When I saw the movie “Sleepless in Seattle” with Michael many years ago, we both agreed that they chose the right city for the movie, as “Sleepless in Boston” or “Sleepless in New York” would sound much worse than “Sleepless in Seattle”. “Sleepless in Seattle” sounds good, and it sounds romantic.
Don’t know why I thought of that, as I am househunting in San Francisco Bay Area right now. I am not homeless yet, as we are still living in the rental house, although there is no longer a lease. I asked the agent over a month ago whether we could do month-to-month, and he said that he would check with the owner. Then I have not heard from him again. Not surprising - since the agent tries to do as little work as possible, so my guess is that he basically told the owner that it’s best to keep doing month-to-month instead of arguing with me for higher rent or longer lease term.
I feel as if I could be “homeless in San Francisco” - hmm, it still does not sound as rhymy as “Sleepless in Seattle”. Plus it is totally NOT a romantic situation!
The first time I bought a house was in San Diego. We flew into San Diego, started looking for a house, decided on one within a week, and moved in within a month. I don’t remember ever reading anything like disclosure documents (!), but I do remember signing a ton of documents. It shows that when you have no knowledge or experience doing something, out of dumb luck, you could end up in a great situation, like with my house in San Diego.
Now that I have learned what I dislike and like in a house, especially in the context of the different climate zones of Bay Area, I find it much harder to buy a house. Those that look decent are often indecently expensive; those that are reasonably priced are often not in reasonable condition. If there is any house that looks like a good deal, there wil be 10 bids immediately.
As it turned out, since we are planning to use only the Stanford loan (which is available for only eligible faculty and staff of Stanford University) and not planning to borrow a commercial mortgage, we need to get a pre-approval letter from Stanford in order for our offers to be taken seriously. The Stanford housing office staff certainly have no incentive to work fast – they are not competing for business with anyone else after all! We were told that we would get a pre-approval letter in two weeks, but two weeks have gone, and there is no apology that they have been slow – only a matter-of-fact “oh it may be ready end of next week.”
The agent I hired was recommended by a friend, although she said that perhaps for Menlo Park/Palo Alto area he is not ideal. Since he’s so eager for business (which agent is not these days?), I felt bad about firing him after a couple of househuting trips. So he stays on.
He’s probably in his 50s, and drives very carefully. We would be driving, and then I would say, “why are we waiting in the left lane for people to turn left, since we are planning to go straight?” He would say, “really? Oh I did not realize that this lane was also for left turns”, when cars were zipping by us on ther right! Or I would say, “why are we waiting on the far right lane to get on the freeway, when the carpool lane is completely empty?” - he would say, “Oh I did not realize that’s a lane too!” And he has lived in the area for over 20 years! I guess when I get old, I will be that slow, and Winston will be asking the same impatient questions to me.
And unlike some other agents who would spend the time and some money to make their clients feel good (i.e. Like a coffee break or a lunch), my agent is on the super low budget. We would go for 4 or 5 hours without a single stop for any refreshments. He has bottled water in the car, and that’s all we have!
Most of the time, Michael and I searched for the houses first, so the agent really does not add much value in terms of identifying properties for us. Come to think of it, the real estate agents are like the lawyers in this country. They create the rules to make themselves indispensable, so we have no way around them, but to hire them, supposedly to represent our interests, when of course they represent their own interests, which are often in conflict with ours.
I saw this house in Atherton that is so cute, quiet and beautiful, and believe it or not, the owner herself is both a Harvard and MIT alum! I love the inside and outside of the house. Given that Atherton is where mansions with 1-acre lots are, this house is one of the few small houses with small yards. She’s asking for $1.475 million, and I would be willing to pay $1.4 million if I could find nearby parks and playgrounds for Winston. But alas, in Atherton, all the kids play in their own 1-acre yards, so I guess they don’t need any public parks. And for that reason alone, we reluctantly have to rule it out.
I also saw a couple of houses that are decent looking in Redwood City – not a great town but with some nice neighborhoods. But often they come with swimming pools. Now, Bay Area is not Hawaii, where you can swim all year round. And these swimmig pools are not exactly big, so it’s perhaps only big enough for babies and toddlers. So why do people dig a swimming pool in an otherwise already small yard? I fail to understand the rationale, except to think that these people are stupid enough to think that having a swimming pool somehow indicates a certain status where they in reality don’t belong. It’s like buying and old and run-down BMW when it’s much wiser to buy a moderately used, reliable and functioning Honda for the same price.
