Categories
Family Music

A new old song 一对旧皮鞋

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I came across this song on iTunes store when I was searching Ayen何璟昕 ‘s song there. It’s available on Spotify too. Note iTunes store is a part of Apple Music. The music world is going to streaming, but I am old fashioned and I like my old iPod Nano (bought in November 2012, kind fit the theme of the old leather shoes here 🙂

You can watch it on YouTube (刘美君 on KKBox, YT Channel) for 原唱。Ayen’s singing is soft as her usual style. And the album cover design (featuring the old white leather shoes) looks like Ayen’s work or style. 一对而不是一双应该是粤语的原因。在英语里面我们也说 a pair (对) of shoes.

Some background on the song on other platforms

Baidu

KKBox 作词：潘源良 (Wikipedia) 作曲：陳永良 (Wikipedia)

Bilibili

I think of couple things related to the song.

Hand making shoes or repairing shoes

I recall my maternal grandma used to make 棉鞋 for us. Also, when I was a teen and in middle school (equivalent to both middle school and high school in the US), and it was a common practice to have a 鞋匠 (shoemaker, cobbler) to attach a piece of metal to the bottom of leather shoes – similar to what we have in the tap shoes bottom here in the USA nowadays. Last time I saw 鞋匠, or cobbler, it was in Shanghai Xu’jia’hui, in 2011, and I was having cobbler fixing my luggage (bag). Yes they fix the bags or luggages too, via their sewing machines or other tools and materials.

Father’s love, or elder generations love towards the kids:

I recall when I was going to college in Wuhan, while we stop by Shanghai, it was hot summer, and my dad and I walked on Shanghai street. He bought me Sprite, and he didn’t get any. Now I think about it, I may do the same.

I also recall once, recently, my younger daughter was throwing a fit after I picked up her and her sister, I decided to do a bit Uber driving after that – sort of my way of dealing with my internal frustration with my younger daughter. But there is downside of driving Uber, for one – because I was thinking about something else while driving, in couple instances I made small driving mistakes. I think safety is probably still the most important, so I stopped driving for Uber recently.

Sometimes comparison (or put things in perspective) is necessary, as I just read from a friend, that her dad drove her car from Rolla to Boston 3 times after she crashed her car 3 times. That’s more than 1,000 miles one way.

At the same time, I don’t see or hear many songs singing about dads 🙂 我印象中好像没有多少关于父爱的歌。Personally I think both mom and dad’s love are important. If I can use an example, I saw a neighbor who appears doesn’t know we were not supposed to drive a car when the tire is flat, and the neighbor just did. My speculation when the neighbor grew up, the neighbor didn’t have a dad taking about that.

PS:

As the Wikipedia maintainer for 何璟昕’s wiki page, I updated all her singles. Go to 单曲 section and you will see all of them.

Categories
Software development

How to pick college major or find career

Reading Time: 2 minutes

K to 12 Education

I talked about this recently, here on YT in English. I just came across on the Chinese app Red Notes (XHS) professor Yang Zhen Ning talked about this and I agree with him (he talked in Chinese on this).

He talked about the education in the US compared to Japan too when answering Bill Moyers’ question in year 1988. Please note I am by no means trying to compare myself to the great and recently passed Yang Chen-Ning.

From my observations there are a lot of shortcomings in the US K to 12 education, and similar can be said to the oriental K to 12 education too. I think about it, I think one thing I liked about in general, is the parents, teachers and society in general don’t force kids to learn or take on a major or career solely for the sake of the money. I guess another way of saying it is: the liberty (freedom of choice, free will) is more appreciated here.

Passion

Because with that passion, I mean long lasting passion, not just a 5 minutes thing, a person can overcome many things including but not limiting to some deficiency in K to 12 educations. We all have that – even if we were K to 12 educated in China 🙂

So, try to find your passion, hopefully early in your life. 25 is not too late. For me personally I started my 1st full time job in the USA when I was 29. And now 25 years later, I think I made the right choice. Yes, I know the AI is trying to eat my lunch, but I am mastering the AI tools to make sure so that they won’t be successful in terms of “eating my lunch”.

(11-03-2025) I came across this from LinkedIn, and I liked it a lot. I pasted the picture below : t’s the content of that LinkedIn post.

I agree with Adam 100% here. Yesterday afternoon I happened to talk to a friend who is 12 years younger than me, and he shared similar sentiment with me. Thanks for the reminder, my friend 🙂

Categories
advice and tips Saint Louis

How to print a file on school google drive at Saint Louis County Library

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I had to provide both Uber driving and tech support for my younger daughter – she wants to print a PDF file on her school iPad. The file is available on google drive in her school google account.

