First Do More Harm

Hello strangers,

Last night was probably one of the more stressful nights at my job, and it really wasn't all that bad. Considering the amount of prescriptions we run, it's surprising that there aren't more problems than there are. If people would just hold out for a while, problems will take care of themselves. The check is in the mail, and your drugs are on their way. Trust me--I'm a doctor.

I got home, decompressed with a really fatty roast beef sandwich decked with melty cheese and mushrooms. So good and so bad and the perfect reward for a job well done. Afterwards, I enjoyed Dragonball Z on the CW. Yes, I still watch cartoons once in a while even though they're silly. Reminds me of simpler times.

Then around 10:30AM, I hear the door open and heard the scuffling of more than one person's shoes. So I peered around and saw my bro and this girl, whom I supposed was his girlfriend. Eh, whatever. He didn't say anything about bringing her home, and so I didn't feel obligated to cease making a nice mold of my butt-cheeks onto my favorite part of the couch. That is, I stayed seated enjoying my toons.

--

After introductions,

some girl: so your brother tells me you're a pharmacist

me: uh huh

some girl: where do you work?

me: in hospice at an independent

some girl: where at?

me: (gives locale)

annoying girl: (etc etc etc) why don't you work at a large hospital like MD Anderson or somewhere in the Med center? (etc etc etc) the benefits are better for when you retire.. (etc etc etc)

irritated me: (silently) who are you to tell me what I should do within 5 minutes of meeting me? (spokenly) I really like my job. They treat me well, and there's not much stress.

more annoying girl: (acknowledging and ignoring my comment) It's good you like your job. Not many can say that. (but wanting to reiterate her point) but you know, large hospitals generally have better benefits and such.

irritated me: umm, are you a pharmacist?

annoying girl reveals herself: oh, no, I'm a psychiatrist.

me: (silently) it figures, an MD and a shrink. (spokenly) oh okay. The benefits aren't really that much better. I worked for [large chain retail], and although pay is less, benefits are about on par.

shrink: (etc etc etc, reiterates point and acknowledges that there's politics when working at large facility, but still maintains her initial suggestion that I should try working for a large facility)

me: (maintain almost-rude indifference by watching TV and ignoring the girl in the room)

--

Thankfully my brother gets done doing whatever he needed to do and they left. I'm generally a very nice person when meeting new people, and I generally make a good impression, but not when I'm tired and not when your opening remarks criticize what I do for a living. 

Goodness, I thought shrinks where supposed to make you feel better about yourself. She made me want to ask her to write me a prescription for Paxil, take 1 as needed post mindf-cking.

But I wasn't so mean as to ask her, "Biological clock ticking much? You know you're dating a guy without a college degree, right?" No, no, my parents have messed with my head long enough for any shrink to make a dent in this impenetrable defense of perpetual self-doubt. It's like when virus-infected cells can't be infected by subsequent viruses.

--

much later,

me: you missed your future daughter-in-law by 30 minutes?

Mama: oh, really?

me: uh huh. Brother brought his girlfriend home. She's a psychiatrist. Do you know what that is?

Mama: Yes, 4 years medical school and then residency. (not impressed) She must be old, right?

me: (laughing) probably around brother's age.

Mama: (as if he had brought home a crackhead) Well, he can do want he wants. I can't stop him from doing anything. (her typical passive-aggressive way of disapproving)

--

Yep, in a battle of wits, I put money on Mama!

What's Luck Got To Do With It?

...got to do with it? What's luck but a second hand-ed notion?

Did you see what I did there? I subbed "-ed notion" for "emotion"? Please excuse that bit of ego-stroking.

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I don't have very many pet peeves. I don't know or care about the proper use of nauseous vs nauseated. But one of my main ones has to do with the correct use & meaning of words. Luck and fortune can easily be mistaken for good decision-making. But it is a severe disservice to dismiss tough, difficult decision-making as a simple smile of the fates.

As mentioned in the last post, I'm departing for the Old World in a couple days. It's been fun making friends turn that lovely shade of gangrene, and I revel in the "I'm-so-jealous!"s. But I silently bristle when I hear the oft-said "Oh, you're so lucky!"

"No. I made the right decisions; some of them were very hard. Please don't belittle the things I had to give up to make this month-long trip that I may never be able to do again." That's what I want to say, but I'm not that much of a jerk. And they mean well, even if they equate my choices' outcome with that of the Mega Millions winners.

There wasn't a Eurotrip lottery. There weren't cross-Atlantic plane tickets in the middle of the street for any lucky fool to pick up. How is it luck? Not to bore you with details, but suffice it to say, I made several sacrifices including several grand, willing unemployment and time.

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The second part of my annoyance comes from the sometimes tragic reliance on luck. It's sad to see people suckling on the addictive teat of casinos' false promise of wealth. Though some may win big at the house games, most leave broke when they don't regard the trip as entertainment. The simple fact is that the odds are always in the house's favor (with the exception of poker, etc). The right decision is not to play the games.

We are in control of a large number of our actions even if it may not seem like it. You can quit your job if you so choose (though it should probably be for a very good reason in this economy). You can go to Europe for a whole month. You can lose all the weight that you resolved to do every New Year. You can get healthy. You can always try to do everything you want to do. It's not about good nor bad luck.