In Palo Alto, we encountered a super agent, who apparently advertises very aggressively all the time. I saw her at an open house, where she had on display all the other houses that she was selling at the time. She was wearing this magenta-colored outfit with bright yellow hat indoors, and had heavy makeup on her face. I suppose all this was meant to catch attention. I asked her if they would consider offers below the asking price, and she said, “based on your question, I think you need a 30-minute tutorial.” I was completely confused, “why?” she said, “real estate is a highly local business. It sounds like that you want to save money, in which case you need a great agent. Have you heard about me before? I am famous.” - I left quickly afterwards as I felt that she could be bossing me around if she were my agent. The house was pending the next day, and so were the other houses in Palo Alto that were half decent. Apparently the Chinese (those who work and live in the Bay Area and those who send their wives and kids here while remaining in China themselves) have been bidding up the property prices in Palo Alto, because the most “famous” neighborhood in Bay Area for the Chinese people is Palo Alto.
So where else have I considered? Foster City – it’s too flat, too boring and too ugly. And in the end, it’s also not so convenient for driving to Stanford and Palo Alto area. San Mateo – well, it’s not completely out of the running, but it’s also quite some distance from Stanford, and we have yet to see houses that are in good location and good condition at the same time. Belmont – I can’t stand the hilly and windy roads of Belmont, and Hallmark area of Belmont is like Palo Alto in that for any decently priced houses there are usually multiple offers within a week. Redwood Shores – it’s like the “Truman Show”. Any place north of San Mateo – too cold. Any place in the East Bay – too far. Any place south of Palo Alto – too hot. Any place to the west of Menlo Park/Palo Alto/Redwood City? - too cold and too far.
What can I say? - I have become high-maintenance! :) Will I end up “Homeless in San Francisco”?
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
From wobbling to walking: one month in the life of Winston Lin
Winston has always liked to walk with help. At the beginning of 9 months, he started on his own wobbly steps. Now at the end of 9 months, he can walk pretty well on his own, as long as he doesn't try to run.
Friday, April 9, 2010
The Golden Gate Park
Since my company was sold in February, I have effectively been taking a break. For the first few weeks, I found myself thinking a lot about the previous company. But gradually my mind moved on. While I have been scheduling meetings with potential investors and partners, I have largely been rather idle.
In the midst of a deep economic recession, it is hard to find people who have the time or interest in the middle of the week to do something fun with me. As a result, I have found myself often driving to Golden Gate Park by myself in the morning, walking through the San Francisco Botanical Garden (isn’t it a heavenly place on earth?), and having something to eat at the incomparable Arizmendi Bakery (arizmendibakery.org) - a worker-owned innovative bakery shop. Sometimes even after I had breakfast at home, I could not resist the temptation to buy a pear and ginger scone, or my favorite provolone and olive roll, fresh out of the oven. Life is so tasty!
It is hard to imagine that essentially right next to the heart of downtown San Francisco lies this lusciously green Golden Gate Park, with blooming flowers, towering trees, hidden trails and many tranquil lakes and ponds covered by water lillies. I even discovered a small Shakespeare Garden very close to the California Academy of Sciences. While there is usually a line of people outside the museum, I have never seen another person in that garden when I am there. It is designed as one of those rose gardesn in Shakespeare’s plays, and on the benches inscribed the beautiful sonnets by Shakespeare. I so love it!
While I admit that in the back of my mind I always do have this nagging worry that perhaps I will not be able to start another successful biotech company, I have truly enjoyed my strolls through the park, when the birds are chirping, the ducks waddling, and the sun shining through the trees. I will surely miss Golden Gate Park when I move further down south on the Peninsula!
In the midst of a deep economic recession, it is hard to find people who have the time or interest in the middle of the week to do something fun with me. As a result, I have found myself often driving to Golden Gate Park by myself in the morning, walking through the San Francisco Botanical Garden (isn’t it a heavenly place on earth?), and having something to eat at the incomparable Arizmendi Bakery (arizmendibakery.org) - a worker-owned innovative bakery shop. Sometimes even after I had breakfast at home, I could not resist the temptation to buy a pear and ginger scone, or my favorite provolone and olive roll, fresh out of the oven. Life is so tasty!
It is hard to imagine that essentially right next to the heart of downtown San Francisco lies this lusciously green Golden Gate Park, with blooming flowers, towering trees, hidden trails and many tranquil lakes and ponds covered by water lillies. I even discovered a small Shakespeare Garden very close to the California Academy of Sciences. While there is usually a line of people outside the museum, I have never seen another person in that garden when I am there. It is designed as one of those rose gardesn in Shakespeare’s plays, and on the benches inscribed the beautiful sonnets by Shakespeare. I so love it!
