UltraCrepidate

• Funny. Buy computer parts that are $50 or less. Wait 1 year until they go out of production. Sell it for $70… profit. Except for HDD #
• Canadian average home price rised by 20% yoy in october. It is now officially in the worrysome zone for me. #

The year in general

2009 is the year of crisis. I wrote this post at the peak of the collapse. You can tell from the way I wrote that I was in despair, and that something is broken inside. Now that I am looking back with hindsight, I understand it for the moment that it is. A make or break point in my life where I experienced the complete acceptance that my life up until this point has been worthless.

Growth

Ironically as I am sitting here typing this, I feel more alive than ever. The cause of my despair has gone and passed, in its stead, only I remained. Perhaps I am more affected because I have everything that defined me on the hook. A man cannot go through the complete destruction and experience the full recovery from his own decisions without breaking and changing. Reading my posts at the beginning of the year feels so alien. There are times that I doubt I wrote those eloquent words, times I can’t understand how my thoughts can be so different and times when I thought that I was emotionally immature. All this change in just one year. I have grown more emotionally this year, than any other year in my life.

Other people have mentioned this to me. That as they step into their 30’s, a sudden sense of clarity begins overtaking them. It feels as if though their whole life is channeling them towards where they are at the moment, at the age of 30. I will be 30 next year and indeed I am sensing this foreboding elation.

I am going to have a quarter life crisis and I am going to come out feeling at peace with where I am in the world.

At the moment, there is some sort of clarity and some sort of confusion. Clarity in the way that I know what is the right thing to do with the confidence in my own gut feeling on what the right thing is. A good analogy on this for example can be explained by parties. Before this point in life, I’d try to go to all of them in fear of missing out that one opportunity meeting or miss out on the chatter afterward. What’s changed nowadays is that I listen to my own feelings to decide whether or not I’d go to something. Because if I want to enjoy something, my subconscious will have to first believe I will enjoy it. Plus it somehow always worked. When I have a foreboding feeling about certain events, what I suspected will be unpleasant always turn out to be true. So it has happened enough time that I decided I will have more chance of fun by blinding following this illogical logic. If it works, do it.

I am a lot kinder to people now. Not as much as I wanted, but I am trying hard. For those of you unfamiliar with Asian culture, we are a pretty blunt bunch. The reason, in my point of view is pretty simple. The language itself is very blunt. For example, we don’t have several different “politically correct” ways of saying “fat”. There’s no chubby, heavy boned or obese. If you are fat, you are fat. We either call you fat lady or fat man. To describe someone with any other term would be…. well weird. As if describing drinking Pepsi by saying: “swallowing the Pepsi liquid.” That and the weird discussions I am used to have with some of my closer friends make my remarks pretty ruthless.

I am not sure if I want to change this behavior because merciless in my judgment is essential for determining a person’s character as well as allowing me to navigate the world of finances safely. I am hoping that as life progresses and as I climb the ladder of life, I can afford to be less “nice” than I am required by the social norm. I also wish to meet more people who are wicked enough to see the funny side of my dark humor and retort back with something equally outrageous. For now, for the sake of increasing my social circles, I’ll watch my tongue, but don’t expect me to be anything else but myself when I am high with joy.

Major Events

There aren’t many major events. The year is just one big problem that affects everyone and everything. A year of fear, insecurity and anxiety. The year of financial crisis. I didn’t have much time to do anything else, but manage the crisis. Or scrambling everything I have to gain the skill to manage the crisis.

Business

Has been very slow. Everyone is super nice to me, I don’t know why. Maybe because I got more time to service them now that companies are falling like ducks in a hunt.

Web Site

The amount of visitors decreased. I believe a 4 month lull in updates caused many of my readers to stop reading. I also moved from writing about what I think my visitors wants to read back to writing about events that I am involved in. Surprisingly, the bandwidth used doubled from last year while unique visitor count halved. Most of the time, I have no idea what these data is trying to tell me. The feeling though is that my readers are transitioning to one hit wonders from search to people I actually know that comes back time after time. I am considering removing Triphasic Sleep, my most popular post so that I can focus myself on the type of readers I want.

