Category: Personal

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Growing into Transition

Last year when Anna started school as a Kindergartener, I had the privilege of taking her to school more or less everyday. After weaning from separation anxiety, each morning she’d go to her class but as she walked away, she’d look back several times to me and wave goodbye. Even a teacher who stood in the area eventually picked up on Anna’s habit and would predict on when she’d turn back to look at me and wave one last time. Naturally, I stood to see her off until she wasn’t in my sight anymore.

This year as a first grader, I guess she’s getting into it much more. Now when she walks to her class, there has been increasing number of times when she just would wave without looking back. 🙁 At first, I thought she was in a hurry or something… or maybe I just wished so. She did it again several times this week… and honestly, it’s sad. I can only imagine how things would change when she’s older… Ah the growing pains…

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My Thoughts on Government Bailout: Take 3

First, it took only two people to re-write my thoughts, ie. Joanna and Daniel. You guys do shed lots of light. Really. For me anyway.

So after much turmoil, I am re-thinking and re-hashing things here. I do realize that it will affect the much smaller mom-and-pop size small businesses, just as much as the larger corporations. I still couldn’t care less about the effect on the stock market though. But since we all have become such a global economy, I can only cave in and say this… “pump up the volume”. Not the music, but the volume of money into the economy.

But I still say that many of the things have to change, as many of the economists have said so themselves. First, purely investment banks like Goldman Sachs need to live up to higher standards. Second, if you are bailed out with the government money, we own you. Not so literally but in the sense that these companies will have to shape up and eventually pay it back.

While I still wanna agree with Ron Paul, I say we do so at different levels…. that the government pump in the money to those banks that make daily operations happen, so that small businesses could pay their employees, and so on. But in the end, I just want a financial revolution. I am sick and tired of pumping hot air into commodities when they don’t have that much value to begin with! Especially with crude oil prices! Fix that. Cap it. Whatever it takes to stabilize that.

While Daniel made good point with large bonuses to attract great management, it should come at some kind of conditions. Like if you let your company fail, you don’t deserve any [bonuses]. Am I bit naive about that? Yeah, you betcha. But that’s how the rest 90+% of us w/o some kind of financial degrees think. WaMu ex-CEO should really return that $18 million that he earned in 3 weeks ’cause he didn’t do jack.

In short, there better be a restructuring and monitoring within the financial companies. And lots of it. It was only a few years ago that Enron created a different type of disaster. If this happens again next time, I say return to the bartering system and to heck with it all.

EDIT: Joanna pointed me to a NY Times article that explains better the implications of the severity of the financial situation and why the bailout is needed (as much as we hate the idea).

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Going lower and lower

Well, when you thought that things couldn’t possibly get worse, it did!

Last week, things got so bad for WaMu that government interjected and took things over… and then was sold to Morgan Chase!  Yikes.  And today, we learn that same fate was applied to another bank that I had thought was doing so well, Wachovia!  They got sold to Citi Bank.  Still, WaMu’s CEO, only after 3 weeks of working, got away with $18 million in payout!  What the fudge?!

Not only that, we are bailing out three of our largest auto makers with $25 billion loan.  Most (rich) people still want the government to bail out the troubled financial corps (for me, corpse) with $700 billion!  What are you freakin’ insane?!

Sure not bailing them out will hurt.  But things will have to get worse before they get better!  This was all brought to us by our own stupid greed.  We have to face the facts.  If the government is the parent, and the financial corps are the kids, it’s time to stop bailing them out.  Let them learn.  Otherwise, things will never improve in the long run.

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My Thoughts on Government Financial Interjection

With Fannie Mae and Freddie doing so badly that the government stepped in to bail them out, and now with the $85 billion bailout loan to AIG and so many others, I am honestly just ticked. Off. All this means is that we, as tax payers, will have to pay for the troubled economy.

How did we get to this state? Greedy investors and companies. That’s the American way and dream, right?! And if people want less and less interjections and such from the government, what the heck are we doing allowing the government to take its claws deeper into the businesses?!

So what if Fannie Mae and Freddie’s going down will cause a turmoil?! Things will HAVE to get worse before they get better! It’s like a teenager that spent too much of his/her money and you practice the “tough love” portion to help the teen learn the valuable lesson. Yet if Bush administration wants to bail the entire economy out, no one will really learn anything.

I for one am sick and freaking tired of using my own money to help others. Let me be clear. I am sick and tired of helping other rich people from losing their money! I would rather want the money to go to help insure the poor families and such. Does this make me a Democrat?! Then so be it! But I still don’t like a lot of Democratic perspective on things, let alone the fact that I don’t like nor do I endorse Senator Obama (and don’t you DARE to accuse me of racism ’cause I’m not).

I just wanna end it with this saying that I didn’t think I’d use myself… “Bah, humbug!”

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Thoughts on Adoption: Post-“Bella”

I just watched the ending to a movie called “Bella“.  It’s a rather offbeat story that throws you off at first but as the story progresses, you figure it out.   But especially so, I didn’t fully appreciate it till the very end of the movie.

*SPOILER ALERT*!!

