Recently I think about giving up alcohol for good. Growing up in China, no minimum drinking age, I got drunk twice before I was 10: once when my uncle (mom’s bro) got married, another time my aunt died (my dad’s sister). /1
I have not finished it yet, and I am in a bit relapse now. But I will attempt to rewrite it as a blog. Or reflection.
I think the most important thing of all, is we need to make sure we don’t get drunk often, or have our lives be influenced by alcohol. That means don’t get intoxicated often and basically we cannot learn in those times. For me this mostly means evenings.
A side note of all this is in the past I modeled my drinking habit or life style after my maternal uncle (my mom’s big / old brother). I recall his motto is he always drinks some alcohol (mostly rice wine) at evening dinner time, and if he does not drink that means he is sick. In a similar fashion I drinks the coca-cola and other sodas because I know Warren Buffett drinks 5 cans of Coca-Cola every day. To be precise Warren drinks cherry coke, and he got almost all of his daily caffeine from coke, and lot of daily sugar and calories from coke. Note Warren Buffett exercises (walks) quite a bit everyday.
The flaw of my logic above is also obvious: I am me, myself, and I am not someone else. I can learn from other’s motto or philosophy, or habit, but I need to assess if that is applicable to me or not. I think for me, I need to consume both alcohol and soda in moderation.
Note the principle above is applicable to work, to many other things in life.
My drinking history
I recall I got drunk twice (maybe more) before 10. Please don’t judge my parents, as there was no legal drinking age in China (I believe this is still the case now, but I did not check recently). I drunk during my uncle’s wedding, and during my aunt’s funeral. In China they are called 红白喜事，and there are usually drinking and food.
My wife’s option on my drinking: perhaps my daughters too. They don’t like me drinking. My wife’s mom passed away due to a car incident (the driver was drunk, note she was not the driver). My father-in-law drinks socially. And sometimes I drunk with him (again note the social part).
I think for now I will give up Whiskey (or any other hard liquors). And consume beer and wine in moderation (not everyday).
First: I am happy to say the kids to back to school. In the last 2 weeks before school starts, some days Sophia really got bored, and she let me know that. She asked me to to buy the humming bird feeder, among other things.
I recall the days I shopped at Sears (hint, a while ago, not much since Sophia was born, aka from 2014).
The stock marker of last Friday and the week can be better summarized in the two tweets below. I do understand the economy usually has cycles and the federal reserve has a tough job to balance the employment and inflation. But at the same time it seems sometimes things are so obvious and I just don’t understand how they could miss the most recent inflation cycle by dismiss it as “transitory”. They are paid to do that job. Or sometimes it’s the politics got in the way? Nobody wants to be the boy who cries wolf coming (and it turns out to be false).
I noticed CNBC did another special Friday evening too. Personally I no longer pay attention like I did back in 2008/2009 the financial crisis days. Maybe a good sign as I no longer tune much into the “market turmoil” and I am more calm and doing my own research now.
There are tons of tweets, and controversy on the federal student loan forgiveness. Legality, fairness etc. aside, personally I think it can potentially help out quite a few people, and many of them are hard working and earned this. One interesting and probably more meaningful policy is the capping of loan interest and payment tied to a person’s income. Also the WH “this you?” series of tweets.
As I said in my previous post on compounding, the debt piled up via the snowball effect too. So anything we can do to minimize or reduce the debt, it could have impact on people’s real lives.
Separately, I had discussion with Serenity on student loan too: I said I will pay for her college.
In my old job at the credit card 💳 co. I did support for a while and once I spent about 2 hours giving cardholder about 1.3 cents worth of US dollar. Today the roles reversed. Btw, Serenity said she was proud of me (assuming she was complementing I was the cool 😎 guy).
What happened
I don’t check my email that’s associated with appleid frequently because I transitioned most emails out of that one. But on Monday August 15, I noticed something is wrong with my Apple Card as I saw the suspicious purchase: $7.97 for robux, in case you don’t play Roblox, robux is the virtual currency for Robox game. On Tuesday 8/16 I saw one more purchase: $12.98 total, $9.99 for weather – (this is quite scammy as I don’t recall I never bought its subscription), and $2.99 worth of robux.
How I handled it
I contacted Goldman Sachs customer service through the dispute button in the Apple card, and they gave me credit eventually. I also changed the password for the apple id and the email (enabled 2FA). I noticed some tips from Apple regarding kids apple store payment, requirement for password, etc. This is the Apple web page that explains a few ways we can tighten the in app purchase on the devices.