It's about belief. Then, and more importantly, it's about proper decision-making. If you're a single parent living paycheck to paycheck, then no, you probably can't go to Europe this year. But you can go back to school, get a well-paying job, save up, and when your kids get older, you too can see Barcelona, Paris, London, Berlin, etc. It's not about luck.

--

Back in high school, a teacher ventured a guess that I liked chess:

me: Why is that? I don't really care for chess.

teach: That's surprising, since you seem to like to be in control. And chess isn't a game of chance.

me: Hmm. Never thought about it that way. But I think chess sucks.

--

I think it's because I didn't and don't have the patience to learn all the moves & gambits & such. And it's probably because I can't quite control what my opponent is doing. And it's a stretch to make chess lessons applicable to life situations. I'd much rather play golf. It takes longer, is more expensive, vastly more frustrating, and hence immensely addictive.

As I get older, I recognize decisions and see the hidden choices I can now make. I understand the consequences of my actions, and I forgo immediate satisfactions for more profound rewards. I'm starting to challenge the accepted 9-5-with-2-weeks-vacation-per-year-white-picket-fence-2.5-kids norm. I'm not doing what everyone else is doing (or should be doing) because I'm not trying to be everyone else.

I'm trying to be the best me. Forcing myself to recognize all options and sequelae has helped me tremendously this past year: what works, what doesn't work, what will never work, and what may work in the future.

It's not about luck. It's mostly decision-making and a little skill.

-g

Bucketlisting: #42 Backpack Europe, almost check!

This morning, the sun and heat creeped through the blackout curtains in my room, jarring me out of my strange visions of Supernatural-esque motel-hopping in which my father and I connected over our experience of watching Lost. We both thought Locke was badass and hoped that Kate would just die already, knowing full well that she would never be killed off. As of late, probably secondary to my increased health & metabolism, I can't sleep-in after waking up. It is an unwelcome side-effect that I'll just have to get used to. Small price to pay for my future 8-pack.

Part of my morning ablutions includes a cleansing of overnight emails via my smartphone. But today, I chose to turn on the TV to view the Today show (no ESPN in my room). And a quad of metrosexual guys* greeted me with talk of their bucketlist. The coolest item was to hoop it up with the Commander in Chief, President Barack. Part of the inspiration behind the endeavor was they felt inundated by the random stuff that just didn't matter. They were lost; they lacked direction. The list was the cure. Or something like that. I am a guy after all, and I am not immune to that male-centric disease of only hearing what I want to hear.

I've been trying to find direction in my life too. Most of it had been appropriated as an outgrowth of my father's desire to become a medical doctor. And when it wasn't him, there were (and are) plenty others willing to chip in their unwanted 2-cents. But I am the master of my domain, in the narcissistic, non-autoerotic way. When I realized that, my outlook changed. No, I can't be whatever I want to be (such as a PGA tour golfer), but I have the power to do what I want to do, and inversely and perhaps more importantly, not do what I don't want to do.

So a bucket list would be perfect to progress this do-or-do-not-there-is-no-try mentality.

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#42 Backpack Europe. I've kinda been wanting to do the Euro-trip thing, complete with hostels, tattered foreign language dictionaries, friendly & unfriendly locals, and sexy females with exotic accents. During my experiential training, my classmate and the professor casually suggested that I should backpack Europe, in a tone which you might use to suggest to the naive guy that he should experiment a little before proposing to the first girl who would have him. At the time, I didn't think I'd have the chance, given the rigid, unwavering path my parents had laid out for me. But "behold, now is the accepted time" with two good friends, a big guy noone would mess with and the other with little hesitation for chatting up new folks. BTW, I'm leaving next week for a month, so you may not hear from me besides posts like "Such-and-such is amazing!"

#15 (quarter) Cross-country road trip. The bad part about having stable, responsible guy friends is that they're highly desirable to stable, responsible women. My friends' wives are awesome, and they probably wouldn't stop the dudes from having a grand adventure to Vegas, but my friends aren't going to neglect their duties for a spontaneous weekend getaway. But a perfect excuse will be when some chick finally bags herself the big one, moi. And by "big one" I mean my enormous melon of a head. The Hangover, part g, anyone?**

#69 Nookie in 15 different countries, preferably with local(s). But taking the same girl to multiple countries would still count in my book. So to all the sugar mommas out there, baby I'm still free, take a chance on me. Planning to make progress on #69 while on #42. This is dedicated to a fallen comrade who recently proposed. His noble dream was to father a child in every country and name the kid after himself, boy or girl. As of this post, he has zero kids (that he knows of).

#23 Apply for the Amazing Race with one of my best friends. We will be billed as the two doctors who somehow manage to do an inordinate number of stupid things because that's just good TV. He has the planning, leadership and determination, whereas I'll bring the muscle and indestructible stomach. And if I succeed in #8 (below), I will try to spend a large amount of screentime doing my best emulation of Daniel Dae Kim with his shirt off. I say apply only because I'm not leaving my Bucket List up to chance--it's not my fault should they fail to recognize greatness when they see it!