If you haven’t watched the movie yet and don’t want me to spoil it, skip the post till you watched it!  So as the story progresses, the lead female character finds out she’s pregnant out of wedlock and goes through crisis.  The male character who used to work with her shares his life story and eventually ask her about putting the baby up for adoption.  But you don’t find out till later that he himself was adopted.  And towards the end, you find out that he adopts the baby of his co-worker.  As the ending approaches and the mother is re-united with the daughter, I couldn’t help but sense how beautiful the adoption is.

See, in spiritual side of things, we also are adopted.  We all are lost but through Christ, God adopts us as His own.  I have always been fascinated by that…  Why would anyone just take us in?  Why would anyone take me in?!  It indeed is beautiful, like the movie title suggests, to see life and that life adopting another life.

I am still semi-serious about adopting a child later on our lives.  It would be a privilege and honor to be given an opportunity to adopt a lost person and tell him/her that he/she is part of us now.  We all are orphans wandering around until we realize that God has received us.

I don’t know… that concept and fact of adoption just blows my mind away every time I think about it.

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Reasons why I love smoked food

I love any food, especially meat, smoked. And like many, there’s a good reason as to why.

We all grew up being a bit pyromanic… right? Didn’t we? Well, I know I did. 😛 I remember memories of making my own fire crackers… putting two matches head to head and wrapping the heads in aluminum foil and heating up the foil, you had instant crackers. 😀

However, what was even more memorable was my visits to my grandparents’ place in Namwon. It is (at least it was when I was a kid) a small town about an hour away from Chonju, Soojin’s hometown, and 5 hours south of Seoul. Back when I used to visit, they still cooked food using wood. Rice was cooked in this big black pot that sat on top of fire. My (beloved) grandma used to let us feed wood to that thirsty fire, and my brother and I didn’t care how hot it was, we just kept feeding the fire to it.

Soon enough, I developed a strong liking to the smell of burning wood. When crop was good, there’d be days when my uncle would bring in peas and after they are dried in sunlight, we’d set the whole thing on fire and eat the cooked peas inside the pods. Boy were they good!

So every time I eat or smell either smoked food or burning wood, I always reminisce about the old days. Things were much simpler then… Cooking in fire was even cooler at night. Shucks… I wish I could relive that moment.

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Visit to Dallas

After having visited Austin two weeks ago, I visited Dallas this past weekend.

I got to see Jun Kang, an eclectic friend of mine, who is a movie/film director/editor/producer. He is a very artistic guy, and I always think of that director dude from the series “Entourage”! 😛 Had lunch with him on Friday and hung out at the Dallas Museum of Arts. Then we hung out at the museum’s little gravel garden. It was good catching up with him…

After that, I went to see my ex-roome, Jin Chung. He came back from Washington, DC where he worked for a great non-profit organization called IJM (International Justice Mission) but came back home to take care of his parents. He’s a good guy really… misunderstood like the most of us… but a great guy with passion. We had fun catching up and reminiscing on the good ol’ times.

Then, I met up with Erica Quinn (now, Erica Bittner!) and her hubby, Travis, and my old favorite Daniel Quinn for dinner! We met at a neat Chinese restaurant called May Dragon. We had an awesome time catching up and having some of the best laughs I’ve had in a long time! And very glad to find out that Travis is a good guy and easy to get along with. My boy Daniel was now all grown up and working… sheesh… where does time go?!

Then I spent the night at Mo’s place. Dude… he lives too far!! Frisco!! But we had good time catching up and awesome breakfast at Le Peep’s nearby.

Then I met up Joohee Kim and her new hubby, Kihyun Kim for lunch. I think we went to the same Soon Tofu place that Alex Lee loved so much! I had missed Joohee’s wedding since I had to stay longer in Korea. She looked pretty happy so I was glad to see that. Joohee’s husband is a jundosanim (pastor-in-training) and he seemed sincere enough.

Then I headed over to Deborah Ahn (now Wingate) and her husband, Jon Wingate’s place! But since Erica didn’t know other couples like herself (Korean marrying Caucasian), I had asked Deborah if it was ok for Erica and the family to join us for dinner!

Added bonus was that I got to meet the Editor-in-Chief of “The Brew” magazine, Eric Beach! 😀 It is always nice to meet people in person after you meet them online. The two couples seemed to hit it off and I am glad to have been the link.

Afterwards, I had great talks of all kinds with the Wingates. Then the next morning, Deborah cooked awesome breakfast of bacon and eggs!! 😀 Mmmmm… and more great talk and catching up.

I attended Binnerri Church for service and see Mo again. But afterwards, I wanted to see Brian Shinn and his kid! So I met him up at local Chili’s resaturant. Last time I saw him was at least 8 years ago so it was great catching up with him. He had gained some weight… but he still was the same Brian! Since his kid was sleeping, he came alone. So I drove to his place to see his kid, Tyler, and meet his wife for the first time! Tyler was sooo cute!

After all that, I drove back home and got home around 7 pm. It was tiring… but awesome just catching up with old friends.

By the way, Jun, Jin, and Mo are still single if some of the readers are single women! 😉 LOL…