Categories
Life Life Tips

不在国/华人里面扎堆

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Google search: 不在国人里面扎堆 （不在华人里面扎堆）: this talked about the Chinese students abroad like to confine among themselves, in terms of social interaction etc. I can sense it when I saw my niece was here for her high school and undergraduate study.

Recently I realized some Chinese parents like to gather among Chinese parents as well. It’s not surprising and to some extent understandable for people like to gather among their races. I saw that during pandemic. But at the same time, as we gradually go back to the new normal, we should strive to step out our comfort zone.

My take

No need to be that absolute. Ideal scenario: now that we are in Rome, (for the most part) let’s do as Romes do. Otherwise why we came here at the 1st place.

When I was in Rolla during my graduate school, I stayed at Fraternity with undergraduates mainly to learn more about the English language and American culture. At my first US employer after the graduate school, I was the only Chinese at the branch and I learned all the computer programming topics in English.

Now that my kids go to middle and elementary school, I encourage my kids to play with the kids from all background. At the same time, I acted as the permanent DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) rep in the PTA/PTO organization. There are always something to learn from other cultures. And we are not always the best, the smartest, or most hard working.

One downside solely gathering among Chinese people

One word (in Chinese): 卷。Look no further than the San Francisco bay area, among the Chinese kids. Many parents either went to ivory colleges (or other very good universities) for graduate school, and for them if their kids don’t go to good universities, it’s a failure both for the kid and the parents. I have friend who moved from bay area to Miami and one reason was to reduce some competition for his kids. This is true in the school district my kids attend, although they are still a bit young (7th and 3rd grades, respectively). But I can see the pressure going up as they progress through their grades.

Categories
Life Life Tips

“He can go to technical school” and teachers’ impact on students

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When I was in the 5th grade in village elementary school, once a teacher said to my dad (they probably knew each other): your son (me) can go to a technical school (they are like technical high school), but he needs to work harder if he wants to be admitted to college/university. This is a not too bad assessment for my dad, because in my case, going to technical school or 中专 means I will get out of the village and be a white collar worker down the road. This is a big jump for kids in village due to the China hu’kou system: essentially a person jumped from the lower class to the upper class. Also, I don’t think he said it out of a strategy of 激将法 (a way to motivate me), he was mostly giving an honest assessment at the time.

Eventually I didn’t disappoint the teacher and my dad, I was able to attend college in China, via gao’kao. There are probably a lot horror stories on gaokao in China. Mine was I could not fall asleep as I was nervous, but nonetheless I was able to carry through. As my now deceased uncle (my mom’s big brother) liked to say: he (me) drunk the wines to help sleep before gaokao (I stayed at my uncle’s house during gaokao).

I think I talked about my strict teacher somewhere in my blog (search for: “a very well-known counselor”). So I am not going to repeat it. I think overall my teachers had an impact on me (search: “When I was a middle schooler”) made me a better person both academically and otherwise.

My old daughter is a 7th grader now, and she knows some good colleges and wants to go to one when it’s her time. And I just realized her homework load is not light, to say the least. And she has some very good teachers too. Once she told her she may fail the class, which was a bit surprising. Later I realized her teacher was mostly to make sure the kids do their work. Another time, she got this red carpet award, I am the proud dad here :-), and she told me winning the award was easy: she followed the teacher’s directions while some other kids don’t (yesterday she told me some kids using AirPods in the class, she did not give specifics re: which class). Now I realized with the tiktok and smartphone, today’s teachers have a much tough job than our time in middle school.

Categories
Life Life Tips Saint Louis

Car Accident 车祸

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Car accident is probably much more frequent than shooting in the US. But the latter usually gets more news coverage and much more attention. Here in St. Louis we know the shooting situation is bad. But the car accident and car/pedestrian accident are bad too.

(Update 08-22-2023) Came across this car accident involves school bus in Ohio – UPDATE: Student killed, over 20 other students injured after school bus crash in Clark Co.

