but not least, Costco Shoyu Ramen with chicken – Frozen Ramen Bowls. It looks like 5 out of 6 bowls are gone since I bought them yesterday 🙂 One thing is we used regular microwave friendly bowls for warming / heating it up. I joked with my wife it probably would cost $7 or $8 in a restaurant.
PS: I noticed in last 6 months or so, Costco likes to move its merchandize around, mostly to create a “treasure hunt” feeling for the shoppers 🙂 This is applicable to some of the hot or seasonal items too.
On this past Sunday evening, I learned a harsh lesson on the fast food and order food via mobile apps. It’s not the 1st time I waited a loooooooong time for the food. During pandemic I recalled once I waited probably one hour at the Panda Express not far from where I live, when I was using the Uber Eats app. I learned lesson and didn’t go back there for a loooooooong time. After the embargo period, I only go there via drive through, or sometimes when their door is open, I will go inside and order food.
I also often go to Chick-fil-A (CFA), Culver’s and Panera (St. Louis Bread Co., or just Bread Co here). I never had issues at all 3. All are fairly friendly places. Using mobile apps ordering food is quite ubiquitous nowadays. This may be get more popular during pandemic and this change seems kept intact post pandemic – the other day I saw a bunch of people wait for food (online order) at Noodles Co, and I recall before pandemic during dinner time, there were usually quite a few diners eating there. Personally I use the restaurants app / website such as CFA, Corner 17, Five Guys, McDonald’s, Noodles Co, Panera, Pot Belly’s, Pickle-man, Raising Cane’s, Shake Shack, Taco Bell, Taike, etc., and sometimes the food delivery app / website (I mainly do pickup though) such as Chowbus (Asian ethnic foods) (Grub-hub (Seamless) and Uber Eats. In very few cases I would run into issues. And I don’t really care much if the restaurants miss one or two items: I think mostly are honest mistakes and we all make mistakes as we are humans.
But on last Sunday the fast food place Popeyes gave me a lesson on this again: not all fast food places are equal. We ordered food from the mobile app (first time I used their app). And we planned to dine in the restaurant. I waited quite patiently. After a few customers and probably 20 to 30 minutes, the staff told me they don’t have couple items, and asked me to do something inside the app. I don’t see an option to update the order in the app. And because the kids already waited for a while, I asked them if they can give the items they have or give replacement (in my impression giving replacement is a quite common practice in some restaurants). They would not do any of those. I did the reporting in the app and we went to the nearby McDonalds’s in stead. I setup an email alert for the post of the charge, and couple days later I started dispute once I received the email message. Did the email again to the merchant customer service department also. || Update (07-26-2023 pm) It looks like after I replay back to the Zendesk (they use Zendesk for customer service) email yesterday, the merchant did refund.
Later on I did a bit more google search, and it seems this (customer service issue) is a quite well know issue at the mentioned chain restaurant: google review, trip advisor, delish and reddit. So I would stay away from them for now.
Customer Service is a tough job in general. As my 13 year old told me from time to time, (probably from her own observations), human beings are messy, and she doesn’t want to be a people manager when she grows up. Me neither. My customer service experience is limited, but once I did spent 2 hours (maybe more) to fix an issue when I was working for the credit card company (loyalty and rewards program), and basically I was trying to issue about 13 cents (yes $0.13) worth of points to a bank customer, because that customer (an old gentleman) would call the customer service line every day to complain about the issue.
I do understand in the case of many fast food restaurants, they are short staffed, and sometimes customers are not that reasonable (I don’t believe customers are always right, btw). But on the other hand, many fast food restaurants don’t provide something (food or drink) that’s only available at their shop, and customers always have a choices. I think this can be expanded to things such as banks, internet services and grocery stores, etc. too.
Something came to my mind (modified from a fairly well known saying): one may never remember what food they eat, but they will always remember how they are being treated at the restaurant (or some other establishment). Another example is in the old days, I recall there were beggars who asked for food at my village, and we wouldn’t or should not say anything like: 嗟来食. And recently I heard sometimes the police would be crazy at the homeless person who ate at restaurant too. Last but not least, a topic on homeless customer (too big a topic and I would not expand it here).
PS: I recall many years ago when I was in the graduate school, one of the fellow graduate students an American friend told me in general Americans can wait about 5 minutes for the food at McDonald’s (he meant people could use more patience, which I agree). I think I probably can wait for 15 to 20 minutes at a fast food / fast casual place nowadays. || Also, yesterday I noticed the CFA is coming to Creve Coeur, they will take over the place at the former TGIF place at Tempo Drive and Olive Road. There will be another CFA place next to the U City Costco too.