While I admit that in the back of my mind I always do have this nagging worry that perhaps I will not be able to start another successful biotech company, I have truly enjoyed my strolls through the park, when the birds are chirping, the ducks waddling, and the sun shining through the trees. I will surely miss Golden Gate Park when I move further down south on the Peninsula!
When Mothers Get Together
Before I had Winston, I dreaded getting together with new mothers, because they could only talk about one topic – the baby. My eyes would glaze over and I could barely conceal my boredom.
Therefore, I can’t help but feel remorse when I find myself talking to other mothers about what to feed Winston at what age, what to expect when he’s teething, how much sleep he should be getting, what kind of skills he should be mastering, how to cut his fingernails and hair when he does not want to sit still ever, etc. These topics are indeed mind-numbing for those who do not have kids.
Recently as I started looking seriously in the housing market, I have found myself focus on completely different things from last time when I bought my first house in San Diego. Back then, I wanted a really nice house, both inside and outside. I loved the views and the easy commute, and totally did not care about school district or convenience to shopping. Now that we have moved to Bay Area and rented the house to a lesbian couple with a newborn baby, I realize that out of pure coincidence the house in San Diego was perfect for a new baby, with its community park, pool and jacuzzi, its easy access to shopping, its balmy weather, its quiet neighborhood, and its nice indoor layout.
Well, now that we are in the insanely expensive Bay Area, I can’t have everything I want in this house. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend at Google and her friend. Since we are all mothers with very young kids, we ended up talking the whole time about baby topics. My friend lives in Foster City. Her parents and parents-in-law take turns caring for her two-year old son during the weekdays. Her friend lives in Saratoga, and has a live-in nanny. We exchanged our stories on how to manage and motivate this “team” at home to take good care of the kid.
Towards the end of the lunch, her friend asked me if I was interested in having a second baby. And I just shook my head emphatically, “ oh one kid is already so much worry and work.” My friend just had a tough night with her kid, so she said that she also occasionally had doubts about having a second baby. But, she said, “ you should definitely consider having a second. Winston is so agreeable and laughs all the time that he could be a baby model!” - Of course that was music to my ears – praises for Winston.
When I talked to my mom on the phone later at night, she said,”yes, why don’t you try to see if he could be a baby model?” I said that I wanted him to grow up healthy and happy, and certainly do not expect him to make money for us when he can barely walk! And yes, I would certainly be delighted if his pictures are adored by many people, but he himself does not benefit at all from it, so my motivation would be purely for my own sake. Given the choices between roaming around the house and posing for photos, I know for sure what he would choose. And I really just want to see him happy.
So where should I buy a house for Winston? - If I were really rich, I would certainly choose to live in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, where the neighborhoods are nice, the commute is easy, the weather is agreeable, and the schools are close by. He’s not even 10 months old, and I am already considering sending him to the International School of the Peninsula from K to 8th grade, which is located in Palo Alto, followed by the Menlo School for high school, which is located in Atherton. But we can only afford to live in a tiny house in Palo Alto/Menlo Park area, unless we are willing to live close to the train tracks or busy streets. Maybe west San Mateo or Hallmark area of Belmont, which are fairly close to the 280 highway? Or Maybe Farm Hill area of Redwood City?
This wil be the home where Winston has his first memories and I just want to make his first memories as rosy as his cheeks!
Therefore, I can’t help but feel remorse when I find myself talking to other mothers about what to feed Winston at what age, what to expect when he’s teething, how much sleep he should be getting, what kind of skills he should be mastering, how to cut his fingernails and hair when he does not want to sit still ever, etc. These topics are indeed mind-numbing for those who do not have kids.
Recently as I started looking seriously in the housing market, I have found myself focus on completely different things from last time when I bought my first house in San Diego. Back then, I wanted a really nice house, both inside and outside. I loved the views and the easy commute, and totally did not care about school district or convenience to shopping. Now that we have moved to Bay Area and rented the house to a lesbian couple with a newborn baby, I realize that out of pure coincidence the house in San Diego was perfect for a new baby, with its community park, pool and jacuzzi, its easy access to shopping, its balmy weather, its quiet neighborhood, and its nice indoor layout.