(Update 27-Feb-2023) This one got national attention recently: ‘I can still hear the roaring of the engine,’ says father of teen injured in downtown St. Louis. Basically a 17 year old girl who came to St. Louis to play volleyball tournament and stayed at downtown hotel, was hit by a car and got both her legs amputated because of the injury. || And this one just come over the weekend: 4 killed, 4 critically injured in crash at South Grand Boulevard and Forest Park Avenue. || It seems aggressive/careless/reckless driving are the culprits for both cases. We know drunk driving is usually another cause. Other causes include totally avoidable issue such as “traffic signal got turned” (but people got killed in this scenario none the less, I guess the only preventable tactic is to avoid the intersection if known before hand, or drive slowly or carefully at every intersection pretending there is another car will not care about the red light).

I heard about non-fatal accident too. I know a friend’s wife was recently involved in a car accident with school bus, on a snow/slippery day/road surface, when she was dropping off kids to school.

Some tips I like to share: don’t drink and drive; don’t drive when I am really tired; drive defensively, don’t get upset or emotional when other drivers go crazy, ignore them and pretend nothing happened; last but not least, watch this YouTube video “5 Defensive Driving Strategies To Become A Safer, Smarter Driver” which is about defensive driving.

Looking back, I think I did a few stupid things such as “fatigued driving”: once we drove from STL to Yellowstone NP overnight, we didn’t stay at the hotel in the night, just driving continuously. I forgot whether it was on the way to YS NP or on the way back, but the check engine light came on. And that’s not the end of the story, I recall on the way back, I was the driver between 1 am and 3 am, and I was really tired. Eventually I had to pull aside and take a break. I did a similar thing when I was a new driver, driving back from the training at West Lafayette, IN (where Purdue U is) to Rolla, MO (where my graduate school Missouri S&T is), and when I drove past STL metro area, it was between 1 and 3 am, and it was the 2nd time I drove past St. Louis 🙂 I recall changing the lanes for the right highway was both exciting and scary 🙁 Now I think I will tell my daughters don’t do this sort of things when they get driver licenses.

(Original) Here is one just happened last night, a pedestrian was hit/killed by a semi truck on highway 44. I first noticed it from Twitter.

Here is another one in which two cars were involved.

And one more recent accident: “The Saturn was hit on the passenger side by a Ford transit van.”

And this “A preliminary investigation revealed a gold Chevrolet Cavalier was traveling southbound on Halls Ferry Road and was attempting to turn left into a parking lot near the intersection of Halls Ferry and St. Cyr Road, when it was struck on the passenger side by a gray Toyota Camry traveling northbound.”

……I don’t want to add more. Or compare car accidents with shooting victims. This is not my point, my point is mainly on the safety and precautions in terms of driving or walking. Also, from the incidents above and common sense/stats, I think we should strive to get a car that’s proper sized (my personal opinion is Toyota Camry/Honda Accord or above).

Personally I have involved in car accidents, mainly two collisions and one self induced accident (my own car, snow, slipped into ditch, good thing nobody was injured, and car was fine too). I am briefly explaining my accidents and also I like to emphasize the insurance rate will go up after we file claims (regardless who is at fault or the other party has insurance or not, something I realized yesterday).

First my self induced accident. It was about 20 years ago. Christmas night. After dinner at friend’s house, we drive home amid snow. I was driving the 2001 Nissan Altima, and on the outer lane. I lost control of my car near an exit, and I ended up went out to the exit (not my intention, I intended to stay on 270), and ended up in the ditch off the exit ramp. No injury and no damage to the car. But eventually needed AAA tow truck and we cannot get out even with a few pass by driver’s help.

A few years later, on my way home (get off work), I was hit by a left turn vehicle, again it was Nissan Altima. My bumper etc were damaged. The lady hit me had no insurance and my main loss was the deductible plus rising insurance rate after that. Initially the lady also ran away from the incident but I was able to find her the following day with some detective work (not recommended).

Lastly it was last Oct. I was rear ended at a red light near Costco west county, it was my 2012 Toyota Camry. It seems I wasn’t hurt but the car was totaled.

My takeaway is be careful when driving and try to drive defensively when possible. Don’t cut the lanes. Don’t react or be emotional when others drive crazy. Take needed breaks during long distance trip. Be alert and focus on road and surroundings when driving, don’t look at the phone etc. Listen to music (calm ones) or podcast. Remember the most important part is come home alive, and this applies to pedestrians and bikers too.