The most popular post: Still Triphasic Sleep. I am beginning to see a pattern now. Around the end of every year, some university student doing research on sleep would land on my site. They’d read over everything about the research, embark on some data gathering and come out with some type of sleep theory next year or blogged about their own sleep deprivation experiment. All without quoting the original content. Every I see any of them say something positive about living life this way I smirk with glee, because I know that they are just bullshitting when they forget to mention the fact that your eyes would hurt so much that you eventually have to go back to sleeping 8 hours a day.

The most controversial post

None. I have stopped writing controversial stuff now that more and more of my business life have access to this. Maybe one day, when certain thing is right, I’ll get back to writing offending posts.

Materials

Acquired

• None

Sold

• Freezer: $50

Finances

You can’t remain the same person after losing everything, then gaining it back and tripling it.

Memories of the ultimate despair still lingers in my mind. The wound it caused, covered by crack cocaine giving me a short lived high. The two opposite state of mind literally occurred within weeks of each other and I get to see myself clearly at the two opposite extremes of my possible personality. Somewhere in between is where I currently settled for.

It was interesting how much money (a way to measure success) affected my perceived authority over others. While nothing has actually happened in the real relationship with those I know. I did notice that some, submit to the authoritative personality automatically while others revolted against it. The money itself for me has little meaning, it’s more the fact of being right that affected my personality the most. That I took the hardest decision because I believe in something while everyone else was scared shitless boosted my confidence to a level I previously didn’t think I could reach. Nowadays, I speak about finances with the utmost conviction in what I say because I apply them in real life and I have been right for 4 years now. At least, right enough to be constantly in the green except a brief 3 months of maximum pain.

The new found freedom comes with a price. I now have to reevaluate certain things that I had assumed about life as money becomes more and more irrelevant. I still live frugally as if I am a student on the verge of being broke, but that is done more out of habit now than because I have to. And because I now have a new subroutine in my mind that constantly evaluate the allocation of capital (in this case, time) versus the reward, it is more and more obvious that a lot of my old lifestyle is not worth the amount of time I allocated to it unless it is for my own enjoyment.

As such, my spending have increased, but still way below 50% of my income. But already, life has been awesome. I cannot fathom what life would be like, if I were to spend every dime I earn and planned on working my whole life. At three times my current spending, it won’t take long to finish buying every gadget I want or take all the trips I’ve planned. Yes, money is evil, but it sure as hell speed up a lot of the things in life. For me, I want more money so I can achieve more, without having to grind and muddle through stages of projects where I need to raise capital. This year, I finally understand what money is and No, understanding it does not mean I am Scrooge and want to rip off everyone I met as much as some would like to believe so. It is a permanent perplexing ideal that I have been puzzle over.

Why do people associate money with the evils of the world?

Projects

Primary goals:

• 6 packs stomach (Still nope)
• Bench press 160 lbs (Done)
  
• Finish my first flash game (Looooong way to finish line)
  
• Finish organizing all digital data (Nope)
  
• Write Zania (Nope)
  

Secondary goals:

• Finish home network (Done)
  
• Learn to pick generic locks (Couldn’t pick anything)
  
• Finish furnishing my condo (Done)
  
• Research and create 10 secret dishes that I can cook (8 now)
  
• Visit Kush in California (Nope)
  

Conclusions

The amount of growth I experienced this year is exponential. I think I have even started entertaining the thought of getting old. One thing is for sure though. I am more at ease with being an adult than I was before. In fact, being an irresponsible youth with a bone to pick with authority is no longer in my dictionary. I piss some people off, but I am ok with that now because I am no longer forcing myself to be liked by everyone. As a result, I attracted others to join my circle.

The most important fact I realized as I step into my would be quarter life crisis is that I will have to realign my life in the direction that is most beneficial to me. I can no longer learn and adapt my way through life and will need all the advantages I can leverage from here on. Sun Tze’s art of war says: positioning is half the battle. There is no benefit in waiting for your enemies to completely cross the river before attacking. Who will be there to sing about your honor if you lost and get killed in the process. Take all the advantage you can, scheme and fight all the fight you should. Then benefit those who matters in your life.