Well, now that we are in the insanely expensive Bay Area, I can’t have everything I want in this house. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend at Google and her friend. Since we are all mothers with very young kids, we ended up talking the whole time about baby topics. My friend lives in Foster City. Her parents and parents-in-law take turns caring for her two-year old son during the weekdays. Her friend lives in Saratoga, and has a live-in nanny. We exchanged our stories on how to manage and motivate this “team” at home to take good care of the kid.
Towards the end of the lunch, her friend asked me if I was interested in having a second baby. And I just shook my head emphatically, “ oh one kid is already so much worry and work.” My friend just had a tough night with her kid, so she said that she also occasionally had doubts about having a second baby. But, she said, “ you should definitely consider having a second. Winston is so agreeable and laughs all the time that he could be a baby model!” - Of course that was music to my ears – praises for Winston.
When I talked to my mom on the phone later at night, she said,”yes, why don’t you try to see if he could be a baby model?” I said that I wanted him to grow up healthy and happy, and certainly do not expect him to make money for us when he can barely walk! And yes, I would certainly be delighted if his pictures are adored by many people, but he himself does not benefit at all from it, so my motivation would be purely for my own sake. Given the choices between roaming around the house and posing for photos, I know for sure what he would choose. And I really just want to see him happy.
So where should I buy a house for Winston? - If I were really rich, I would certainly choose to live in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, where the neighborhoods are nice, the commute is easy, the weather is agreeable, and the schools are close by. He’s not even 10 months old, and I am already considering sending him to the International School of the Peninsula from K to 8th grade, which is located in Palo Alto, followed by the Menlo School for high school, which is located in Atherton. But we can only afford to live in a tiny house in Palo Alto/Menlo Park area, unless we are willing to live close to the train tracks or busy streets. Maybe west San Mateo or Hallmark area of Belmont, which are fairly close to the 280 highway? Or Maybe Farm Hill area of Redwood City?
This wil be the home where Winston has his first memories and I just want to make his first memories as rosy as his cheeks!
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Tribute to My Remarkable Female Friends
Life is full of coincidences. The other day, I was chatting with a friend online, and she mentioned that she just updated her blog, so I went to take a look (http://yinglauraliu.blogspot.com/). I was just complaining to her about a bad fight that I had with Michael, and how I was feeling really angry . After talking to her, and reading her blog, I felt so much better and wanted to leave a comment, but then I got busy with something else and never got to do it.
Then I received an email from another friend asking me to read this latest op-ed piece by the columnist David Brooks in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/opinion/30brooks.html?src=me&ref=homepage). As chance would have it, yet another friend told me that she’s now writig a blog in Chinese - http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/. I went to take a look, and found myself reading the whole thing from beginning to end in one breath, as if it were one of those suspense novels that keep me on the edge of my seat.
Now why are these things related? - To varying degrees, all these writings are about how to live a happy life and what it means to have a happy life, especially for a woman.
Starting with the friend YL who counseled me right after my fight with Michael (http://yinglauraliu.blogspot.com/), which was of course about something trivial in reality but ballooned into something that felt enormous and terrible – reading her blog is like talking to her in a way. Surely she must have had moments of anger in her life, but I find it hard to imagine what she is like when she is angry. From that perspective, she has a very different personality from mine – I have been called bad-tempered or hot-headed by quite a few who know me well. That being said, I always find it extremely easy to understand her and be understood by her. From the self-effacing way she writes about her life and herself, one could not conjure up an image of a strong and capable woman who is at the same time sweet and empathic, which she is. Having received both PhD and an MBA from Ivy League schools, she is working full-time at a big publishing company in New York. She’s the mother of three(!) boys – an older boy of 4 years old and a pair of twins who are almost 2. At home, she manages a household that is in sheer number of people bigger than my company. Outside of work, she is in touch with a lot of friends. It is not without some envy that I see her popular with so many more people (true I am not a teenager any more but can’t help it still). She is the one that chats with me often about movies, as we both seem to be rather fanatical movie fans. She was very candid in speaking to me about how the birth of a child could add stress to relationships. Considering that I have only one son and she has three, and she did not experience this kind of “stress” until the birth of the twins, I must say that it proves that she handles interpersonal relationships much better than I do.