My thoughts
Overall I still prefer Apple music / fitness+ over Youtube Music. Compared to Youtube (owned by google), sound quality on Apple music is usually guaranteed, while some YT music has bad sound quality. Also Fitness+ with integrated music is better than Peloton outdoor.
I wrote a twitter thread on this, btw.
I did not change the #email address. But I changed the password for the mentioned email (added two factor authentication), and password for the #appleid as well. I did explore changing email, but it seems both my personal #gmail and #outlook email are already on Apple system. /4
A checklist for Ladue school parents and guardians
Buy school supplies;
Meet the teacher / community night (bring school supplies if applicable): mainly say hi to teachers and staff, and for the kids to learn where are the classrooms etc. on 1st day;
Adjust kids sleep routine: from summer (no school or no camp) schedule to school schedule, may take a few days or a week;
Adjust grownup routine: from watching kids + work (or the other way), to do more work and maybe some self care (workout, social etc);
Some apps or emails that are likely relevant:
Parent Square (district and schools to parents communication), iOS, Android. Note PS has website too. But app is a bit more handier and performant. Last but not least please take a look at the notifications customization as well (especially the text messages).
MySchoolBucks (lunch money). From this school year (2022 to 2023) on the free lunch money from the government ran out. There is still the reduced fare lunch and so on, please contact the school as applicable. Note to add money to the meal account, we can do it via credit card (CC) on its website (it seems to me we cannot add money via the mobile app), or via check to school district (which I have not done it, please ask each school administrator as needed). Note MySchoolBucks (heartland payment co.) charges a credit card transaction fee.
Email Ladue Schools e-Connect Newsletter (usually weekly) and the paper Newsletter (usually monthly): district wide information such as lunch or construction, or strategic plan. The content is created by the district Communications Office.
SafeStop (instructions here, note this PDF has the code for the district, the one at the school bus website doesn’t): bus tracking, not the best or most reliable app in the world, but considering constructions in some schools the bus may still be the better choice for many families (maybe on one of those days, I can brush up my mobile app dev skills and create a better app 🙂 Btw, the bus information is here. Last but not least, it seems we only need to put in the code once for one device. || A side note, it seems there is delay of tracking the kids moved up in schools (for example, from elementary to FGC), it’s possible we need an manual update in the backend in terms of kid’s school information. || Another way to track kids, especially younger kids, is to use airtag. It seems it’s working because the main thing it needs is other nearby device’s bluetooth capability. Without today’s popularity of smartphone in the school and in the bus, I think it works most of the time.
Last but not least, for Spoede families, the portal of SSA (Spoede School Association) moved to here. The underlying software is used for the LMSPA website we well.
Personal opinion: the coffee from ALDI is pretty good; so was the regular half & half (creamer) from Costco. On the flip side: probably 1st world problem, the store brand coffee from the biggest grocery store in St. Louis 圣村 is not good.
A building in #Shanghai Yangqu district sudden locked down:
Just an average day in zero-covid Shanghai. Can only guess that a case was rumoured to have been found inside. I wonder why the guys in scrubs grab the one fellow there. Easy catch? Or contagious agent? Gotta love the woman’s high-pitched response: “SHIT! SHIT!” pic.twitter.com/TMMBCVFA0X
The defensive missile can shoot down the offensive missile successfully 70% of the time. If the defense shoot 3 missiles toward the offensive missile, what’s the probability that they are successful? Think about it for a minute. My approach is shown below:
There is another way. Note in math and many other fields, it’s good to have a second approach for verification purpose. So the second approach goes like this: 0.7 + (1-0.7) x 0.7 + (1-0.7) x (1-0.7) x 0.7 = 0.7+0.21+0.063 = 0.973 = 97.3% (it matches the number above, hurray). Courtesy of my classmate in college (who is likely a math genius in high school).
Let me explain: 0.7 is the probability of hitting target the first time, (1-0.7)x0.7 is for the scenario of first time missing and second time hitting, vice versa for the last one (both first and second times missing) and last time hitting.