#4 Bungee jump, then skydive. Fear of heights is a good thing. Stretchy things have stretchy limits, and parachute packs are sometimes filled with silverware. But I will do these one day, alive or dead. My last will & testament will have a clause stating that to release funds, my heirs will have to tandem jump my putrid corpse gently (or ungently, for that matter) back to earth before putting me six feet deep.

#16 Complete the Big Texan 72-oz steak challenge in Amarillo, TX. I know it's a spectacle and gluttony is a deadly sin, but I'm an exhibitionist and steak is delicious. It isn't a nicely marbled ribeye, but we're going for quantity over quality. My only food challenge thus far was a 4-lb bowl of pho which I demolished in 45 minutes at Pho 24 in Houston. The largest steak I've had was 32-oz, and I felt I could easily pack away an additional 8-oz.

#73 See a live performance & get a kiss from Iliza Shlesinger (a comedienne--get your minds out of the gutter!). The goal is a peck on the cheek, but if the lady should opt for a full French connection, a gentleman should always oblige. She's another blonde-haired, blue-eyed piece of kryptonite, a weapon of my destruction. And I'm a sucker for sharp wit, snarky comments, dirty jokes & killer legs. I almost forgot about her if not for Excused, a spiritual successor to Blind Date. I also want to see Daniel Tosh, Mike Birbiglia and Demetri Martin one day. (Thanks to the commentator who posted about Martin. His comedy has that intelligent word-play I crave!)

#8 Get an 8-pack & benchpress 2 plates or 225-lbs (1-rep max). My current workout regimen is intense, and I'm sad I'll have to put it on hold for a little bit while in Europe. I didn't think a 6-pack was possible for me, but my faith is growing. Besides, if those meathead drunks on the Jersey Shore can do it, certainly I can! Thus the 8-pack: set 'dem goals high, big swhoal***. I've maxed out at 185-lbs in high school when I was a scrawny 155. So 40 extra pounds should be within reach.

#100 Finish the Modern Library's top 100 novels of the 20th century, whether I understand them or not. I've read about 25 so far, including everything in the top 10 except for Ulysses. It will be my capstone and is the reason for the condition "whether I understand [it] or not." Portrait was difficult but intelligible. Ulysses must be some odd mixture of Greek, Esperanto, Elvish, Klingon, and Na'vi with a light smattering of English to gel it all together. Damn you Joyce! I'm sure I'm not the only one to curse your masterpiece of literary masochism.

The numbers on the list have been brought to you by Lost, Sheldon Cooper (73), and a well-known position. Disclaimer: Numbers shown may not actually reflect the numbers on g's list since said list has yet to be fully written.

-g

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*I think all these guys are straight, but I wouldn't be surprised if all swung the other way (not that it matters, of course).

**At this rate, I'll never sucker anyone into marrying me! :D

***my version of swoll

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

The prodigiously prodigal blogger returns!

This time, he has forced himself to write at least one post of explanation before pretending that the long absence hasn't happened. Boyfriends who are okay boyfriends (based on the fact that they're still boyfriends) frequently ignore their girlfriends. So who am I to question this logic? Distance--and silence--make the heart grow fonder as the drivel goes. Oh how I love the silent treatment when Sportscenter is on! DUH da DUH, DUH da DUH!*

Posts will continue more or less sporadically, though it is unlikely that readers still check for new posts on a daily basis (and have resorted to the Feedburner link which I am not sure still works).

So the explanation? 1) Better things to do, 2) sloth, 3) increased reliance on smartphone and less on actual PC and 4) less instances of being drunk. You can't imagine the number of almost drunk posts that I've had the wherewithal to coitus interruptus to prevent their existence. I'd say one out of every 4 drunk posts slips through. The truly drunk ones don't have their time-stamps doctored. (the previous is mostly facetious).

--

I thought tablets (iPads et al) were stupid. I realize now that they do fill in the void between the smartphone and full-fledged PC/Mac. An instant-on device with sizable real estate was a largely undiscovered niche that needed filling**. But a tablet would have the same effect on my blogging as those silly ab-belts would have my my one-pack. Web-surfing would be helluva more enjoyable though.

--

Sloth. Lazy. Done.

--

Better things to do? Highly debatable. I finished all 120 episodes of Lost; about 5-10 anime series (about 24-26 25-min episodes each); thought about working out; read zero books; platinum trophy'd Tiger Woods 11, Resident Evil 5, Heavy Rain, Infamous, God of War 1 & 2; thought more about working out; had GOW 3 but thought platinum-ing it would count as a sign of impending gaming addiction; actually started working out again; picked up golf again; cursed golf's very existence; liked golf; hated golf, repeat; and really got into working out again.

----

Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a comedic-mystery novel by Douglas Adams, probably one of my favorite authors. He may not be as deep as those literary figureheads, but I'd like to think it was because he was too light-hearted and self-conscious to express his inner Fitzgerald (one of my other favorite authors***). You may know Adams more from the Hitchhiker's Guide, but the Dirk Gently series is more satisfying plot-wise: each novel is complete in and of itself.