• Final Salsa of the year and it lasted for 5 hours. A new record. #
• @equivocality Do you want to be seen as normal? in reply to equivocality #
• Done making sushi. 2 people manufacturing ,5 hours and $40 later. My co workers better appreciate it tomorrow. #
• is making sushi for company potluck #
• OOPS forgot to play RIMM's earnings release. #
• God damnit Obama. What's good for the stock market is good for jobs. Stop fucking around with the economy. #
• @equivocality That's the difference between how we handle addiction. I don't believe in abstinence. in reply to equivocality #
• @equivocality I toughed it out and suffered one week of addiction so I can get sick and tired of it. Now it's all light play. in reply to equivocality #
• Man, when is an Engy class update going to happen in TF2? #
• The more you understand. The harder the decision. #
• Farking brilliant butterfly. #
• http://bit.ly/8ZrOKt Looks like crunching real estate numbers is going to be priority. #
• Bleh. Quad witching this week. Feels like hiding. #
• Possible future: Us audits fed. US debt downgraded to junk status. US falls back into a 3rd world country. #

It’s scary thinking about what I am about to embark on. The excitement of new possibilities pitched in a perpetual war against the fear. Do I? Or don’t I? I thought the answer was crystal clear before, but now, I don’t know… Will I be lonely?

That loneliness factor had never entered the equation when I was deciding on similar events before. All of a sudden, I find myself confused about possibly giving up the things I’ve come to treasure. Mainly, the relationships that are already established. Am I running away? Do I have the strength to make the right decision? Perhaps I’ve lost some of the luster of youth. Desiring more for comfort of the established life and the warmth of the familiar. Will I kill the dreams for it? Have reality pummeled so hard that I have stopped daring to dream?

On the other side of the equation, pulling me on. Is the promise of certain freedom. Freedom from certain binding which seems like it can be achieved soon. The two opposite factors should have canceled the need to make a decision if you average them mathematically, but the reality of life is that they contribute to adding more tension to the rope. When the rope snaps, the momentum will be greater.

One thing I know is that I am taking this decision more seriously than previous similar ones I’ve made. Enough so that I have taken Christmas week off to think it over and look at it from all point of view.

I have never taken a Christmas vacation before.

Yeah, that’s right. I’ve always worked through Christmas since I waded into the pond of adulthood. The decision to take the days off was subconscious before the true implication of what this decision will mean was clear to me. Goes to show how my subconscious is treating this as the top issue to be sorted out in my life. Yes, more important than sex, money and chocolate. That is all I can say for now, since there are people in my readership who will be impacted by this.

Yes, I have a vague idea of who’s reading me, except for a few permanent reader from foreign countries that I am pretty sure I’ve never been to. Thanks for reading. You are my one way psychologist. Considering how cheap ass I am, I don’t see this being replaced by a real psychologist soon.

Believe it or not, this is a sun. At least it’s going to be a sun in the game I am going to make. I am really not sure what influences my art style since I don’t really recognize it from any of the existing art. Somehow, with a pen in my hand and Adobe Illustrator aiding my unsteady strokes, I managed to create something like this. How to animate this is still up in the air at the moment, but I am sure I’ll figure something out. Just like everything else in this game.

It’s feeling more and more like I am taking on something bigger than I can tackle by myself. The fact that I am not coding full time or producing graphics full time means that I wastes a significant amount of my day fumbling around or getting into the zone. Then again, I really don’t have the funding to hire somebody to do it for me. So muddle through I go.