Categories
Fun Life Life Tips

Some random thoughts on teen sports

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Something random came to my mind the other day. I think overall our middle schools, high schools and some colleges *may* have emphasized too much on sports, especially team sports. I can see that from the NCAA Division I sports, basketball and football, etc. The reason I am saying that is twofold. We have limited resources, and I think compared to making sure every kid has some sports he/she likes/plays, team sports only draw a certain number of students (because it’s a selected team). And I think “make sure every kid has some sports he/she likes/plays” is more important, although it’s obviously less glamorous. Another phenomenon I saw is some kids started to specialize in some team groups fairly early (let’s say middle school, grade 6, or 7), at the same time they may not pay enough attention to academics and other things such as knowledge on “personal finance”. This obviously does not make much sense. But in this FB/Instagram/Reel/TikTok/YouTubeShorts world, I can certainly understand. Again no judgment here. This reminds me of a friend/neighbor who joked with me once: he volunteers at Human Society. He said, someone, paid $100 to adopt a dog, feels good, put it on FB, and never thinks about the long-term cost/commitment of taking care of the dog.

I said what I said, and I understand sports has its meaning and importance too. For that matter, academic as well. It’s hard to be the best nowadays, on one thing. I learned sports is hard when I was young, in my 1st year of high school. In China middle school was 3 years, and high school was 3 years too. We have the annual sports festival which is basically a track and field meet for the whole school. Because our school then is a combined middle and high school, and each grade has about 4 grades. It’s a big deal for the whole school, I vaguely recall probably when I was in the 1st grade at middle school, our class even has a mercenary of sorts, because technically a girl who specialized in sports (yes, in China there was sports school for kids talented in sports even when they were 12, or 13, they go to this sports boarding school, with everything covered by the government). So basically this girl got all the gold medals she can get, in our grade’s competition. Now you decide whether it’s fair or not. This girl probably spent 4 or 5 hours training, and I think she is in Heptathlon (https://www.topendsports.com/…/athletics-heptathlon.htm), so basically she can earn us quite a few gold medals (things such as long jump, high jump, 100 meters, 200-meter dash, etc.) for our class.

Note I don’t have that kind of talent. But I found a quick trick to earn some points for my class. I was doing okay for 200 meters sprints during middle school, likely because I got to adolescence a bit earlier than some other kids. During my freshman year in high school, that edge was going away. So I did the 400 meters. It was a tough race. Eventually, I got the No. 4 spot among 8 classes of my grade (yes 8 classes, with 50+ students each; assuming boy/girl 1 to 1 ratio, I was competing against probably 8 fastest boys out of 200). I was almost dying, as I hear my classmates cheer for me at the last 100 meters. Later on one of my friend told me I was really close to the bronze medal winner and I did give him some scare. He said: when you push hard, the other guy was scared of you as well. That’s something I learned out of that race. Psychology is definitely interesting topic including in the sports/competition. 

Other benefits I can see from doing sports (or any other activities that we can see quick progress) are the feel of accomplishment and self-esteem. Please note this does not have to come with “beating the opponent” or “winning”. In a sense, as long as we did better today than yesterday, or we learned something today, that’s a win. Self-esteem or pride should not come at the cost of “beating down others or opponents”, again this is something the recreational or competitive sports/athletes need to keep in mind. In that sense, we all can learn a good lesson in terms of how to be a good teammate from the Cincinnati Bengals’ loss of game last Sunday.

(Update 09-14-2023) Came across this post “Elite Club Sports Teams and the Dramatic Shift in High School Athletics” via FB. I agree. Quote the article: “Youth sports, now a $17 billion dollar a year industry in this country, has skyrocketed into a galaxy that is close to being insanely unrecognizable. ” (my comment: are NCAA sports similar?) || Personally I hope something like our 8th grader cross-country running for fun/exercises can continue. For team sports, I am aware of something like this – (I heard from Dr. Wipke our Superintendent, and some other parents about this). || Last but not least, it seems that in the 10th or 11th grade, they would have a really heavy course load, prep for college, etc., so finding time for team sports may not be trivial. That being said, a habit of exercise is beneficial both in the short term and in the long term.