The title of the book suggests a somber story ("dark") coupled with reflection ("of the soul") set in a rather drawn-out ("long") English afternoon ritual ("tea-time"). And it is. And it isn't.

And so this little absence of mine is a long, dark tea-time of my soul. It is what it sounds like, but then it isn't what it sounds like.

The story of such events (if I can find the motivation to blog about it) may be 1) silly, 2) stupid, 3) enlightening, 4) humorous, 5) all of the above, or 6) a grand waste of time. Hope it will be 5, but it will probably be 6.

-g

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*Some people leave on CNN/news while doing stuff around the house. I leave on Sportscenter. Much less depressing.

**A less refined blogger would exploit this easy double entendre. I will merely point to its existence.

***My literary taste has lost some of its diversity as of late, but Fitzgerald is a fine if common choice.

Blown Fuse & Healthcare Reform

To Current Events Buffs,

Do you seriously watch CNN/CSPAN? I understand why people leave news networks on the in the background but that stuff is strangle-yourself boring/depressing. Unless it has a chance of affecting me somewhat indirectly, I don't really care. My political view is that if it gets so bad in the U.S., I'll move to Canada or some other English-speaking country.

Though healthcare reform does affect me a little, considering I'm a drug dealer, I could care less about the whole debate and the death panels, etc. It's not like I can really change much (please don't get P Diddy to text me with, 'Vote or Die!'). Like one vote matters anyway. Incidentally, I did register to vote when I renewed my driver license but that's in the off-chance that I meet some girl who'd find my non-voting an issue.

So let's make light on the whole healthcare issue by relating it to a practical problem: The AC in my car went out last August. In the Texas heat. 120 miles southwest of Houston, which meant that it was even hotter. And it wasn't fixed until 2 weeks ago, when my mom finally visited my uncle to get it check out.

The problem? A blown fuse, probably costing less than $10, for which I spent the better part of 8 months sweating away whilst driving 2hrs to and from Victoria (TX). And suffering on drives around Houston, sometimes in dress clothes. I'd have to hold the steering wheel in such a way that the fan blowing warm air would reach my axillary cavities* so as to not have pit stains by the time I got to where I needed to be.

Why didn't I just visit a body shop just to see what was wrong? Well, that's pretty good 20/20 hindsight you have there! I should have done that very thing when the AC went out, but you see, my uncle is a Toyota mechanic and being the younger sibling, he's obligated to do pro bono work for his older siblings, namely my parents. Thus, my parents always take it to him to check it out. That is when they have the time.

The great thing about my beater of a car is that the only thing I pay for is gas. It's in my parents' name and they pay the insurance. It's been paid off. And until recently, I've done zero maintenance on it. It's like borrowing your neighbors' tools: you can abuse it and run it to the ground without a second thought.

But when it's broken, you have to wait for them to get it fixed. So August passed, and so did September. And the weather was cool some weeks, so Mama put off getting the car checked out. Then it was winter during which some freak 85-degree days ruined some shirts. Then I stopped working, so there was really no point in getting it fixed since I was no longer driving to Victoria anyway.

But then I started working again in April, at another place 2 hrs away from Houston. Twice I had to drive in the hellish heat. No more! After much pleading, threats**, and guilt trips, she finally took that damn car to my uncle's shop.

A. Blown. Friggin. Fuse...

Mama made it sound like something expensive and magical. She popped the hood and the fuse box to show me what had been wrong, and the 'expensive' $10 replacement fuse. I should've simmered over in the boiling blood of all those stupid 100-degree drives, but it was my fault too. If I had gotten it checked out (and possibly invested in the beater), I wouldn't have suffered.

--

So it is with the new healthcare reform, supposedly. In the U.S. you can get the best healthcare in the world so long as you have the greenbacks or greenback equivalents to pay for it. With the new socialized medicine, you might have to wait to see a specialist or spends months on a waiting list for a 'life-saving' procedure. Again, I don't care either way. When I get sick, I'll put more thought into it. After all, that's the American way of thinking.

The car story parallel explained: Free uncle fixing car = socialized medicine. Paying some random auto-mechanic who could price gouge me and find 'other problems' = non-socialized medicine.

But I would've gotten AC much quicker the second way.

Moral of the story: Get a free estimate somewhere, then get the free uncle hookup.

Thanks beater, for burning me up with your [lack of AC].

--

*armpits

**'Just watch! I'm going to buy a $40k car just to show you!' One of my mom's worse fears is that we waste money.

The Point of Diminishing Returns (PoDR)

to Freakonomics subscribers:

I've been meaning to write this post for a long while now, and I've actually had a couple longish discussions with friends about this concept of diminishing returns. It is my absolute favorite concept I learned from high school economics, and I find it to be the most practical to daily life. Sure, supply and demand gets all the fanfare and has a two line graph showing the point of intersection where suppliers and demand-ers should meet for sheer nirvana and such, but it doesn't really do much for people who aren't in the business of supplying or demanding. Well, a whole bunch of us are in the business of demanding lots of things, but it doesn't correlate as nicely or as quickly as those textbook graphs. Examples: the cost of the original PS3 or the current iPhone--it takes a while for supply & demand to take over to find the magic $299 and $199 price points, respectively.