• Deep cleaned my room in preparation to make art tomorrow #
• Will there be a china town in Iraq now that China won most of the oil contracts? I expect them to import Chinese workers to Iraq. #
• The era of tablet PCs is finally upon us. I have waited 10 years for this. #
• Looks like I will be joining the blue soliders this weekend: http://www.teamfortress.com/war/part1/index.htm #
• Scotia itrade. Your options trading platform sucks big time. The day when TOS can hold CDN $ is the day I withdraw all my money from you #
• life(){fork(); fork();} #
• @Scifispace I always knew that I like it because of how close knit the characters are and now I realize, the closeness is due to dialog. in reply to Scifispace #
• Pensions. The biggest ponzi scheme of them all. #
• Going through some transcript of Firefly. Realizeing that every exchange in that show is a well thought out gem. #
• More than anything, I want to stop feeling guilty when I write code at work. #
• Gold bubble to burst within a year. #

• Deep cleaned my room in preparation to make art tomorrow #
• Will there be a china town in Iraq now that China won most of the oil contracts? I expect them to import Chinese workers to Iraq. #
• The era of tablet PCs is finally upon us. I have waited 10 years for this. #
• Looks like I will be joining the blue soliders this weekend: http://www.teamfortress.com/war/part1/index.htm #
• Scotia itrade. Your options trading platform sucks big time. The day when TOS can hold CDN $ is the day I withdraw all my money from you #
• life(){fork(); fork();} #
• @Scifispace I always knew that I like it because of how close knit the characters are and now I realize, the closeness is due to dialog. in reply to Scifispace #
• Pensions. The biggest ponzi scheme of them all. #
• Going through some transcript of Firefly. Realizeing that every exchange in that show is a well thought out gem. #
• More than anything, I want to stop feeling guilty when I write code at work. #
• Gold bubble to burst within a year. #

The double dip?

As the holiday approaches and volume died down, I can no longer play the strategy I played last month for earnings month. Therefore, the type of trades I used and the type stock has to be rethought. I believe that this is the reason why most people don’t make it through their first year. They try to apply the same strategy to different months. Trading is something that has to be constantly adjusted.

I admit, I screwed up on the first week of trading. I bought a few butterfly options to speculate on merger acquisitions. However, I didn’t do much research on what potential volatility might do to the butterfly option. I should’ve used an iron condor instead, but hey, I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to research. I was in the holiday mood.

Lo and behold. Dubai is contemplating defaulting on their debt. In one day, I lost about 1/3 of the starting money. Going back to the logs. I saw that HPQ wasn’t as liquid as I originally thought. A liquidity crunch happened and instead of selling at 1.5, it sold at 1. That’s about an additional 25% loss that wasn’t necessary. Who would’ve thought that HP is pretty illiquid as an option.

Performance analysis

Starting balance: $3675

Closing balance: $2158

Trade carrying over to next week: $1517(100%)

Derivative risk: $0

Increase from opening balance: $1218.60  (41.2%)

Strategy

The theme of the month is going to be Christmas. I basically bought a few butterfly spreads and wants to sit on some merger acquisition play until the options expire. It’s the holiday season and I don’t really want to work too hard or worry too much. Because of my relative lack of experience in butterfly options, I really got my ass handed to me from picking the wrong stock and wrong options.

Reflections

I have since understood that I really need to do a lot of modeling before going into a trade so that I know what buying certain options mean. Before going rogue and trying something unknown this month, I had no idea that butterflies are best used for speculation. A $100 worth of butter fly could potentially land you a $5000 reward. Go figure.

• If my cardio workout is any indication. I should be able to do 30 dips sustaining my partner's weight without problem. #
• This guy plays mount and blade like I do. Can't wait to duel him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehpNcnRahLY&feature=related #
• Mount & blade, an indie game I've been supporting is finally going to have multiplayer. Can't wait to show off my archery skills. #
• Coming this Christmas. A full analysis on Canadian housing. A "yes or no" on whether or not we are bubbling. #
• I hope management crunched the numbers and saw that Tech is going to lead us out of recession. Not the Medical field. #
• Phew. Looks like we will be officially out of recession soon. Both literally and psychologically. #
• Today China to US:" Yo Ben, raise your interest rate and stop the carry trade." US: "Up yours. Stop pegging the yuan to USD." #
• @natashaduchene Request. Photos of Ukrainian ballroom dancers in reply to natashaduchene #
• Sigh… AMD is the best play of my life. Up 60% in 1 month. Lucky. #
• Not only did Hyundai email me to thank me, they fucking called me to thank me!… For changing winter tires using their service….. #
• I have to say. Hyundai dealership got customer service right. I can even trust the mechanics there. It's all in how they setup the structure #
• Just saw a 3360×1050 resolution browsing through my tracker log. Envious… #
• And a personal thank you to Ken Lewis. You have delivered on everything you promised. Unlike politicians. Hope this reaches you… somehow #
• Ah. Thank you BAC for the Christmas present. Now make me some money for sticking throught the rough times. #
• Started seriously learning Python. #
• Moving on to assess whether or not the EU can survive Dubai's blow up. #
• @natashaduchene You speak russian? in reply to natashaduchene #
• Sigh… Dubai is going to blow up. #
• GAA!!! I need more time!!! #