David Brooks’ article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/opinion/30brooks.html?src=me&ref=homepage) started out on the current tabloid news – actress Sandra Bullock won an Oscar (finally), and then the found out that her husband was cheating left and right on her. Presumably someone asked a question, “If you have to pick, would you choose to win the Oscar or have a happy marriage?” The article went on to explain that there is dubious relationship between money/fame and happiness, whereas there is clear correlation between personal relationship and happiness. In other worlds, what is emphasized in our education is not even a major contributor to happiness. Perhaps there shoud be a course in the required curriculum called “interpersonal relationship”, besides english, math, chemistry, biology, economics, etc. David Brooks’ article is not about women, but since Sandra Bullock is a woman, one cannot fail to notice that the successful/famous actors have fared in general much better in private life than their female counterparts. Sure, they might have gone through a divorce or two, but somehow they did not seem to suffer much from those divorces, they were never lonely or alone, and they almost always emerged from these breakups better and happier and eventually they all settled down one way or another. Think Tom Hanks, Warren Beaty, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise. And then think Sandra Bullock, Hillary Swank, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman. In the Asian cinema, the three extraordinarily beautiful and talented actressses (Gong Li, Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh – now all in their 40s) are all single and childless. So is it because these women paid too much attention to the wrong thing? The friend QH who forwarded the article lives in Scarsdale and works in New York City, like YL. Like YL, she has a PhD and an MBA, and works in a multinational company. She has two kids – a boy and a girl. Like YL, she has had to shoulder majority of the task and responsibility of taking care of the ailing parents’ generation in addition to taking care of the kids. Gone are the carefree days when the only worry was a chemistry exam. In spite of all these roles she has to play, she and her husband have still managed to take vacation trips periodically and keep entertainining friends – one of YL’s blogs is about a Thanksgiving party at her place. I could not help wondering that she forwarded this article to her friends to deliver the message that while career, money and fame are all “nice-to-haves”, ultimately it is the family and personal relationships that do matter most.
Some of the articles on my friend YQ’s Chinese blog ( http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/) happen to be on the same topic as well – happiness. She talked candidly about how she learned some wrong lessons in her childhood, in that she focused perhaps too much on “doing the right thing”, “being the good student”, “getting the best grades”, “winning the competitions”, etc. Among people I know, I cannot think of one that matches my impression of an “intellectual and idealistic woman” better than YQ. She is from Shanghai originally, but while she’s got the physique and looks of a Shanghai gal, she has none of the materialism of a stereotypical Shanghainese. We met on the plane from Shanghai to San Francisco, when we were both starting at Harvard, her as a freshman and me as a transfer student. From the start, she demonstrated a sensitivity and sensibility that were way beyond her years. What is striking is not that she possessed a feel for the intangibles at such a young age. It is that she was completely conscious of it, and insisted on keeping it even at a young age. In her blog, she wrote about starting out in math in college, not out of interest but out of competence. Most people at her age in her situation would have gone on to Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan or McKinsey and then back to Harvard Business School for a final touch before going back to the original firm to make partner. She, on the other hand, had the supreme confidence to not pursue that route, while possessing the tentative uncertainty to question her choice. Thus in a paradoxical way, she's more confident and less arrogant at the same time. Now she’s working towards a PhD degree at Harvard and building a career in teaching, writing and documentary film-making. She wrote one piece on happiness, and I found myself reading it over and over again - http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/logs/59678630.html. It feels much more poignant to me than David Brooks’ article – of course it should, since she and I are very much alike in many ways. Again, it is her that noticed a similarity between the two of us first, even when we were both in college. I could not see it, but politely did not object at the time. It has then taken me over a decade to figure out something that she grasped in a few encounters when she was just 18 years old – yes, indeed we are very much alike. The life she is living now is one that I thought that I would live, or at least imagined that I might be able to live – an intellectually stimulating and inspiring life that is largely devoid of materialism, but I did not have the confidence nor the ability to follow through. Instead I followed a much more conventional pathway. The childhood she depicted reminds me of mine – when I was also a model student and teachers’ favorite. We have both come to the conclusion that what matters most in life is not fame, or money, or status. It is happiness that matters. But we both are introspective types that have spent much time pondering what makes us personally happy. Even when it comes to small things, like how she describes her hair as hair being hard as wires, I found myself thinking, “I have finally found another girl whose hair texture is the same as mine!”