But diminishing returns, now that you see everyday. You see it in my blog (I posted a lot, got fed up with it, and stopped, and now I'm doing it again). You see it in reality TV (Survivor comes out, then Idol, but after the 25th season of Idol, you just stop caring). Wikipedia-ly stated, 'In economics, diminishing returns (also called diminishing marginal returns) refers to how the marginal production of a factor of production starts to progressively decrease as the factor is increased.' Simply stated, after a certain point, the more you put in, the less you get out.

Ex. At a fast food joint, the more labor you hire, the more burgers you can push out. Let's say you originally had 4 employees working who churn out 80 burgers an hr which is 20/person/hr. You hire another person, and now you can do 100/hr (given that you have the demand for it). You hire another person, but now you can only get an extra 15/hr.

What happened? Well, there's not enough grill space anymore. Eventually if you keep hiring more workers, you get to the point where people just get in the way, and you actually lose production for each additional unit of labor. To maximize efficiency, you'd want to add inputs until you get to the point of diminishing [marginal] returns, that is the point where the next unit would start to have less production value (the 15 burgers/hr person). To maximize total production, you'd want to add inputs until the total production starts to turn south (where the next person hired would contribute nothing or take away from the total production).

Of course there's a whole bunch of factors in determining how much inputs you should use. But it's all very academic and boring, and doesn't have a popular iPhone app for it, so who cares?

I promise, it's really useful in figuring out why you and people around you do things! Maybe..
--

My idea of diminishing returns doesn't concern inputs and outputs. It deals with the net gain/pleasure per additional unit of stuff.

Mama told me this about my favorite dish when I was a kid: 'Eat one day, you desire for more. Eat two days straight, you grow tired'*. Turns out to be very true. I'm so glad I live in Houston where there's such a diverse and vibrant culture of obesity which means there are diverse and vibrant restaurants. The point of diminishing returns (PoDR) depends on how much you like the food, but everyone has a point. Incidentally, my PoDR for Tex-Mex is significantly higher than for Viet food probably due to Mama's psycho-babble.

And now for a visual:


Ex. The smartphone craze:
Blue phase: first couple hours after getting the phone activated and recovery from sticker shock. 'What's the big deal with a touch screen phone? Texting while driving is even harder now that I have to peck at those virtual keys! And it can't even make calls without a special cover on it!'
Green phase: 'OMG, there's an app for that? So friggin awesome!'
Yellow phase: 'o...m...g..., there's...an...app...for...that...haven't slept in days...eyes are fried by super AMOLED or whatever screen...'
Orange phase: 'cell phone bill is over $300, but my life had been incomplete before the advent of fruit ninja and his comrade apps which mimic bodily functions.'
Red phase: 'I have terminal brain cancer and crippling arthritis of the thumbs. If I had to pick one to be cured, it would have to be the arthritis so I can live out my last moments on this earth yelling sweet nothings to my smartphone because of its poor call quality.'
--

Okay, seriously now. I did not think there was a point of diminishing returns for money, but I have sadly reached that point. Let me explain before you break out the world's tiniest violin. My hourly rate working in a small town a couple hours outside of Houston was outrageous. And the work was pretty chill, and there was ample opportunity for extra hours (not time and a half, but with extra pay on top of a ridiculous rate). And so I worked 23 12-hr shifts straight. Not once, but twice.

I figured it was just money sitting on the table, and I might as well pick it up while I still have the stamina to work all those hours. But when I paid off the debt that had any interest, the desire to work all those hours faded. Nothing had changed much except I had no reason to make money anymore. That extra dollar had diminished in value to me, especially since the gov't took a hefty chunk before I even saw it.

If I had a family or kids or a car or house, then things would have been different. I would have remained in the green phase of the DR curve since I had a reason to work. So when that job ended and I was offered a relief job, I decided to take a few months off since I was well into the yellow phase and rapidly approaching the orange.
--

It was at this point that I embarked on the longish green phase of the PS3/Netflix DR curve. I finished the 80ish episodes of the Battlestar Galactica series (a really great drama, and not just for nerds/sci fi folks) and started on the first season of the X-Files before I again reached the PoDR. This was also after I spent 129 hours to get the Platinum Trophy in Final Fantasy XIII (totally worth it!).

So after a couple of months of not working much (I put in a couple of shifts here and there), my work DR curve has finally been reset, and I am ready to start working regularly again. And I'm glad to say I haven't suffered much vision loss or thumb muscle hypertrophy from the PS3/Netflix addiction.
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I can't think of anything that doesn't in some way follow my loose interpretation of diminishing returns. Drug addicts who reach a point of tolerance (yellow) consume more and more to get the same high (orange), ultimately resulting in their death (red). But for most things, when a person or thing gets to that yellow or orange phase, they back off until that thing or activity feels good (or tolerable) again. One just has to figure where that point is before they surpass it and have a hard time getting back to the green phase. Or one can find ways to shift the curve by finding reasons to continue an activity, such as making money to pay for kids' tuition.

Even studying for classes which rapidly reaches the PoDR, you can shift the DR curve by thinking about the reasons for your current state of torture. Like the cash you'll make when you graduate, or the lives you'll affect, or that general feeling of satisfaction of accomplishing something really big.