So there’s that. 97.3% is pretty high in terms of an outcome actually happening. What if the probability of hitting the target is 50% (roughly the odds of coin flipping, get head or tail). The answer is 1 – 0.5×0.5×0.5 = 87.5%. That’s still pretty decent odds. Extrapolate this to basketball, let’s say a player’s free throw hitting rate is 50%, he or she can be fairly certain (with 87.5%) that 1 point will be scored in 3 attempts. But note everything has a cost, hidden or not. Missile has a cost, free throw has a cost of earning it. I recall 15 years ago, when the NBA player Shaquille O’Neal was at his prime, he has a weakness of free throw. In his career he hits 52.7 percent from the free-throw line in his career (I googled it). And the opponents sometimes would use the “hack Shaq” strategy when he got the ball in the front court. Let’s calculate the probable points he would have made from two free throw attempts, note free throw is 1 point, so 0.527 + 0.527 = 1.054 is the possible score he can get from 2 free throws. I also looked at his career field goal percentage: 2 x 0.582 (2 pointers percentage, I am ignoring his 3 pointers for now, because he was not known for that) = 1.164, so in other words, it seems “hacking Shaq” strategy has some stats to back it for the opponents.
Lottery
If anything, I would like to remind people lottery is a sure way to lose money if we know a bit probability. Use the popular Show Me Cash game as an example, the odds of winning are shown in the web page. Note the ticket cost 1 dollar. If any return below $1 means the player is losing. 1 x 9.6% + 10 x 1 / 102.6 + 250 x 1 / 3386.8 + 50,000* x 1 / 575,757 (the prize is at least 50,000 for this category, I would use 50,000 for simplicity) = 0.096 + 0.0975 + 0.0738 + 0.0868 = 0.3541 so let’s just say 35 cents for simplicity. Other games are similar, with possibility of even lower return (compared to 35% for Show Me Cash). Btw, every time I saw people use a stash of cash to buy lottery tickets at Schnucks or lottery machine, I am shaking my head internally. I understand sometimes people want to try luck, or believe their luck is better than the others, but in math this is not the way to get ahead in life. In my opinion the government should ban the lottery. Below is another tweet on the topic on probability and lottery n Chinese. Use google translate (with some editing from me): when we met with people last weekend and introduced each other, some people said that he had made software for casinos, and that no matter how good the gamblers were, you couldn’t play mathematics… When everyone did with eating, they started to talk about how to achieve financial freedom. My classmate who made casino software said that he is buying lottery tickets every day. I said, didn’t you say that a gambler couldn’t play math against casinos? He said he only buy a little… This tells me that no matter how educated and rational a person is, he can’t resist himself. The fluke mentality…(my comment: talk about psychology and discipline. One thing great about Warren Buffett is he would not bet on small things even if he knows it’s a good bet, again we are talking about discipline: He’s playing golf with a bunch of people and they all bet a dollar on a particular hole. Buffett won’t bet. “Why not, Warren?” they ask him, “you’re worth a gazillion.”He said, “I never break my discipline.”)
Sometimes called snowball effect. In investing there are a lot of talk on this. It’s applicable to other aspects of life as well, for example, exercise, eat / drink healthy, work, relationships and so on.
There is a reverse side of this effect too, for example, if a person does not eat healthy food, or have healthy life style, for example, drink a lot of sugar water, no exercise, he / she could gain weight pretty quickly too. And the detrimental effect to one’s body and mind will be growing fast as well. I will probably write a separate post on “compounding” in the near future.
PS: the story above on Buffett was a bit different from what I heard earlier. My version says someone offers Buffett a bet that Buffett will likely win. But his answer was similar: he said if I cannot resist the temptation of making $100 quick money, I cannot manage large sums of money.
深度好文：台湾为何与我们渐行渐远？原文作者：廖信忠 (baidu) || I just noticed the article from Twitter. Also noticed A City of Sadness (悲情城市) from the comments. Personally my earlier view on re-union between mainland and Taiwan was shattered after seeing the Russia / Ukraine war since Feb 24, 2022. And it also reminded me of the recent Zero Covid policy implementation and protests in Hong Kong in 2019.
It’s no secret the US and the world are increasingly use drone as weapon, as shown in the recent attack on the former No 2 to Bin Laden, which is quite different from the killing of Bin Laden himself (about 11 years ago).
I think at least two reasons for that: 1. The technology advancement of drone and its associated weapons, such as the one used against al-zawahiri. 2. In the west, it’s harder and harder for the electorates to see soldiers died in foreign wars or military operations. Those are also reasons the US does not want to directly involve in the Russia-Ukraine war (which btw, the largest military conflict in Europe since the end of WWII), in addition to avoid the direct conflict of nuclear powers. I guess this will come to play in other relevant military conflicts too.