These three female friends of mine brought to mind my other remarkable female friends, in whose shadow I stand in awe. One is so intuitively understanding of human relationships that what I have struggled to understand in years can be explained in one or two sentences by her. Like what YQ wrote in one of her blogs (http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/logs/60024593.html), she knows clearly what she wants, and therefore does not spare effort in getting what she wants, and does not whine about the cost it takes to get it. She understands that we have to get what we truly want to be happy, but often having something is at the cost of not having something else. One friend is so talented in more ways than one - her bi-lingual blog is one place to demonstrate the wide variety of her interests, skills and abilities - http://liebestraum.blogspot.com/. Another friend has managed to prove the rest of the cynical world wrong. Yes, in her life, “love does conquer all”. She’s happily married with one son, living and working in the Netherlands now. Due to her husband’s kidney disease, she donated a kidney to him, and therefore had to take care of her husband while recuperating herself for a few months. And she’s perhaps one of the happiest and most positive people I have ever known. She said to me, “I could never have imagined when I was younger how happy I would be today.” And there are more of them... While I don’t see or talk to them often (they are all busy!) I have the impression that I am surrounded by these beautiful, talented, strong, mature and utterly sweet women.
Therefore, this blog is dedicated to these remarkable female friends of mine, without whom the world would have been so much duller, and my life so much less interesting for sure! It is in a way my humble tribute to them.
Then I received an email from another friend asking me to read this latest op-ed piece by the columnist David Brooks in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/opinion/30brooks.html?src=me&ref=homepage). As chance would have it, yet another friend told me that she’s now writig a blog in Chinese - http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/. I went to take a look, and found myself reading the whole thing from beginning to end in one breath, as if it were one of those suspense novels that keep me on the edge of my seat.
Now why are these things related? - To varying degrees, all these writings are about how to live a happy life and what it means to have a happy life, especially for a woman.
Starting with the friend YL who counseled me right after my fight with Michael (http://yinglauraliu.blogspot.com/), which was of course about something trivial in reality but ballooned into something that felt enormous and terrible – reading her blog is like talking to her in a way. Surely she must have had moments of anger in her life, but I find it hard to imagine what she is like when she is angry. From that perspective, she has a very different personality from mine – I have been called bad-tempered or hot-headed by quite a few who know me well. That being said, I always find it extremely easy to understand her and be understood by her. From the self-effacing way she writes about her life and herself, one could not conjure up an image of a strong and capable woman who is at the same time sweet and empathic, which she is. Having received both PhD and an MBA from Ivy League schools, she is working full-time at a big publishing company in New York. She’s the mother of three(!) boys – an older boy of 4 years old and a pair of twins who are almost 2. At home, she manages a household that is in sheer number of people bigger than my company. Outside of work, she is in touch with a lot of friends. It is not without some envy that I see her popular with so many more people (true I am not a teenager any more but can’t help it still). She is the one that chats with me often about movies, as we both seem to be rather fanatical movie fans. She was very candid in speaking to me about how the birth of a child could add stress to relationships. Considering that I have only one son and she has three, and she did not experience this kind of “stress” until the birth of the twins, I must say that it proves that she handles interpersonal relationships much better than I do.
David Brooks’ article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/opinion/30brooks.html?src=me&ref=homepage) started out on the current tabloid news – actress Sandra Bullock won an Oscar (finally), and then the found out that her husband was cheating left and right on her. Presumably someone asked a question, “If you have to pick, would you choose to win the Oscar or have a happy marriage?” The article went on to explain that there is dubious relationship between money/fame and happiness, whereas there is clear correlation between personal relationship and happiness. In other worlds, what is emphasized in our education is not even a major contributor to happiness. Perhaps there shoud be a course in the required curriculum called “interpersonal relationship”, besides english, math, chemistry, biology, economics, etc. David Brooks’ article is not about women, but since Sandra Bullock is a woman, one cannot fail to notice that the successful/famous actors have fared in general much better in private life than their female counterparts. Sure, they might have gone through a divorce or two, but somehow they did not seem to suffer much from those divorces, they were never lonely or alone, and they almost always emerged from these breakups better and happier and eventually they all settled down one way or another. Think Tom Hanks, Warren Beaty, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise. And then think Sandra Bullock, Hillary Swank, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman. In the Asian cinema, the three extraordinarily beautiful and talented actressses (Gong Li, Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh – now all in their 40s) are all single and childless. So is it because these women paid too much attention to the wrong thing? The friend QH who forwarded the article lives in Scarsdale and works in New York City, like YL. Like YL, she has a PhD and an MBA, and works in a multinational company. She has two kids – a boy and a girl. Like YL, she has had to shoulder majority of the task and responsibility of taking care of the ailing parents’ generation in addition to taking care of the kids. Gone are the carefree days when the only worry was a chemistry exam. In spite of all these roles she has to play, she and her husband have still managed to take vacation trips periodically and keep entertainining friends – one of YL’s blogs is about a Thanksgiving party at her place. I could not help wondering that she forwarded this article to her friends to deliver the message that while career, money and fame are all “nice-to-haves”, ultimately it is the family and personal relationships that do matter most.