The more I dance around, the more I understand what I am looking for. More through a yearning of something that’s lacking than being satisfied by my own progress previously. The difference is huge and I am not sure if I can convey this properly without sounding weird. I guess you have to reach where I am to feel this. It’s the difference between seeking to constantly improve (the attention towards the selfish progress) and the search for a perfect interaction (a perfection of giving and taking).

This change of concept is vastly different from the traditional belief of lead and follow to a more harmonized approach to invitation and usage. Along with the realization that you can only have a perfect dance when both parties are able to go all out at 120%. If 100% is you dancing perfectly, then 120% is both of you going faster, sharper and more emotional from leap frogging off of each others momentum. In this interaction, a guy no longer leads forcefully and a girl no longer follows blindly.  The man will have to be confident enough to not abuse the role that initiates steps while the woman has to be confident enough to take the invitation with full force.

I’ve been able to lead everyone so far into what I want to do by using the strongly lead expecting the woman to reciprocate with a strong follow. So why am I looking for that elusive connection? Because it’s the difference between having to adjust the way I dance to the woman’s need and not having to think at all and just let my body do what it wants.

I’ve been in a slumber for so long that the clarity struck me like lighting, leaving me on the spot wriggling in pain while at the same time, electrified to overflowing with life. A little insight for you on the events that led me to this clarity. As I said before, there is something missing, something I wasn’t getting about my dance. Now, that’s the only part you should retain from all my previous posts on my adventures in Salsa.

Fast forward to today and I danced with Dihilia at about 80% of my maximum ability with Salsa level 1 steps, but it was enough to awaken something in me. If you want me to describe me, I can only reference to the fight club scene where Tyler was describing how fighting changes your perspective in life. How you start sizing people up on the street and everyone you meet. With that slight disapproving scowl on his face. As if your whole life before this was unsatisfying, you can beat up anyone you meet and you are pissed that you only realized it now. To tell you the truth, I probably danced like I used to, or probably even less skillful than before when I was at my prime. What has changed is a complete synchronization of dance and life. I don’t have to pretend anymore and what I dance is what I am.

Or, another way of describing this, I have become what I pretended to be.

I get the biggest surprises when I dance with newbies and the biggest disapointments when I dance with advanced dancers. This is probably because of the expectation I have set for both groups. For some advanced dancers might look very pretty and flashy, but in reality have a very crappy frame; instantly destroying the fantasy constructed up till the moment when the music starts. All because, yes, they should know better.

Which to my surprise, proved that the opposite is actually more exhilarating as a result and requires some modification in my thinking of what is considered talent. I haven’t danced with beginners for a long time and never in my life danced with so many of them in such a short time. On top of that, salsa is close enought to dancesport so that most of the skills and techniques are interchangeable, except for my 11 somewhat years of built-in instinct to start on the 2 or the 4. Salsa starts with 1.

The similarity means that the lead and follow should somewhat be the same in both groups and that what I notice in one applies to another as well. Back to the point, I’ve been noticing that some selected few beginners possesses some talents that I’ve only felt in top dancers before. In the way they spin, in the way they respond to a connection and in how they prefer to carry their frame.  I’ve always thought that these type of thing is taught and improved over time, but if I was not delusional when I was dancing with these newbies, then I am wrong and these are things that you are born with and is inherent in your personality.

Hence, the pro’s claims to know who you are from the way you dance.