Categories
Saint Louis

The Bayer formerly Monsanto Creve Coeur campus redevelopment

Reading Time: 3 minutes

(Update 10-25-2023) STLToday – Residents vow to fight Creve Coeur ‘village’ on former Bayer campus

(Update 10-24-2023) STLToday – Creve Coeur approves turning Bayer campus into mixed-use ‘village’. It seems to me the City of Creve Coeur is keen to move this forward amid the recent setbacks on the Olive and Mosley (HBE building, a proposal to convert it into a Hilton branded hotel), also Olive and Greaser (the proposed QT gas station) development, last but not least the apartment building at Olive Pavilion (Olive and Old Olive, current CPK and former Stir Crazy location). This is obviously a much bigger development. Also KMOV (Channel 4, video): Despite neighborhood pushback, massive Creve Coeur redevelopment approved for old Bayer campus

(Update 10-23-2023) STLToday – Creve Coeur residents want restrictions on turning Bayer campus into ‘downtown’ || It sounds like the city is for the development. At the same time, I think it’s probably fair and reasonable for the developer to give up a bit more, the buffer zone used to be much bigger: probably 200 feet, now they are proposing 50 feet (up from the original 35 feet). I hope the two sides can find a compromise.

(Update 09-30-2023) I received a call from a friend living in the neighborhood of former Bayer campus. They have a petition going on. Please read and consider signing, especially if you live in the impacted neighborhood (Monsanto/Bayer Lindbergh west campus redevelopment). If you have friends live in the neighborhood, please consider signing as well to help your friends. Thank you.

Personally I feel this is a complex topic. In America the private property is respected. But at the same time, private ownership of the land doesn’t mean the developer can do whatever he/she wants: neighbors’ rights should be considered and respected as well. It’s a balance act.

(Update 09-06-2023) KMOV: ‘Impressive development’ at former Bayer site plans on bringing in residential units, more . If this is approved it will be the 1st after the developers failed attempts to build a Hilton brand hotel (next to Mosley and Olive, the HBE building), the apartment at the CPK restaurant (or you can do a google search), and a QT gas station (Greaser and Olive). Note the developer and City of Creve Coeur didn’t always got it right: they approved the Fresh Market at City Place, and it opened probably for a year before shutdown.

Some differences I can see for now: 1) the former Bayer campus is much bigger and developer may have more financial resources. 2) : the neighbors at Mosley and Greaser were pretty fired up and united in terms of opposing the project – I don’t see such as grassroot movement against the former Bayer campus redevelopment so far. I recall seeing people protesting the hotel project by sitting on the sidewalk of Olive Street (and Mosley).

(Update 09-01-2023) Some more movement on the development, as you can read from this STLToday piece – Creve Coeur to review redevelopment of former Bayer campus. Quote “Fireside Financial and its development partner, Jack Matthews Development, are proposing a mixed-use redevelopment with apartments, townhomes, retail, hotels, office buildings and other commercial space at the property, at 10300 Olive Boulevard…… Edwardsville based Fireside bought the 95-acre site from Bayer last year for $55 million, according to St. Louis County records.” From my gut feeling it seems $55 m is a deal.

And at Creve Coeur city gov website – REZONING APPLICATION FOR FORMER BAYER WEST CAMPUS PROPERTY.

Earlier I had some confusion on the developer, and it seems L3 Corp is the realtor (broker), not the investor, per this STLToday article Hotels, housing and retail planned for Bayer’s former Creve Coeur campus – “Northmarq Capital provided the financing for the deal. Hearth Construction, a company Bailey co-founded, is overseeing construction. Rick Spector of L3 Corp. is the real estate broker for the project.”

The division of the labors or the specialization of commercial real estate fascinated me. We have developers Fireside and Jack Matthews, financier Northmarq Capital, construction co (associated with Fireside) Hearth Construction and realtor L3 Corp.

(Update 05-22-2023) Today when I was buying a used Herman Miller Aeron Classic chair from them (first noticed it from Facebook), I noticed the developer hired a company called Refurbiture to dispose the furnitures. Here is my post regarding my research on chair etc.

(Original) I noticed it from news first, then heard from a friend who lives next to them. Here is the twitter thread I wrote.