But sometimes, regardless of how good you determine your point(s) of diminishing returns, you just need a break. So take that break. The world and its problems will still be there tomorrow. And you'll be in a better mindset to take on those challenges.

I apologize for the sappy ending. It really isn't like me to be all inspirational and non-sarcastic/satirical.
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*It's much more poetic/sparse in Vietnamese: an mot ngay, them, an hai ngay, chan. Literal: Eat one day, hunger; Eat two days, tired.

forever, forever, ever, forever, ever? Forever never...

to snail mail mailers:

Do you even exist anymore? With the advent of email, Twitter, Facebook, and their ilk, who actually sits down to type a letter to be printed out, enveloped, and stamped? let alone actually hand-write some epistle?

The only things I can think of that warrant envelopes and stamps are holiday cards, bills from companies which don't accept online payments (stuck in the dark ages much?), and job-related stuff. For me, the only thing for which I use an envelope and stamp is the latter, and for this career trade of pharmacy, it's usually for thank you letters after interviews and letters of acceptances.*

And thank goodness for the Forever Stamp, since I only use one of these things like once every 4 months (if that often). I think I paid $8.40 for a 'book' of 20 stamps, which comes out to $0.42 a piece. For you non-letter writers, the forever stamp is good forever as the name implies. It doesn't have the value printed on there, so it's good for any normal letter you send. I think I still see a few stamps with the value printed on there, which would suck for those people since they'd have to buy 1-cent, 2-cent and 3-cent stamps for when the US Post Office inevitably increases postage rates.



And all those extra stamps look tacky on the envelope. And they don't have the 'USA...FIRST-CLASS...FOREVER' printed on it. A little arrogant subliminal message**, I suppose, but it does make me feel all subconsciously warm and fuzzy about this land of milk and honey (and processed meat and China-made goods).

When the forever stamp first came out, I thought about stockpiling them since the price of the stamp will probably vastly outstrip inflation. But I realized it'll be like SPAM and Twinkies in a bomb shelter: they'll still be there when you're long dead and gone, and you won't ever get the chance to use them all up. (and if you do use them all, there's something really wrong happening).

So out of 20, I still have 15 stamps left, which will probably last me a whole 7-10 years, if people don't bum some off me. I will, of course, charge a nickel-surcharge fee on top of whatever USPS currently charges. I will promise to pay an extra $0.02 in taxes on that nickel, because by that time, my marginal tax bracket will definitely be in the 40% range, and it won't be because I'm making significantly more (though I'm all for social programs, I secretly delight when Republicans win so I can get tax breaks...and I like the right to bear arms even though I don't have a gun). I'm going to get a sizeable refund this year, but the gov't still took 2/3rds of my dough after accounting for all the FICA and other taxes.

Oh, and I'm writing a letter of acceptance. So I should be on an more even keel now :).

--
title from lyrics from Outkast's 'Ms. Jackson'
*Since it's a licensed profession, there are generally fewer applicants so pharmacists generally don't mass-mail inquiry letters. There are exceptions like residencies and such.
**That the USA will be FIRST-CLASS FOREVER

Of Mice and Men

to New Years Eve revelers,

If you don't want to kill your joy, avoid Steinbeck's novella of insight on this last day of the year. Avoid Grapes of Wrath too; that ending was more than a bit weird. I'm all for depressing novels, but they can sometimes be a bit too much at the wrong moments or the wrong moods.

According to Wikipedia (which is still asking people for donations when all it needs to do is add one small little adbar to reap beaucoup revenue), Steinbeck took the name of the novel from a Robert Burns's poem, To a Mouse. Which makes perfect sense, and I've used that tidbit of information to inflate my ever large hubris many a time to the right people. The original line from the poem reads--

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,

Reversioned into coherent English by a Wikipedia author who, supposedly, doesn't get paid--

The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,

But I much prefer my version: The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry. 'Schemes' has a bad connotation, and I don't consider myself much of a 'schemer'. 'Oft' sounds kind of sexy in an archaic way. It's a word that most people can define using context clues skills they learned in 5th grade, but still adds a mystique to the conversation. That or they'll start considering you a pretentious ass who uses thesauri or Google to make yourself sound [even] smarter than you are. Either way, it is a win-win.

Though I confess I do use thesaurus.com and Google plenty of times to clean up my diction (poorly, I might add), the bit about 'go oft awry' dates back to 12th grade when I was still confined to rules of proper English in order to vanquish the English Literature AP test. On a tangent, I like blogs because the sheer amount of daily writing involved almost excuses wordiness, my prime offense.

English Lit class involved reading dry, supposedly wry texts from masters whom I wished the editors modernized to something readable. Not dumbed down to Jersey Shore level, but at least to a style you might see in Times magazine. Being in class also meant being a complete failure at trying to impress girls with my use of the English language. Besides the relatively large but slowly shrinking size of my savings account, my command of this mutt-language is the best thing I have going for me. Pretty sad, I must admit.