PS 2: I came across this one, which is a bit extreme. Again really there is no need to fight over something like this. I think the best way is to go to another place, e.g., McDonald’s, Chick fil A, Raising Cane’s, or Culver’s, in this case 🙂
This is probably my only successful merge arbitrage speculation so far. By “success” I meant I am out after the recent US FTC failed attempt to stop the merge. Note the UK authority could still pose challenges or stop this thing completely. Although the market does expect the deal to close eventually.
I didn’t speculate on those frequently. I do recall I did a few such as the CNOOC / Chevon bidding war on a company, as well as the InBev buying Budweiser. For this one Activision I started buying after the 2022 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting. And I did trade the stock here and there during the process. The main thing I am happy about is not how much money I made (about $1,000 I think, I didn’t bet heavily on it, btw), but I was able to hold my position towards the end (I mean almost the end, close to the $95 closing price).
Reading Time: 5minutesStock chart for AT&T ends on 07/14/2023 – this actually the low point of stock for a while as you can see the new chart here
(Update 12-19-2024) I gave it more thought here at my Substack.
(Update 12-31-2023) I just looked at one of my IRA accounts in which I hold mostly stocks. The dividend yield is about 1% (I hold about 45% of the portfolio in $BRK). There are two points of the views on dividend based investing, some people argue we don’t always need the dividend. In the example of $BRK, basically we can trust the management, and we just need to sell the stocks to get the “dividend” for our spending need. Below is a YT video that explains this.
(Update 12-15-2023) Costco is issuing a special dividend of $15 per share, and this spurs some interest on some investors. Quote Motley Fool: “This will be Costco’s fifth-ever special dividend. Previous special dividends were paid in 2012, 2015, 2017, and 2020 in the amounts of $7, $5, $7, and $10, respectively. This makes the company’s 2024 special dividend of $15 its largest, by far.” I only have a few shares of $COST, btw. Below is a bigger $COST shareholder.
But I have more $KO, and I believe today 12-15-2023 is also the day Coca Cola pays out quarterly dividend: it’s 46 cents a share. Note $BRK has much more dividend income from $KO.
Other dividend stocks I have: $DVN and $PFE. Both declined significantly this year. I bought $DVN in the hope of getting the dividend yield, and it seems with the oil price slipping (in the near future), this didn’t work out for me yet. You may also notice $DVN’s dividend dropped compared to last year.
In the case of $PFE, the situation is much more dire: as shown in this Yahoo Finance Video.
Last but not least, Steve Baller, the former CEO of Microsoft, is getting lots of money from $MSFT dividend.
I have invested or to be more precise speculated in the US stock market since 2003, and this will mark the 20 year anniversary. In recent years, I gave more thoughts to the dividend, both because the dividends are becoming more meaningful, as well as I am thinking about potentially switch from a 9 to 5 job to multiple income streams, e.g., dividends, adjunct teaching at college, ads income from this blog (this seems to be hardest so far, btw :-), etc.
A few things to keep in mind when doing dividend-based or focused investing.
Make sure the company can afford or pay the dividend from its Free Cash Flow (FCF). If something is too good to be true, it’s likely not true. Case in point, if you look at AT&T stock now (07-21-2023), the dividend yield is 7.5%. The problem with AT&T and some other companies (e.g., $SCS, Steelcase the office furniture maker came to mind) is with the debt and deteriorating business or economy, they may not be able to pay the dividend continuously. I know one company that cut dividends recently: VF Corp ($VFC). More on AT&T, I had a tweet on its return in the last 29 years: I think I still need to calculate it myself. Not sure if the chart below includes all the cash dividends and the stock dividend (“Additionally, shareholders of AT&T received 0.241917 shares of WBD for each share of AT&T common stock they held at close”) $T #dividend.
I just noticed this Tweet (thread): S&P Dividend Aristocrats (Wikipedia; 5 year performance comparison with S&P 500, google finance, it seems they did NOT include the dividends in the calculation). I have $KO (#CocaCola) on this list. But Number 2 on the list Leggett & Platt, Incorporated (LEG) looked interesting to me. I just realized it’s based in Missouri (wiki), in fact, the town Carthage, Missouri is close to Joplin, MO, and it has two interstates passing the town: I-44 and I-49. Note their products are also interesting (e.g., this geosynthetic solution and their specialty products, as well as their history. They seem making components for office furniture too – reminds me of Steelcase and my recent purchase of an office chair. The family appears to no longer controls the company. Their current annual dividend is $1.84 (rate is %6.26 per Friday 7-21-2023 closing price of $29.38). I think I will do a deep dive into the company next. Btw, recently I realized this is a hard time for new graduates to get into the IT/software development field, I just noticed there is one position for this company (IT support, I know it’s not ideal, but still something to think about as an entry-level job).