It’s the 1st time I am using the printer at the new County Library the Clark Family Branch (it used to be the HQ before the rebuild). I think initially we tried to log into her school google account on the PC dedicated to the scanner. That didn’t work. I asked her to log into google drive on my iPhone. It worked. But there are no “Air Printer” from my iPhone. Also per school IT policy, she could not share the file with me because I am not a school employee.

So there is how I did: I made the file available offline. Then I went to Google Doc app, and shared the file via “send a copy” aka email to myself.

Later I log into one of the library computer, and logged into my email there, and click “print” (we gave the job a name). There are one more thing before the printer job will go though – there is a computer between the two printers (the black/white and the color printers). And I log into that computer and approved the “named” print job. Each library patron gets $5 printer credit each month, and it’s enough for small printing job. If not, I believe they take cash or credit card.

Last but not least: you will need to bring your library card in order to use the computer and the printer at the library.

PS: we have printer at home and it supports air print: meaning we can print it from an iPhone or iPad. But this time our younger daughter wants color printing and our printer only prints black and white.

(Update 11-21-2025) So S6 wants to print color copies for a file in Canva app on her school iPad. The process is similar, I asked her to export the document as PDF and save it to her Google Drive. Then on my personal iPhone she was logged into the Google Drive app, I just need to send the PDF file to myself. Tomorrow I am going to print out the file at country library. Again all this is to get around the issue of she cannot share file directly with me. So we have to do it in 2 steps (via the intermediary of Google Drive).

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

Thoughts on retirement and retirement accounts

Reading Time: 3 minutes

For example, if one can earn meaningful amount of money from the 401k (paper gain) and that amount is equal or bigger than salary, and the person is over 59 and half, can he/she consider retirement? I recall there is a YT video on this – maybe this one by Azul – Research Shows This Is The Perfect Age To Retire (this is an interesting point: see if you can retire the debt including the mortgage before retirement).

Roth Conversion

Vanguard: IRA Roth conversion

Also:

Roth 401k: Roth comparison chart (IRS)

Average Joe and Jane

CBS News Money Watch article below

More Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, putting retirement out of reach, report finds

Left behind retirement accounts? (can I have some, joking)

A new 401(k) rule is coming in 2026 for millions of high-earning Americans — what to know if you’re in this group

Btw, came across this from Medium recently: The Retirement Myth: What Most Americans Really Do After They Stop Working

I loved this comment: “No such thing when it comes to retirees. I see two groups, one that does what you said (and typically dies with as much money in accounts as when they retired) and one that get healthy and stays healthy and gets busy intentionally creating and enjoying life! From what I see it’s about a 70-30 split with 70% ding very little – but the 30% are having a great time!! You have to choose which group to be in before your health choses for you. The Lie of Later: How ‘Future Time Slack’ Is Stealing Your Retirement – now I realized this article is really appliable to everyone, both active workers and retirees.”

My own video

This morning, I also talked about aging, retirement and related topics on my morning walk via YT. Or you can watch from Bilibili (link here) if you are inside China.

PS:

(YT, audio only) Charlie Munger No. 1 investment tips for those over 50

(YT, Holy Schmidt!) 6 SECRETS Retirees Should NEVER Disclose

I’m 81 and live in my RV for half the year. I didn’t save enough for retirement, so I stay afloat by ‘work camping’ and DoorDash driving. (I read it from Yahoo and it didn’t have paywall)

Americans are living longer, but many are making a costly mistake about old age (CBS News)

You can live healthy to 100, author says, Here’s the secret (Yahoo)

(YT) This 104 old’s life advice will blow your mind

(CNBC) This is the ‘biggest mistake’ you can make with your IRA, attorney says

(Update 11-14-2025 Yahoo Finance) Health & wealth check-up: How a financial adviser can help

(Update 11-18-2025 YT) How Do I Pay For Health Insurance if I Retire Early

(Update 12-31-2025 CNBC) Rule expands penalty-free early 401(k) withdrawals — but new use ‘might not be practical,’ advisor says. Let me quote some below:

If you reach your 65th birthday, you have about a 70% chance of needing some form of long-term care services and support, according to a 2020 estimate from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. On average, women who require care need it longer — 3.7 years, versus 2.2 years for men. While a third of 65-year-olds will never need long-term care, 20% will end up requiring it for more than five years...