Some of the articles on my friend YQ’s Chinese blog ( http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/) happen to be on the same topic as well – happiness. She talked candidly about how she learned some wrong lessons in her childhood, in that she focused perhaps too much on “doing the right thing”, “being the good student”, “getting the best grades”, “winning the competitions”, etc. Among people I know, I cannot think of one that matches my impression of an “intellectual and idealistic woman” better than YQ. She is from Shanghai originally, but while she’s got the physique and looks of a Shanghai gal, she has none of the materialism of a stereotypical Shanghainese. We met on the plane from Shanghai to San Francisco, when we were both starting at Harvard, her as a freshman and me as a transfer student. From the start, she demonstrated a sensitivity and sensibility that were way beyond her years. What is striking is not that she possessed a feel for the intangibles at such a young age. It is that she was completely conscious of it, and insisted on keeping it even at a young age. In her blog, she wrote about starting out in math in college, not out of interest but out of competence. Most people at her age in her situation would have gone on to Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan or McKinsey and then back to Harvard Business School for a final touch before going back to the original firm to make partner. She, on the other hand, had the supreme confidence to not pursue that route, while possessing the tentative uncertainty to question her choice. Thus in a paradoxical way, she's more confident and less arrogant at the same time. Now she’s working towards a PhD degree at Harvard and building a career in teaching, writing and documentary film-making. She wrote one piece on happiness, and I found myself reading it over and over again - http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/logs/59678630.html. It feels much more poignant to me than David Brooks’ article – of course it should, since she and I are very much alike in many ways. Again, it is her that noticed a similarity between the two of us first, even when we were both in college. I could not see it, but politely did not object at the time. It has then taken me over a decade to figure out something that she grasped in a few encounters when she was just 18 years old – yes, indeed we are very much alike. The life she is living now is one that I thought that I would live, or at least imagined that I might be able to live – an intellectually stimulating and inspiring life that is largely devoid of materialism, but I did not have the confidence nor the ability to follow through. Instead I followed a much more conventional pathway. The childhood she depicted reminds me of mine – when I was also a model student and teachers’ favorite. We have both come to the conclusion that what matters most in life is not fame, or money, or status. It is happiness that matters. But we both are introspective types that have spent much time pondering what makes us personally happy. Even when it comes to small things, like how she describes her hair as hair being hard as wires, I found myself thinking, “I have finally found another girl whose hair texture is the same as mine!”
These three female friends of mine brought to mind my other remarkable female friends, in whose shadow I stand in awe. One is so intuitively understanding of human relationships that what I have struggled to understand in years can be explained in one or two sentences by her. Like what YQ wrote in one of her blogs (http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/logs/60024593.html), she knows clearly what she wants, and therefore does not spare effort in getting what she wants, and does not whine about the cost it takes to get it. She understands that we have to get what we truly want to be happy, but often having something is at the cost of not having something else. One friend is so talented in more ways than one - her bi-lingual blog is one place to demonstrate the wide variety of her interests, skills and abilities - http://liebestraum.blogspot.com/. Another friend has managed to prove the rest of the cynical world wrong. Yes, in her life, “love does conquer all”. She’s happily married with one son, living and working in the Netherlands now. Due to her husband’s kidney disease, she donated a kidney to him, and therefore had to take care of her husband while recuperating herself for a few months. And she’s perhaps one of the happiest and most positive people I have ever known. She said to me, “I could never have imagined when I was younger how happy I would be today.” And there are more of them... While I don’t see or talk to them often (they are all busy!) I have the impression that I am surrounded by these beautiful, talented, strong, mature and utterly sweet women.
Therefore, this blog is dedicated to these remarkable female friends of mine, without whom the world would have been so much duller, and my life so much less interesting for sure! It is in a way my humble tribute to them.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Trivialities of Life
I recall distinctively a conversation Michael and I had a few years ago. He just read that families in this country spent an average of a dozen hours every week on running errands including shopping, which we both found astonishing. We wondered why people could not be more efficient and take just one shopping trip per week to all the necessary stores on one day and buy everything needed for the week, or for the month, when it comes to non-perishables. After all, we followed the concept of efficiency almost militantly. I would go grocery shopping once every week on a weekday evening to avoid long lines. Then on a weekend day, I would cook everything I bought that week into one big feast of 8 or 9 dishes. Often, I would invite some friends over for this one big meal of the week. Then Michael gets the leftovers for the next 3-4 days, with the rest of the time eating out. Since I only cooked once a week, the kitchen just needed to be cleaned once a week. Because of the infrequent and light cooking as well as infrequent and light presence of its inhabitants (Michael and myself) in the house, it was kept immaculately clean all the time, despite the fact that I very rarely did a thorough cleanup of the house. On shopping for things other than groceries? - well, we would take perhaps one trip every two or three months to Costco and stock up on all the things that Costco offers in huge quantities.