I think I probably say a word about why invested in “stocks that issue cash dividend”. Besides the benefits of cash, a company that issues dividends regularly in some way shows two things: 1) Financial strength (again show me the free cash flow); 2) They care about the shareholder, in some cases the owners probably have a lot of shares too and they actually rely on the dividend for their lives. On the other hand, this does not mean the companies that doesn’t issue dividend are not good, in fact, Berkshire Hathaway the company famous investor Warren Buffett doesn’t issue regular dividend. I recall he said once they did issue 10 cents (source: “Other than a ten cent per share dividend that Berkshire paid in 1967, the company has never paid a dividend to shareholders since Warren Buffett took control in 1965.“) dividend, which looking back it was an expensive mistake. The reason being they invested in the money (say $1) instead of give it to shareholders right away, they get way more than $1 down the road.
PS: Leggett & Platt reminds me of another Missouri based company (Monett, Missouri), ironically it’s a banking ( technology company named Jack Henry & Associates (JKHY). They provide technology and service for financial services industry, with a focus on smaller banks or credit unions. It has an excellent return if we look from its IPO. It has a small dividend, and is in the S&P 500 index. Maybe someday I will drive around those two towns, and see if I can find special sauces that made them successful. Note the greater St. Lotus area has some S&P and Fortune 500 companies too: such as Emerson Electric (EMR) on this list (tweet). Btw, the all time return of JKHY (+47,569.44%, from 1985) is much better than EMR (+1,717.33%, from 1983). Not sure if Google finance has the complete set of historical data. Btw, Leggett & Platt (LEG) Inc performed similar to EMR in this period. I probably looked at JKHY about 15 years ago, not definitely not as serious as Warren Buffett. Warren probably reads the annual report for the company he is interested (plus the reports for 8 competitors).
Market sentiment week of 07-17
It can be better summarized by the unusual_whales tweet on the $ABNB share sales of its cofounder. While I am not saying the insiders always time the market, but it still reminds me of this: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sells more than $285 million in Microsoft stock. I recall about 6 month later (April 2022), $MSFT and Nasdaq had a peak / climax. Again I am not predicting the same this time around 🙂
This is probably my 3rd or 4th visit to the Jeff City (I recall one of my American friends used to call it Jeff City). I had to admit I forgot most of it as my last visit was probably more than 20 years ago. I recall in the Thanksgivings of 1997 and 1998, I visited the Governor’s Mansion because my American host family (Bob and Sue’s family) are the family friends of Governor Mel Carnahan. They are all Rolla native. I can explain their family relationship if you are interested. Please note host family is not where I stayed when I was in Rolla, but I interacted with them quite a bit and they helped me quite a bit in terms of learning / practicing English, as well as learn American culture and heritage.
Sophia our 9 year old decided she wanted to visit a place that’s about 2 hours drive, as recently saw a name for it “trip with one tank of gas” (don’t know how to measure it with EVs 🙂 And she picked the Jeff city. Probably because she likes the name. And I booked hotel which is the Hampton Inn near Capital Mall.
The day before the trip, my girls especially my 13 year old asked “dad, did you plan for the trip”? No I didn’t. So I did google and found Missouri State Penitentiary (tour booking website) on the top of the TripAdvisor list. So we kind agreed we will visit it on the second day (a Sunday). For Saturday we plan to drive there and stroll around the state capitol.
Half the fun is on the road, as the old saying goes. We took the highway 70 west from Wentzville, and took exit 148, drove highway 54 to the Jeff city. On highway 54 we passed Fulton, the Westminster College there is the location where Winston Churchill (the former prime minister of Great Britain) delivered the famous Iron Curtain speech. I understand that’s what Westminster / Fulton are famous for (for me). But I am fairly certain they have much more to offer. Below is from Westminster College website (if you scroll down a bit, you will see):
When you hear about Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri – you may also hear about Sir Winston Churchill, and for good reason. On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill visited Westminster College as the Green Lecturer and delivered “Sinews of Peace,” a message heard round the world that went down in history as the “Iron Curtain Speech.”