For example, the cost of a home health aide reached an annual median cost of $77,792 last year, up 3% from 2023, according to the 2024 Cost of Care survey conducted by Genworth Financial. The national annual median cost of a semiprivate room in a nursing home rose to $111,325, up 7% from 2023. For a private room, the median yearly cost climbed 9% to $127,750.

(Update 02-17-2026) You need $2 million to retire and ‘almost no one is close,’ BlackRock CEO warns, a problem that Gen X will make ‘harder and nastier’

Categories
Life

Mid-Autumn Festival – 36 years ago

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I left my childhood home and my parents many years ago for the boarding middle school. And I barely recall that I was home for the mid-autumn festival celebration in those middle school (high school) years. Then I left for college. And the college was a bit far away from my hometown.

About 36 years ago, the mid-autumn festival party organized by the HUST 浙江同乡会 left me impression. Because in 1989, it was the first year I was in HUST (Wuhan) and far away from home Ning’bo, and not to mention I really missed home. I believe many HUST friends who are from Zhejiang province missed home too. I recall the hostess (the girl who is toast master) is a Shi’jie from Zhenhai middle school, and her last name is Su. Sorry I forgot her 1st name now. 她说了一句话让我现在还记得：我们来自于吴山青，越水秀 (google search) 的故乡浙江省。

这个中秋节，来自于广东的唱作人何璟昕(我这里有关于她的介绍，博文1 和博文2；维基上的关于她的介绍在这里）的新歌 明月高高挂天上（网易云音乐，QQ音乐，油管视频，油管音乐，bilibili, 苹果音乐，Spotify) 也让我想到中秋节的意义。

Categories
Fun kids Life

An interesting story and dads’ feelings

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When their daughter(s) finds someone she loves. I think the right word probably is “mixed emotions”. No, I am not implying anything and our older daughter who is 15 and hasn’t dating someone yet – good to me for now :-).

I also have a friend who strictly forbids her daughters dating even in college. She told me about this rule; they are from India btw. My view is less strict: personally, I feel it’s okay to date in college because I did, and it didn’t turn out to be a disaster (I was lucky in many ways I think :-). But date in the high school is probably too early. This is also considering their schoolwork in the HS, which is a lot in my opinion.

A bit over 10 years ago, before our younger daughter was born some of my colleagues did a baby shower, one of my American colleagues commented: you need to watch out all the guys now you are having a daughter 🙂

In July 26 this summer, I happened to be a similar boat like this. I was going to drop off the girl who is from China (she is 16 years old), and attended the summer camp here at WUSTL, to the STL airport. The time was a bit tight for me, because after dropping her off, I need to come home and drive my older daughter to the Community Music School in Webster University at Webster Groves. So, I arrived at the girl’s place early so that I could have some breath room just in case. I told them about my plan. But the girl would not come out at 8 am, and I was a bit upset, because it could take 15 to 20 minutes to drive from WUSTL to the STL, and I also need to go inside the airport to make sure her can check in luggage and get boarding pass and so on. So, I said in the WeChat group chat to hurry up. And after probably 15 or 20 minutes, the girl came out, with a boy and it’s quite obvious the boy is her (likely new) boyfriend. Then I felt pretty bad.

And also, I was thinking what would I feel if I saw my older daughter in this kind of situation? Keep in mind I never saw that girl before, and I had to guess whenever someone comes out from that building. But her dress reminds me of my daughter. Btw, I talked about the teen girls dress trend here, from my observations, scroll to “What to wear for girl nowdays???“.

Anyway, I did have a small opportunity to make up my dumb (and being rude) mistake. The girl’s luggage is over the weight limit by 6 pounds, and I paid the $100 luggage fees right away. I was not late for my older daughter’s thing either: here is some of the percussion that the students at CMS did in the past school year (YT) including the summer. Can you guess which one is my older daughter? Hint: she was in the way back and she didn’t have a lot of time on the screen.

PS: you may like my other post here Dad daughter moments. As you may be able to predict or perceive, not all moments are happy or light moments though – something I didn’t anticipate or intentionally ignoring before we have our kids. Some moments are quite hard or difficult, honestly speaking.

PS2 (10-24-2025): I wrote more re: “Father’s love, or elder generations love towards the kids” here.

Categories
advice and tips Life Tips

I learned to say NO to things or friends or families for that matter

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I talked about Don’t work too hard, work smart and Don’t work too hard (again) this April and May respectively.