Anyway, it probably happened like this, the 'go oft awry' bit: We read stuff in class, probably pieces like the Burnsian poem. The teacher in a more optimistic mood asks a bunch of seniors 2 months from graduation, what a particular line means. After being beatdown with glares and sneers through most of my pre-adolescent and pubescent life, I'd learned not to raise my hand as often. But since the guy was in such a pleasant mood, I threw him a bone.

'That's nice, Mr. Nguyen. Though would you really choose to use "oft"? It's a bit archaic, isn't it?'

It's a peeve of mine when teachers address students by their last name. They try to elevate you to their level, yet this oddity (since every other teacher calls you by your first name) reminds you that they hold the superior position in the relationship. It is utterly condescending. Don't pretend I'm not your b--, smiley face.

'Yes, I'd rather stick with my choice of "oft", though I very well know that it is likely an old-form of "often" and though my classmates probably don't know that, I do, and I'm kind of the only person that matters to me.'

Okay, the story went nothing like that. In my lukewarm quest towards complete Advanced Placement domination, I deferred learning the important material by reading pleasurable stuff. Before this potent Netflix addiction, my past vice was reading for hours on end until the wee hours of the morning. And when I got to a particularly savory bit of writing, I'd write it down to pwn for my own use later. So was born the 'go oft awry bit'. Mr. Optimistic assigned us texts to read, and sat down to whatever he wanted to read, and if you wanted to learn, he was there to teach. Those teachers were swell.

Excuse the long, pointless story.
--

Last New Year's Eve, I was stuck in Dallas, down and out with a cold for the nth time. And I did nothing but attempt to console myself with largish quantities of cough syrup (sadly, it wasn't purple). In my drug- and cold-induced stupor, I thought about resolutions I had made. I was going to start setting down, find a nice girl, have her try to change me for the better as girls are wont to do, etc. Probably that summer, I would start looking at condos in the Addison area and join some book club or something. Start to put down true connections and such. My friends would have started their rotations by then in the Dallas area, and I'd have some people to help me meet new people. It was going to be all good and swell.

Then a month before Easter, the 'go oft awry' bit happened, and I was informed I would be 'displaced' which was the HR-approved term they used. Though it put me in a tailspin, I thought I was pretty well qualified to try to do non-retail stuff, like hospital or long-term care.

No dice. I spent the better part of three months depressed that employers refused to acknowledge my existence simply because I didn't have the 'experience' they were looking for. So I gave up going for hospital/clinical jobs.

Shortly after that decision, I landed a job doing the same work with more pay (the rate was pretty sick) and closer to home. The first cut is the deepest, as Sheryl Crow croons. I worked all the extra shifts possible since I felt the job wouldn't last all that long. And sadly, I was right.

So this is where I am today, chillaxing, figuring out my next move, wondering how many hours of Netflix I'll watch tomorrow when I'm hungover from tonight's festivities. I say 6-8 hours, and that's probably an underestimate.
--

Recently, I gave some advice to the newest brothers in my pharmacy fraternity. The first bit when like this:

Firstly, ‘things fall apart.’ Things Fall Apart is a book written by Chinua Achebe about a tribal leader in Africa who resists the change in his community by the white men. But by being so steadfast in his ideals, he eventually becomes frustrated and commits suicide, which is one of the chief sins in his belief system. It is a very sad irony. What does this have to do with...pharmacy? Things will change, for better or for worse. You must learn to cope and deal with all types of circumstances. Things will not always turn out as you expect them to, but if you realize this early on, it will not be as hard to handle when things do not go your way. Bend, but do not break. [end]

I thought about titling this post 'Things Fall Apart', but that's such a dreary opener. And it's not completely encompassing of my life this past year. I'm not dead, and I'm very much the better for my experiences this past year. I've paid off all my debt, and I finally have a virtual tabula rasa, a clean slate. I can do or not do whatever the hell I want. It's like ice cold lemonade sweetened with real sugar on a hot summer day when you're inside with the AC blustering hard to keep it a cool 68 degrees, after you've spent 2 hours mowing and edging the lawn of a house on the corner lot. Utterly magnificent.

Though I won't go so far as to say 'Things Fall in Place', I will say this past year has been more constructive than destructive. The most fitting epitaph for this year is, therefore, 'the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry.'

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Never.. 2010, what a wondrous year!

Job Search Begins in Earnest

To the pharmacy job-seekers,

Would you mind ever so nicely to forward me your contacts? Especially the really good sounding ones with hefty pay and minimal stress? Thanks in advance!
--

The Vegas chronicles can get a bit dreary for the non-poker folks, so I'll intersperse them with the regular dreary stuff. I promise at the end of the Vegas posts, there will be something about a 5-10, 6-4 in stripper heels, platinum blonde 'exotic dancer'. But it will likely be at least a week before then. I can be a tease, I know.
--

After getting back from Sin City, I reconciled my losses and partitioned my poker bankroll from my regular cash stash. Both were dismally low, so I supplemented with a drive-up ATM withdrawal which took more than 10 minutes because some lady in an SUV was having a pleasant conversation with the machine which included about 10-15 hand motions. Honestly, if you need more than 5 minutes at a drive-up ATM, do everyone a favor and go inside. There are actual human beings paid to service you when you need that many transactions, and they won't be snide and say stuff like, 'Did you know you could deposit your check at the ATM outside?'