There seems will be a lot more apartments in the area, as I know Olivette also built/is building quite some new apartments recently. It seems the affordability of single family houses, rising rents and millennials preference for “worry free” or “no maintenance work” prompted the build up of more apartments. In theory a condo or a townhouse is probably a good compromise, but it’s probably out of reach for many millennials and first time home buyers (the 20% downpayment requirement after 2008 financial crisis is one factor).

Categories
Life

Chat with S8

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Nike AirMax 270

This afternoon Serenity told me #Nike #Airmax 270 is the most popular shoe at LMS. Good stock tip. I cannot wait to buy $NKE on Tuesday morning. || Btw, she said it’s overpriced and doesn’t really care: similar attitude to the #Lulelemon 🙂

The war against drugs seems backfired, from YouTube video. This reminds me of my fellow graduate student’s Libertarian’s view on drugs. I think as a minimum we should examine government’s role on many things: in the US abortion is a hot topic, and in many red states, the Republican legislature passed laws banning abortion from 6 weeks. For practical purpose many women don’t know if they are pregnant or not at that time, and basically this ban all abortions and in many states the law does not give any exceptions.

Categories
Life Politics

American Healthcare Systems I：美国的医疗系统系列之一

Reading Time: 3 minutes

American healthcare systems are probably the most convoluted healthcare system in the world. The US probably has the world most advanced medical device and pharmaceuticals industry, many brilliant doctors and great hospitals, e.g., the BJC hospital in the St. Louis area, which is one of the top research hospital in the USA. At the same time, we can see the average life expectancy in the USA is dropping in recent years. The Covid obviously has impact on that. But the overall issues of population health in the USA and the healthcare system were there before pandemic. 美国的医疗保健系统可能是世界上最复杂的医疗保健系统。美国可能拥有世界上最先进的医疗器械和制药工业，许多优秀的医生和一流的医院，例如圣路易斯地区的BJC医院，它是美国顶尖的研究型医院之一。与此同时，我们可以看到近年来美国的平均预期寿命正在下降。 Covid显然对此产生了影响。但美国的人口健康和医疗体系的整体问题在大流行之前就已经存在。

Back to the healthcare system, on both hospitals and the payer (insurance companies for the most part, individuals do have some responsibility). I did not realized the seriousness of the issue until I joined the workforce. I come to the US for graduate school in 1997, I was relatively young and partially due to that I did not visit the hospital or the clinic in the university, another reason was I did not know how to describe medicine in English. At work I got better coverage, and I had first hand knowledge of surgery and emergency room in early 2000s. I vaguely recall the “tonsil removal” surgery cost about $50 from my perspective: the insurance company probably paid $5,000. The personal out of pocket cost will be much higher today. So will be the insurance company’s payment. An emergency room visit, I vaguely it was about $2,300 for about 6, 7 hours stay, with some testing and medicine obviously. There is another bill from the X-ray, MRI office which is a few hundred dollars. We eventually negotiated with the hospital as the patient (a relative) doesn’t have insurance, and we paid $700 and settled it. It as also during that time I realized that patient can negotiate bill with the providers. 回到医疗保健系统，对医院和付款人（大部分是保险公司，个人确实有一些责任）。直到我加入劳动力大军，我才意识到问题的严重性。我是 1997 年来美国读研究生的，当时我还比较年轻，部分原因是我没有去过大学里的医院或诊所，另一个原因是我不知道如何用英语描述医学。在工作中，我得到了更好的报道，并且在 2000 年代初期我对手术和急诊室有了第一手的了解。我依稀记得“摘除扁桃体”的手术费用在我看来是50美元左右：保险公司大概赔了5000美元。今天的个人自付费用会高得多。保险公司的赔付也是如此。一次急诊室就诊，我大概花了 2,300 美元，停留了大约 6、7 个小时，显然还做了一些测试和药物。 X 光、核磁共振办公室还有一张几百美元的账单。由于患者（亲属）没有保险，我们最终与医院协商，我们支付了700美元并解决了。也是在那段时间里，我意识到患者可以与提供者协商账单。

But remember always pay the bills, even after negotiation sometimes. Don’t ignore the bills. Because the bill ignored will be sent to collection (a 3rd party), and it will put a dent on one’s credit score. And we know credit score is quite important for many things range from rent an apartment, buy a car house, find a job and so on.
但请记住始终支付账单，即使有时经过谈判。不要忽视账单。因为被忽略的账单将被发送到收款处（第 3 方），并且会降低一个人的信用评分。我们知道信用评分对很多事情都非常重要，从租房、买房、找工作等等。