And recently I gave more thoughts on activities that is not work related. And my conclusion is I need to take care of myself 1st. And it’s okay to have 2nd thoughts or change mind. For example, I think it was probably 9 days ago, I realized I have 3 things to do in about one hour or so. So, what did I do: I changed my mind and only did the 2nd thing, the most important thing, which is to drop off S8 our old daughter to the pep band (for the HS football game). I skipped the 10th grades (sophomores) parents’ happy hour, and the Ladue Education Foundation celebration of 20 years, both activities I signed up earlier, but I am not VIP at both activities, and I don’t need to be there. I dropped off S8, I took a peek at the LEF thing and went home. Later on, that evening, I came to school and pick up her – because the following morning she needs to go to a Cross-Country Race/Meet.

It’s okay to say NO. I used to think “saying NO” will hurt people’s feelings, but at the same time I just realized “saying too many Yeses” will hurt my feeling. I learned the lesson the hard way recently too – and after I realized it, I started saying NO to a friend who thinks I have nothing to do during the day for my WFH job.

(Update 10-26-2025) Came across this from XHS this morning, here is the YT link 當你停止對所有人隨叫隨到，你的人生將徹底改變｜卡爾·榮格的覺醒之道 #心理界線 #能量守護 #榮格哲學 #自我覺醒 #心靈成長 #沉默的力量 #心理能量 #情緒自由 as I assume they will be similar. Wish I have watched this earlier. But better late than never 🙂

(Update 01-01-2026) Yesterday evening Mr. R called and asked for a favor when I was at Pan Asia grocery store. I said I was not at home. She said she needs a ride at about 6:30 to 7 to go to the bar. I said okay. At about 6:15 pm I was home, Mr. R called again, and she said if she could drop off something before going to the bar (her daughter’s ask). The place is 13037 Old Farm Dr., I was not nervous about it as I drove for Uber this past year, and this is at a middle class neighborhood. But after dropping off the thing (she said clothes) I had some uneasiness – as I don’t know what it exactly is. Maybe her daughter was doing some delivery job? I hope it’s the case. I think from now on I really need to politely decline those kind of asks because it made me not comfortable.

Categories
advice and tips Fun Life Life Tips

Exercises, music, work and sleep

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I talked about my recent exercise trend here. But I think I need to focus on my sleep a bit more, as in recent years, due to various reasons, I didn’t get the necessary sleep and that is taking a toll on my health.

As I reflect back, in addition to aging, work at MC is one culprit of my deteriorating sleeping quality. I talked about my on call experience of that employer (in Chinese) here.

Fortunately both my last job and my current job are less demanding, and less stressful. But I am getting older too 🙁

Recently I started to listen to music during sleep. That alone may not be the best solution for “not being able to fall into asleep”. But I am fine tune it, as well as adjusting so that I don’t listen to my iPod Nano (I talked about it here and here), or a new MP3 player I bought the whole time.

Also, back to exercise, I think in addition to swim or walking, I am going to focus a bit more on meditation, such as breath on Apple Watch or Yoga via YT (see my YT Yoga playlist).

PS:

I got to see my uncle (my mom’s little big brother, who is 89 years old) this summer. He commented on the sleep problem we have. He said, not exact words, but why we are worrying about things in the night? His point was we probably had too much stress from our day job (which is probably true). Back to the time when he was young, he probably doesn’t have the material things we have now, but he is much happier. Probably one reason he lives to 89 🙂

(Update 10-17-2025) I just came across this at FB “What is Success? Success is being able to go to bed each night with your Mind at Peace.”

PS 2:

To my fellow HS students’ parents especially parents of student athletes: now we have this AI thing – let AI do the work and let our kids and all of us have some more sleep 😴 (not my words, coach and my uncle’s words – they are wiser than me. Okay I added this AI thing for dramatic effect [捂脸]). Btw, tonight is the blue and white night at #LHWHS and if you have time (no impacting on your or your kids sleep schedule): the girls powder puff flag football game is fun to watch. #homecoming #powderPuff

PS 3:

年近退休睡觉不爽， 有招了

I did one thing similar: something I mostly figured out my own, with some inputs from friend(s). I listened to Cantonese music (slow music, more like lullabies). Do you want to guess which musicians (singers) I listened to most often? Btw, I mostly use my 13-year-old iPod Nano (as shown here). Because it doesn’t have the fancy stuff on my iPhone and won’t pull me into the blackhole of “doom scrolling”.

I think in theory at least, a podcast or a book would do the similar trick. I mostly just listened to one song non-stop (loop) – a side benefit is it saves the battery of iPod Nano.