It was a quite hot afternoon, the capitol was closed to visitors. We went back Sunday morning to get a better view of the front side of Capitol, including the Missouri river.
I was surprised to find the sculpture of Monroe etc, which was about the Louisiana Purchase. I had to admit I didn’t brush up my Missouri history before the trip. Some of the other sculptures and memorials are also pretty good / impressive. The girls liked the Lewis and Clark monuments especially the dog.
For food, we had the Fuji Japanese restaurant, and Aunt Annies at the Capital Mall, also the Central Diary ice cream (this is the place to visit for the cancelled 4th graders field trip in 2020, when my 13 year old was a 4th grader). I am glad we finally made it after 3+ years 🙂
But we have a bonus this time, that is the Missouri State Penitentiary (Wikipedia). We picked the most popular 2 hour history tour. And I am a history junkie to be honest. The tour beat my expectation and there was one small scare moment: we toured the dungeon cell which is for the punishment of convicts (offenders => residents). It was totally dark for a few minutes. The tour guide Kathy was quite knowledgeable on the history and the penitentiary as she previously worked in the system, so was James the tour assistant. We toured the gas chamber at the last.
I understand it’s a bit ironic the most popular tourist destination is the penitentiary. But the capital mall is not bad either, with the stores and other entertainments, such as the little animals ride-ons (electric chargeable). Sophia liked it and the owner / operator is from China and she even offered free ride to her after she rode once. We were ready to leave though – we took a slightly different way back, as I saw some bad traffic / accidents on highway 70 (I-70), and decided to take highway 50 / I-44 instead. I had a little fun driving the more rural highway 50, a large portion of which is two lanes highway. But I survived with only 3 cars passing me 🙂
This is something I felt we were doing sometimes in the agile software development. It goes like this, we analyze a problem, and we come up with some sort of solution / architecture / design. But during implementation we realized we missed something, especially on the consideration of things like performance. We know we cannot work on the stories forever, so what do we do? We create a new “performance” story and put it in the backlog, meanwhile pushing the existing story forward. This is okay for one time but not every time, in my opinion.
Also, recall a code section in which sometimes people tend to overlook.
Those are scenarios are different
if(condition 1) { // do something 1
if(condition 2) { // do something 2
}
}
vs
if(if(condition 1) {) { // do something 1
}
if(if(condition 2) {) { // do something 2
}
PS: came across this tweet – “coding is 95% copying and pasting”. I think the author may said it in a joking tone. For me seriously I am guilty of this quite a bit in my career. Once I cloned (copied) the javascript code (framework) for a tree structure, and later I started to regret it. One reason I copied was I didn’t know how to properly use an Object Oriented approach there. Also during re-rewrite projects (hope you don’t have to work on those), sometimes there are quite a bit copy/paste as well. I understand sometimes there are valid reasons, e..g., if we just do a “life and shift” without intension to change any business logic. In practice though, there are usually room for improvement during rewrite.
Also, once a business analyst shot me an email shortly after I asked doing a DB update for a month end job. And that person quickly realized the reason for that update and retracted the email or the question. It still shows the sign of a not well organized place though. Believe me that’s not the most disorganized place I worked so far 🙂
Both my daughters’ passports expired. They are kids and it looks like they will have to get new ones. My wife was thinking we just go to to the USPS office on Saturday (which is how we do in the good old days), and I promptly stopped her. Because from my own experience, a lot of things changed since pandemic. So I went to the USPS website for passport application including renewal.
One thing to keep in mind for the kids passport app: “Both parents/guardians must authorize the issuance of a child’s passport. The best way to give consent is for both parents/guardians to go with the child when applying.” I think I can understand the intention behind this: both parents being present. That is to prevent any dispute of child custody and to prevent one parent takes child away from another. In practice though, this may put more burden on any hourly working parent. Because they may have to leave work (unpaid) to get the passport application in. So there is that.
Also make sure both parents have valid IDs. The cost is $100 for the state department, and $50 for the post office. Since we applied for 2 kids, so the total is about $300. The state department portion has to be cash, debit (there is a small fee) or check (no fees for check), it cannot be credit card. So make sure bring a checkbook as needed. Btw, the clerk at USPS office is very friendly. She took my older daughter’s picture for a few times to make sure it’s good.
Btw, noticed the California Pizza Kitchen in Creve Coeur only offered takeout yesterday evening. We took our friends to the Bristol’s instead. A few days ago I noticed the Noodles and Co. has a lot of takeout customers too, I think mostly probably offered via web or mobile app. Very few people ate inside the restaurant.