From patient point of view, the insurance premium went up a lot in last 20 years or so. And there are some improvements such as the Obama Care, meaning individuals who don’t work for a company can buy health insurance from marketplace. But those plans sometimes don’t have great coverage. Here is one example. Jeff is my former coworker at Mercy Health: ironically Mercy is a large provider in the St. Louis area. I think ultimately one root cause is most those insurances are for profit. From provider (hospital)’s point of view, the Medicare did not pay great, the Medicaid pays horribly, and the regular insurance made up most of the cost or profit for them. 从病人的角度来看，保险费在过去20年左右涨了很多。还有一些改进，例如奥巴马医改，这意味着不为公司工作的个人可以从市场购买健康保险。但这些计划有时覆盖面并不广。这是一个例子。 Jeff 是我在 Mercy Health 的前同事：具有讽刺意味的是，Mercy 是圣路易斯地区的一家大型供应商。我认为最终的一个根本原因是大多数保险都是为了盈利。从提供者（医院）的角度来看，Medicare 支付的不多，Medicaid 支付的很惨，常规保险占了他们的大部分成本或利润。

The medical workers need to eat too. And support family. And the doctors pay are still fairly good in the USA. But as my former boss at Mercy used to say (we were both at IT dept), the 50% of people who visited emergency room don’t have insurance or put wrong names. You can refer to the example above in which we negotiated the price. Another hidden cost for the providers, mainly for the doctors and the nurse practitioners, they have this burden of electronic health records, both for record keeping, for meeting regulation and insurance reimbursement need. One direct result is less face time with patients. 医护人员也要吃饭。并支持家庭。而且美国的医生待遇还是不错的。但正如我在 Mercy 的前任老板曾经说过的（我们都在 IT 部门），50% 的去急诊室的人没有保险或输入错误的名字。您可以参考上面我们协商价格的例子。供应商的另一个隐性成本，主要是医生和执业护士，他们有电子健康记录的负担，既用于记录保存，也用于满足监管和保险报销需求。一个直接的结果是减少了与患者面对面的时间。

To be continued… 未完待续。。。

Categories
Software development

Production Incident

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 01-07-2024) Was doing some hashtag#productionSupport this past week, for the most part. At one time, it reminded me once at the credit card company, we let the one (out of 6) node (server) running for 8+ hours during the maintenance window, before we brought the other 5 nodes back online. hashtag#theFun hashtag#withProduction hashtag#SRE

(Original 11-16-2022) Had a production incident recently after production deployment. I was not intimately familiar with the oracle index charge (drop) and impact on other apps (lack of visibility and lack of perf testing environment). It’s hard to prevent this sort of thing from happening but I think as developers we should learn from those mistakes and try to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

For production incidents, it’s best for the dev team (or production support team) to know before the customers call in: especially in the case of external customers. I recall at my immediate previous employer, during pandemic we had this “Screen and go” web app. One morning the app went down: it turns out to be the auto scaler issue. Another time the Twilio SMS were blocked by the carriers. We found out both via the customer service desk.

Technical Assessments

At the credit card company I worked at a while ago, we have this thing called technical assessments for Change. Change is usually a production deployment of code / infrastructure change. The author of the Change need to add the technical assessments of the impacted team, I recall in one change I had to include 16 external teams tech assessments. It took some time and effort for me to get their blessing. But the plus side of all this, if we did this for the mentioned incident above, the incident may not happen (if the impacted team did seriously evaluate potential impact to their apps).

Btw, I just realized I did not write a lot on production, other than this one.

Categories
iPhone app Life Life Tips

Keep fit

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I am trying to keep fit and I have been doing this for a while (before pandemic). This includes both the physical fit, weight and most recently, the iPhone addiction. Also as the weather is getting colder, and I am thinking doing a bit more swimming. Last but not least, I am thinking slowly going back to office: my office is about 5 minutes away.