Chinese: 王永利：按揭贷款必须回归本原. Quote: 一是住房按揭贷款并不是完全以作为抵押物的房产作为偿还贷款本息的全部保证，贷款银行在处置按揭房产净收入不能完全偿还借款人所欠贷款本息时，仍可以对其进行延申追索，并会因借款人不能偿还所欠贷款本息而被诉诸法庭、列入失信人黑名单等，使“按揭贷款”偷变成一般的抵押贷款。|| This is mind boggling, so in other words, the banks will have recourse against the borrower’s income in addition to the house (apartment) in the mortgage. I think this is different from the west, in which the bank can only hold on the property (not the borrower’s other income), which is different from the government who has the claim in case someone does not pay tax.
PS, I noticed the US senate just passed the inflation reduction act: and it claims including some climate change funds (in billions). I think baby step is helpful. But the road to combat the climate and environment (aka save the earth) will be long.
Below are some pictures and videos from this week’s flash flood in the area. Quote the last article (the last tweet) written by Mr. Tony Messenger. “These sure the hell aren’t 100-year floods,” Criss says. “They’re like two-year floods. It’s staggering.” || We were not flood, but I know some people were impacted or lost car or belongings (their house or apartment were flooded).
I think for us we still start from baby steps: not buying bottled water for example. I think #ClimateChange#Environment issues are like #Pandemic: it takes us all to make it work. We cannot blame others, and we cannot solely rely on Bill Gates / Warren Buffet.
Kirkham and Elm in Webster Groves is flooded. Black car managed to get out but flash flooding is no joke here. Just about .2 miles from where it flooded Tuesday morning. #mowx#stlwxpic.twitter.com/TbqLALcdWs
This, almost unbelievably, was Deer Creek surging through Brentwood/Webster Groves (Mo.) in the wake of the all-time record rainfall of 7/26/22. #stlwxpic.twitter.com/wwp5WbYj2k
Dear St. Louis: please, when the next developer comes to the next local municipality promising sales tax nirvana if only he can raise some land out of the flood plain, remember July 2022. There is a better way and we have been ignoring it for too long. https://t.co/FNveqSiwiY
Some disclaimer: not district official doc. I believe each kid is unique, special and gifted in her / his own way. And for many parents / guardians they do sincerely believe their kids are the smartest. Years ago I think when my older daughter was probably 3 or 4 years old, at the preschool a few parents talked about the competitiveness of getting into gifted programs at public school (I was not the parent to initiated this topic :-). And one parent said that’s one reason they are sending their kids to private school. Although now I think about it, their kids were very smart and they can get into the gifted programs in many public schools.
The gifted program runs from grade 1 to grade 8. It’s called Idea Lab between grade 1 and 5; Apogee between grade 6 and 8. The main identification period is at the end of kindergarten, and at the end of grade 2. There are also exceptions, for example, there are opportunities, both for transfer (in) students, and occasionally at recommendation of classroom teacher (as he / she sees fit for the kid). Some may ask why they stopped at middle school: one explanation I heard is in high school they have the AP (which personally I think it’s different, but AP itself is a topic I don’t want to get into today). Note the program is not accelerated math or turbo charged STEM. The teacher has a lot of topics, but usually it covers topics such as science, creativity (think Lego etc) and some presentation. They usually meets twice a week in regular school time: which may or may not impact other regular subjects. Please check with the classroom teacher for the missing content and make sure the kid make up the work as need.
The work: I recall when Serenity our older daughter was at 2nd grade, she made a very nice hard cover book on a topic she was interested. I was impressed with the quality of the work: it seems Serenity carries this “attention to details / carry it through” to other subjects such as music. Serenity also benefited quite a bit from the presentation training, as she is an introvert and she usually gets nervous in front of people. I saw her progressing over the years. || This probably is applicable to everyone, and every job. Over the years I have seen myself improve on this front, and in one instance, we (a fellow mom to be precise) helped a shy student to speak up at the Creative Convention. Back to topic below.
Tests
There are two stages of test. One has to pass the first stage before entering the 2nd stage: which is an IQ test, it requires parents / guardians’ approval, as well as the kid has to be at least 6 year old. The first stage tests are described as below. I quote some content from the letter I received via email from the gifted program coordinator, for my younger daughter. I believe there is no proprietary information here: may be helpful to share it on district proper web page? I did take out the actual percentile or score threshold etc. See below in Italics:
“…During the initial steps of the process, we first evaluate two categories of learning and review students academic performance. Students need to pass at least two of the three screeners to move onto the phase (2) of testing.