PS: Covid pandemic definitely changed things around. I recall renewing the license plate online during the pandemic: “I saw long lines at the license office at Olivette yesterday too. I also just did a first-time online license plate renewal 2 days ago. It’s not the sharpest website but it works. I think we should try new things, especially considering the pandemic. (not everyone can renew online)”
Below was written over a few days. Personal story. Hopefully could be useful for people in the USA. As one of my previous colleagues said: the best is to avoid the hospital, but if we do go, it’s important to have the healthcare insurance 🙂
Today (7/01) I spent almost full day at the total access urgent care center (TAUC). I am not complaining but rather quite appreciative of how things came about. Yesterday (06/30/2023) we had a storm here and I did a dumb thing looking back: remember hindsight is always 20/20. I climbed up the ladder shortly after the storm with the intension of removing a few big tree branches on the roof. But things didn’t work as I hoped: I fell from the ladder, back down 1st and totally unexpected. Btw, here are some safety tips re: using ladders, and this one too. And I talked to my colleague about it later, who has medic and safety experience. Reflecting back the loose foundation (with mulches etc.) is also a contributing factor of the fall of ladder.
I didn’t feel too bad in the immediate aftermath, but things turned worse over the night as I found I had blood in my urine. It was about 9 or 10 pm and I didn’t think it’s a good idea to hang out at a hospital emergency room. So I tried to tough it out until 8 am this morning when the urgent care places opens. Note the main reason not going to the hospital emergency room (ER) is the ER usually tries to help the most in needed, those were seriously hurt etc., and I don’t think I am in that category.
But why I still spend almost a full day? I think the short answer is they have many patients that are in similar situation as me. Also my case is a bit more complicated because the doctor wants to do a CT scan on my neck as well as my abdomen with contrast. There is X-ray in the 1st TAUC place I went (Creve Coeur), but for CT scan I need to go to another TAUC place which is about 20 minutes drive (Chesterfield). Note this is my 2nd CT scan in the US. My first one was documented here. This time I got more scans than last time, I think I got both the regular scan as well as contrast scan. And I got the GE CT machine instead of the Siemens machine last time (year 2015).
I think TAUC started to pop up in last 10 years or so in the St. Louis area, with the booming of the urgent care in the US in general. They are not the 1st urgent care place in the area (Creve Coeur to be specific). That honor goes to St. Lukes. But St. Lukes has one disadvantages, they usually have two bills (one from the urgent care, another one from the provider). TAUC only has one consolidated bill. I think TAUC bill is also usually cheaper. For example, yesterday (7/01) I went to the Creve Coeur location 1st. I know from past experience, that I need to queue up online 1st. So I did. I waited at the Bread Co. at Old Olive road. At about 9 am, I saw I am at spot 3, and the restaurant is getting busy, so I went to the clinic.
Tests, lots of them
Typical treatment flow of urgent care goes like this: check in at front desk (may or may not fill out paperwork, or may need to make some payment from last visit, become more rare as more payments are done online nowadays). Go to the treatment room, and wait for the nurse. Nurse come in the take vitals. The provider (a doctor, nurse practitioner, or a physician assistant PD) will come in and ask questions. In my case I talked about what happened, and the aftermath. The doctor will order some tests. Actually I think my urine sample was taken before doctor even come in. And the doctor checked my back etc. and ordered both X-ray for back and legs, as well as CT Scan for the neck and the abdomen. While the X-ray technician started to work on my X-ray, I realized I have some minor pain on head too, so they (the doc and technician) did the head X-ray as well. After that they did some blood draw as well as the prep for IV for the contrast CT scan (basically leave a cap in my elbow area). I was ready to move on at about 12:15 pm at the Creve Coeur location. Thought about ordering McDonald’s but the text message came quickly asking me to go the the new TAUC location, and I realized I have something in my elbow too. So I started going there.
At the new location, I got the vitals again (before leave, the CC location did the vital for me again to make sure, and I realized the med tech/assistant is a Wash U student), and the IV which is just saline. I did the CT there, which is more complicated than last time, mainly because of the contrast scan. I closed my eyes during testing. I recall in my recent China (refer to my recent visit, this one and that one ) trip I realized they do way more CT than they are doing here, and some elders don’t like hold breath etc. and my mom didn’t like some of the tests either.