About 5 years ago, I started running (joggling), initially doing a few 5K races. I still remember I ran out of breath quickly after running probably a few hundred yards. I did better and ran longer over the time, until I ran a half marathon with about 2 hours 23 minutes before the pandemic shutdown. Did a few 10k and 5K, and trail runs too. But since pandemic and reopen, I did not do as well as I thought and hoped. Due to various reasons. This year I did two half marathon: the Creve Coeur (near CC lake and the bridge to St. Charles Katy trail and back), and the St. Charles (near research park at Weldon Spring). I finished but the time is not as good as 2020. I also signed one or two races last year and this year, and eventually bailed out at the last minute. Last March (year 2021) was due to the 2nd Covid Vaccine shot, this Oct (2022) I did not do the Inns Brook HM at the last minute as I felt my right leg is not perfect the day before. I do have a few frost bite series paid for but not sure if I will do it this winter eventually.

Back to swimming

At the same time, I decided to go back to swim a bit since Sunday (this past weekend). I used to do it for a few years from 2012 to 2017, at local JCC. My initial reason for running in 2017 was mainly to make sure I don’t gain more weight. From year 2004 I gained quite a bit weight, probably from 135 lbs to 155 lbs. I did quite a bit Tae Kwon Do back in 2002 to 2004 and lost some weight. The tough part is to keep it that way. One good thing about swimming this time: now I have Apple Watch (series 5) and it can track swimming (previously between 2012 to 2017 I didn’t have something like that). The other day I did the steam room, it’s probably the 1st time I went back since pandemic. Once I was interviewing for jobs in Seattle (in early fall / Sept 2014), I decided against it one Saturday morning when I was enjoying the outdoor pool with my family.

Pandemic

Working from home is probably not the best for me as I am not best at disciplined myself in terms of snacking. That’s one reason I decided to go to office, another reason is to be more focused.

iPhone

It seem the screen time for me is just way too much. I am using 2 apps to help me: Off Screen and MiiDii clock. I paid $20 total for both. I like the gentle reminder from Off Screen regarding “don’t use phone when walking”, as well as “pickup challenge” (default limit is 50 times a day). Basically I need to get off WeChat and other frequent used apps.

Categories
Career

Tech Layoffs and don’t lose faith

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 01-20-2023) #Google to lay off 12,000 people — read the memo CEO Sundar Pichai sent to staff and noted Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s comments on layoff.

(Update 01-06-2023, posted at my linkedIn as well): The writing is on the wall for many tech companies regarding recent (or upcoming #layoffs). So please don’t get caught off guard. In a capitalist system like the US, even non-for-profit bow to the #wallstreet (in broad terms): thinking about the bonding rating from Moody’s Corporation, etc. Something to keep in mind: 1) Have an emergency cash pile (in a high-yield savings account, ideally). 2) Get a resume and perhaps more important skills marketable and up-to-date, so that in case something happens, we can get the next job quickly (for the sake of healthcare or cash flow). 3) Perhaps even better, bonus points, thinking or working on cashflow (cash income) outside the day job, could be a side gig such as Uber/Lyft, photography,or #youtuber etc. #prepForRecession #tightenSeatBelt #cashFlow #sideGig

(Original) The tech sector started layoff, hiring freeze or internal move freeze (Amazon came to mind) recently. My worst memory on layoff was on Oct 11, 2001. I was a one year tenure software engineer at a CAD / PDM software company in St. Louis, and I was on H1B visa. On that day we had 16% to 18% layoff across the board, due to two reasons. 1) The company I worked for just bought a similar size company and we had some expectations that a layoff would come (the CEO did give a bit heads up); 2) 9-11 happened on Sept 11, 2001, and it made the US economy worse. I survived the layoff, thanks to the God and my boss(es). It’s the not first time nor the last time I experienced layoffs at the places I worked. 大概二十年前(2001年10月11日），我在的公司裁员16%到18%，这个是我经历最吓人的一次。那次裁人有两个原因，我们公司去买了一家公司；9-11 对经济也有打击。

Anyway the most important two things I would like to mention:

  1. If your personal financial situation is good enough, don’t rush out to job search after the layoff. Assess, regroup, before hit the market again.
  2. If you don’t have the luxury of a bench time, for example, you may be on a H1B visa, and need an offer quickly. I think it still helps to be prepared, both mentally and technically. Here are some advices I have for job search and be prepared for folks who currently have the jobs.