Please note those scores or numbers are not absolute. The teachers and staff do have some flexibility interpreting the scores. We did not do anything special prep other than the daily math and reading work which the kid does at school or home (depends on the grade). My old daughter passed the tests at the kindergarten year, and my younger daughter at 2nd grade. Note the tests are usually done at the second semester. I recall there is usually an authorization form for parents to fill out at the beginning of school year as well.
For the second stage there is this IQ test, again note another form the parents need to fill. They emphasize there is nothing to prep for this IQ test. And we did not do anything 🙂 And it seems they rely on a specialist outside from district to perform the evaluation. I honestly don’t recall how my old daughter did (it was 6 years ago), but my younger daughter did the eval recently, and I felt the lady who does the eval has great patience with her. Both my girls scored similarly. Their scores are above 130. I think they maybe smarter than me 🙂
Personally I never took an IQ test, and I haven’t asked my kids about it either. It seems 130 is pretty high from the video above.
Experience
Note each school has one gifted teacher. My older daughter has gone through 4 teachers now (she had two teachers at elementary due to teacher change). Parent has option to do a parent / teacher conference, which is helped by Zoom for middle school nowadays. One thing I do remember is the Creative Convention, which is organized by the Gifted Resource Council. They do Equation competition too, also organized by GRC. I vaguely recall 2nd grader and up participate the Creative Convention; 3rd grader and up participate the Equation Competition. For the latter I am pretty certain it’s not limited to the gifted program kids. The team is usually organized by each school though.
Other Resources
The gifted program at Ladue Schools are usually not that easy to get into, because the program is limited (again only one teacher at each school; I think there are more in middle school) in terms of size. But for the parents, it’s not the end of the world if the kids did not get in, or did not get in at the kindergarten year testing. Remember it’s not Harvard admission either: both in terms of difficulty and its impact. Every kid is unique and as parents / guardians our main responsibility to provide an environment (along with the teachers) to help them learn / grow in their own ways, and hopefully to their full potential. In our case as you can see our younger daughter did not get in during her kindergarten year (her spring break was the time we got covid shutdown). We were obviously disappointed, but not disheartened. My wife was a bit anxious on her math and she made sure Sophia our daughter do some extra work when possible.
Last but not the least, I want to thank you all the Spoede/Ladue teachers who have taught our kids.
Gifted Resourced Council (GRC)
Also, there are many other resources such as GRC’s learning labs and summer academies (summer camps), and they are open to all the kids and parents. (Update 09-29-2022) Please note the fall 2022 learning labs, and parenting classes here. It looks all are in person now (no more Zooms).
There are other interesting STEM programs such as Maryville Science and Robotics program and Project MEGSSS for math enthusiasts as well. Again both are open to all the interested kids / families. They have some scholarship opportunities too. Last but not least there are tons of good materials on the Internet including YouTube nowadays. The internet definitely democratized the STEM learning.
SLPS Magnet Schools: this is a voluntary reciprocal program between STL City and County (not all county school district participate though). I have seen couple kids (Clayton, Ladue) went to the city magnet school, stayed for couple years, before coming back to their regular public school.
St Louis Regions Program for Exceptionally Gifted Students (South – Lindbergh; North – Pattonville). I have seen something similar for a Ladue kid (went to the Lindbergh for a year, then come back to Ladue). Note my kids never went to the city magnet school or the PEGS program.
FB Private Group (Parents of Gifted & High Ability Children): they will ask a few questions before you can join. It has a range of questions and discussions. || Btw, I came across this advice from the FB group: “As the mom of an older gifted child (10 years old in the 99.99 percentile), I want to HIGHLY recommend getting your kids into sports while they are little. A majority of gifted kids have asynchronous development that you begin to really notice throughout elementary school. This means they are VERY advanced learners, observers, emotional beings.. but usually a year or two behind socially and physically which can seriously affect self esteem and physical health. Starting and keeping them on sports teams early can really really help this. Best of luck “
I understand those at first look, doesn’t seem intuitive, but we as parents (especially for parents of gifted kids) probably will benefit a lot learning about all this.
(Update 09-17-2024)GRC is offering free webinars for parents (google form registration here)
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