(Update 12-9-2025) Your Body Ages Rapidly In Your 40s And 60s. Doctors Say These Habits Will Help Slow It Down (Women’s Health via Yahoo.com)

Categories
advice and tips Life Tips

Cost of eating out via food ordering apps

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Came across this article “The insane amount of money people are spending on McDonald’s, according to new study” from NY Post yesterday. Some thoughts:

I have a friend who is by no means rich, but I saw the friend orders food delivery often. For me personally I usually order the store app and pick up food myself, and occasionally I order via Uber Eats or Grub Hub (also self-pickup). My Amex Gold card has some benefits for both apps: $10 cash back for each app each month, note the card has an annual fee that kind pays itself. For Uber Eats I bought discounted gift card at Costco. I just noticed today that Grub Hub price is slightly cheaper than Uber Eats, which the article also confirmed.

One thing though: when scrape the Uber Eats physical gift card, always do it via a coin, and do it gently. Don’t make the mistake I made on the bottom card: initially I though I can peel and see the code. I was wrong and almost lost $50 due to my stupid mistake 🙂

My uber gift cards: already redeemed. Make sure you don’t make mistakes that I made on the bottom gift card

I didn’t realized I am privileged

I just realized that when I made comments above, I didn’t realize that I am somewhat “privileged” in terms of I have the flexibility of working from home and can pick up food myself if/when needed. Not every job offers this kind of flexibility. But at the same time though, I still need to make up the lost time in the evenings or weekends when it’s applicable. Also, I actually helped that particular friend quite a bit whenever I was called and when I can.

Re: the “when I can” part, more recently I also realized that I need to make sure that I take care of myself: including my family and my work first. This is a bit touchy topic and I will talk more about it when it’s the time.

Categories
Business Career Software development

H-1B

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I received my H-1B visa about 25 years ago. I went directly from F-1 student visa to H-1B worker (without the OPT or Optional Practical Training) because I quit from the Ph.D program from my graduate school at the time. I was probably one of the first batch of the international graduate students took that route in my school. Do keep in mind the US job market and economy was in much better shape at the time (1999 and 2000) compared to now. The current job market is the worst job market I’ve seen in last 25 years.

I came across a thread re: H-1B on linkedIn re: this topic. I pasted the content below as not everyone has LinkedIn. You may find the discussion below the post interesting too.

========

I’m seeing a lot of takes about the new H1B $100,000 fee. What I rarely see is this issue framed from the perspective of the unemployed senior software engineer with 10–20+ years of experience who has been searching for months; or the recent CS graduate who can’t land their first job.

The reality is that the H1B program has been heavily used for cheap labor. When you count renewals, there are over 600,000 H1Bs in the U.S. Roughly two thirds (400,000) are in technology; and the vast majority of those are software engineers.

Multiple studies by the Center for Immigration Studies; a group that is generally pro immigrant; have found that H1B employees in technology earn about 30% less than domestic engineers. With around 1.2 million employed software engineers in the U.S., that means roughly one third of the field has been replaced by H1Bs over the past decade. This isn’t a case of “we can’t find enough domestic engineers.” This is “we’re going to replace our existing engineers with cheaper labor.”

The most glaring example came recently… Microsoft laid off thousands of employees and then applied for thousands of H1Bs to replace them.
So yes, the program is heavily abused. I’m not calling for it to be axed; the original purpose of H1B was to bring in the best and brightest to fill genuine gaps. That’s still important. But the way it’s being used today is a complete distortion of that purpose.

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The US is obviously going through a lot of changes since the new administration took over in January 2025. But I didn’t expect things happened so fast: probably some other friends felt the same way too.

另: 我已经很久没有特别注意美国h-1b 签证的情况了，总的感觉是比我那时候更难弄。现在美国国内就业市场不好，移民和拿工作签证的非移民也就成了替罪羊。现在的新移民让我想起很多年之前，在上海上下班的时候坐公共汽车，售票员一般让大家往里面挤一挤，让下面的人多上来一些。但是对已经上了公共汽车的人来说，也就是美国公民和绿卡持有人，让新移民或工作签证人员上来（进来）意味着自己的活动空间变得更小，或者说自己的饼可能要分给别人。

其实在我看来，同是搬砖人，相煎何太急。当然问题是亿万富翁宁肯自己手上的饼都烂掉，也不肯跟大家分 🙂

我是在网上看到这一张图的，觉得蛮贴切