So I was very puzzled by the general inefficiency of the “average population” back then. I thought to myself, “it will be awful to spend one’s valuable time on running errands all the time.”
Well, that year was BC (Before Child). Since the birth of Winston, I have also joined the “average inefficient population”. I have a live-in nanny that also does the cleaning, but my house is still not as clean as before! I have been paying attention to how much time I spend on running errands the past few weeks. I lament to say that I certainly can no longer pride myself on spending 1 hour per week on running errands. There is the Ranch 99 supermarket where I need to shop every week – even if I don’t care about the food too much, the live-in nanny who is from the culinary heaven of Sichuan province certainly will not be happy or motivated if I don’t provide her with enough raw materials to cook fresh and decent meals every day. So I go there religiously every week to get a ton of stuff just for the week. Then I have to go to Costco almost weekly instead of quarterly, not necessarily because we are running out of toiletries faster than before, but because it just seems that there are so many things that I need to stock up all the time that I did not even need to buy before – water, soy milk (since I don’t like drinking milk), lots of chicken, beef and fish to store in our freezer, vitamins (I have got to stay healthy as I have a child to take care of now), beer (I need some alcohol to relax at the end of a busy and yet trivial day), and other household supplies. In addition, I have to go to Safeway every two weeks because I cannot find Winston’s baby yogurt elsewhere. And of course there is the Baby R’us where I sometimes would go weekly, because I would find myself suddenly in need of one thing or another for Winston, and nothing related to Winston can wait. Lastly, there is the Walgreen’s to get Winston’s prescription, as well as other things that he has needed before (e.g. Litte Nose saline drops) or will likely need in the future (e.g. Tylenol, band-aid). Where else have I been lately? Ah, yes, there is the optometrist’s shop to get my glasses, the bank to deposit the checks as well as withdraw the monthly salary for the nanny, the tire shop to get the flat tire replaced, the local Comcast store to return the equipment since I no longer watch TV, and so on and so forth.
I have only one kid, who is almost 9 months old. I also have a pretty competent and industrious live-in nanny that works 6 days a week. One would imagine that I should not find myself tied down by the “trivialities of life” so to speak. Still, when I am at home I find myself distracted by all sorts of housework – mail to sort out and bills to pay every day (and phone calls to make if anything in the mail requires attention), directions to give every day (when to wash clothes and what to include, clean up the bathrooms, vacuum the floors, get ready for a big lunch with guests) and things that only a mother would think of doing for her baby, such as checking on the windows of the nursery before he goes to sleep, smoothing out the sheets and blanket to make sure that it’s all comfortable and cozy, turning on the heater to the right temperature before his bath and getting his new change of clothes ready.
Now as I am writing, the nanny just came back from a short stroll in the neighborhood with Winston. Naturally I could not help myself but went downstairs to check to see if he’s happy. And then I decided to feed him the bottle of milk before his afternoon nap – I saw that it’s already 3:25 pm and since he’s supposed to go to sleep at 3:40 pm, clearly the nanny had not been paying proper attention to his schedule, which is perhaps rendered a bit military by me! - Yes, I know that I am a bit obsessive when it comes to Winston. After he drank his milk, I changed his diaper. He’s so chubby that he always tries with both hands to grab both his feet, and would just barely be able to do so, whereas other skinnier babies his age could bring their feet to their mouths! He’s clearly really excited still, and was babbling and squealing when I put him into his crib. But now he’s fast asleep, as I can see from the video monitor. He’s such an angel when he’s asleep.
The other day, while I was driving down the same old streets again from a trip to Costco or Walgreen’s, I was feeling quite middle-aged because of the monotonous and mind-numbing routines of life. But every day, as I watch Winston’s sweet and round face in his sleep, hear his uncontrollable laughs from the belly, observe his perseverant efforts in reaching the toys he wants and admire his big clear and innocent eyes looking curiously at me or something else, I suppose that the trivialities of life are a small price to pay for having such an angel in my life. I so love him!
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