Waiting
After done the CT, as well as finishing up the IV (again saline). I was mostly in the waiting mode. I noticed in the new location, the TV is not on. I managed to plug in the power adapter for the receiver and was able to watch some TV. At one point I was restless, so I went to the car and get water as well as the portable battery to charge my iPhone, as the iPhone battery was low after I used it for a while. At about 3:30 pm or so, I got the call from the provider and he explained the things to me, and ready to let me go home. I got the call when I was in the restroom taking the call from my Apple Watch (I left the phone in the treatment room). I think I started to order McDonald’s via the app as well. The main thing at the time was to remove the cap on my elbow, and receive the discharge instructions. They did the vitals once again as well.
At about 4:15 pm, I was finally ready to go. And I went to the McDonald’s right away.
PS: on Saturday night when I 1st saw blood in my urine (which is probably the 1st time in my almost 52-year-old life), I was unsettled. Today (07-04-2023) I think about the life insurance I bought in the year 2012, which is a 15-year term life for $500,000 coverage. And today I realized 500k in the year 2012 is probably 250k in today’s dollars. Inflation is another tailwind for the insurance companies, in addition to the benefits of float (they didn’t have to pay out all the claims because people didn’t all die, or claimable accidents didn’t all happen at once). So basically they can invest the float (the income from premiums) money for a long time. Today I went to skating too, and I think I may not need to see a urologist that urgently for now.
PS 2: I found out my elbow has some residue pain from the IV, refer to this. It seems “Once the tube has been placed, the IV site shouldn’t hurt, sting, or burn. When the IV procedure is completed, some swelling and bruising at the site are common and not cause for concern. Most IV sites heal quickly in a few days.” I think I am starting to fear if I got this IV thing when I get older. And it seems to me the pain is there when I visited my mom recently in hospital in China. This seems like something comes with the modern medicine (note IV is used much more in China than there). Before my recent visit to urgent care, I recall I did this only once when I had fever (and maybe cough) a few years before pandemic. I recall the nurse put in some steroids to help me (make me more comfortable).
I was not aware or conscious of the famous Chinese singer Liang Jingru’s age until a few days ago. Note 梁静茹 Sometimes the fans call her Fish Leong. I think Leong is the last name 梁 in her native Malaysia: her ancestor is from China’s Guangdong province and I assume they all speak Cantonese.
The reason for my interest to learn her age was this short video clip tweet; here is a longer and mostly complete version on YouTube and some controversy around it (Sina in Chinese 新浪中文). Btw, the song here is 分手快樂 (YouTube link here). I think you should be able to find out on other platforms easily as this is one of her most famous songs, and Leong is probably one of the best Chinese female singers in her generation.
The controversy is about her gaining some weight in the last few years. Note she is 45 years old. Last few years due to the pandemic, many people stayed at home more and didn’t pay attention to snacking habits, or exercise, and they gained weight that way. Perhaps, age is a big factor too. I recall about 12 years ago when I was 40, one day I hiked with my friend at the Powder Valley trail, and I saw myself in a t-shirt, and suddenly I realized I gained quite a bit of weight in the last few years. Aging and gain weight is quite common due to the change of metabolism and not adapting the food/drink intake at the same time.
I recall in the summer of 2016, when I encountered one of my college classmates after about 23 years, he couldn’t recognize me due to my weight gain and aging over the years.
At the same time though, there is absolutely no need to comment on other people’s weight, especially in a not-so-friendly way. Because we will all age, some age faster, some a bit slower. Weight is a much more personal thing. Some people will gain weight more easily, and vice versa. It’s important to be vigilant because weight gain in a short period of time could mean something health-wise, and we know health is one of the most important things.
There is another subtle meaning that comes with this controversy: that is the perception of aged women are less worthy. Interestingly, Michelle Yeoh, who is also a Malaysia-born Chinese, recently talked about it. I would talk about “aging gracefully” in another post, as this is another big topic.
PS: not to 蹭热度 (cloud chasing) I felt this youtube video explained a similar situation regarding “what can be said in a joke” or whether something is “pushing the envelop” too far. Yes I had to admit that I agree with the “hot lady” there (did I push the envelop too far here? I will remove the hot if most ladies think so 🙂
PS 2: not about sexism (guys, never comment on ladies / girls appearance, vice versa for girls). It’s about ageism. I understand in Chinese there is this saying 徐娘半老 – not a complements I believe. Until recently to be precise it was during my recent China trip, in the Shanghai subway I realized I am probably the older part of the passengers in the train. So God forbid, if somethings happens in the train, I should lead, or give the opportunity of life to other younger folks 🙂 Last but not least, I created a YT playlist for her live performances in last few years. Please note to singing a few hours non-step or with little stops are not easy. Not everything is Taylor Swift.