When I got to the machine, it took me less than 2 minutes to get my dough, even without the quick-cash option.

With that little windfall, I paid back my bankroll for the night at the Spearmint Rhino, then paid my parents for the DSL and phone service. And then my cash was once more depleted. Though my credit cards, bank & saving accounts are relatively solid, it's the cash that makes me happy or depressed; if I had a $1000 in cash in which to roll around, I'd feel momentarily richer than if I had $10 with $10,000 in the bank. It's pretty stupid, my sense of wealth, but I digress.

On the last night in Vegas, I had come to a conclusion (more on this later), that poker would be, at best, a side-gig for me and that I should suck it up and go find a real job with a 401(k) and benefits. Because you can work an entire week as a poker player making all the right decisions and still lose money, whereas the worst pharmacist in the country is pretty much guaranteed at least $50/hr. But I still think poker is my lottery ticket to the big-time, especially tournament poker. I found out that cash game poker isn't my cup of tea since it can be static and boring, eventually shifting my play to autopilot which isn't winning poker.

I checked if this job in Houston was still available and it was. Reposted after a month in fact. That's always a good sign. Unlike poker, second-best is still pretty good if it treats you right.

But sleep can cure insomnia and cause amnesia, so I sequestered all the icky job seeking notions as soon as I touched down in H-town. You know, because I had to clean up and stuff, and reconcile bills, and wash clothes, and play on my PS3, and finish up the Battlestar Galactica series, and start on the X-Files, etc. And it's not like I wasn't still completely solid. The way I lived my life as a college student, I could go 4 years without seeing another red cent in earnings. Old world Asians are the camels of the money world--there is no such thing as interest and credit because we can do without. Except those degenerate gambling ones; they're like reverse camels, 'Spend it if you got it!'

So after initially planning to submit my resume on Sunday night, here I am on Wednesday, still messing around, wondering if I'm up to scratch to start a brand new career, preferably non-retail. A few years back, I had deluded myself into thinking it was a fear of success (if I succeeded, then there would be a longer path ahead) that handcuffed me from doing what I really wanted. Most assuredly it is a mortal fear of failure. Perfectionism, ironically, is a major flaw.
--

The PS3 game I've been playing lately is InFamous, a sandbox-style game where you take the reigns of Cole MacGrath, a guy with newly donned superpowers courtesy of an electrical explosion that wipes out half a borough. Funny how you never play the role of a Dwight from the Office. You choose to be good or evil, and the storyline progresses depending on the path you take. It's a pretty novel concept, I think, perhaps one of the first of its kind to take it that far.

The cool thing about the game is that there is almost no penalty for dying. You start off at the nearest checkpoint, and progress with a full energy bar to boot! So much for those Contra days when you had 3 lives to beat a near impossible game without the cheat code (or use a computer emulator with save states). After the first couple of missions, I got over my fear of simulated heights, being shot, and dying multiple times. And it's pretty fun to electrocute, sticky-bomb, and fry your enemies with lightning storms.

I would say that's the new culture of video games. Continue where you left off, with perhaps a slap on the hand. Even on hard difficulty. And that might be the new culture of this era. It's okay to fail, so long as you try. It's the quitting or not trying that's punishable by mediocrity.
--

And so this old dog (at heart) must learn some new tricks, must put aside all those messed up thoughts of superiority and/or inferiority, don the devil-may-care attitude of the new generation, take some lumps, and keep on moving towards less imperfection. Because perfection is a false idol and prophet which will lead all souls to mire in their illusions of grandeur.

But my resume/CV will still be grammatically perfect!

This time will be the last time
That we will fight like this..

Vegas (and work) manana!

to the gamblers,

If you've never read the Theory of Poker, please sit at my table and buy in for the cash that you would have lost at the blackjack table anyway. If you can explain and apply 'reverse implied odds'*, then kindly look for your fish at other tables, because mine are spoken for. And I sure do hope there are plenty of fish in Vegas this week (in contrast to 'sharks' which is really a mispronunciation of 'sharps'), because I'd like to pay for this vacation I planned before my job loss.

During the 20+ straight nights of work a few weeks back, I had booked a trip to Vegas for one of my off weeks, and this is that off week. I had a show planned for each night to reward myself for the many hours of Hold'em I was going to play. And if I totally killed at the tables, I would go support some students and single mothers at the Spearmint Rhino, against my rule of never going to a strip club alone**.

But things change, and so if I do win, I'll put it towards my bankroll to support my second (and possibly primary career). If I lose, the experience will let me know if this plan to play cards for a living is a pipe-dream or if it is a truly serviceable option for making a decent wage.

Because I do think I have the potential to be a winning player. My mathematical skills are still prime, when I tilt*** it is almost always to the conservative side, I have a reserve of cash on hand, I can augment that cash if necessary by working crazy shifts, and I don't particularly need the money which would allow me the time to develop the textbook tight-aggressive style.

The question is if I can sit and grind all day long, no sexual innuendo intended. To play poker until the point of physical fatigue and mental exhaustion. Can I do it? This trip will tell.

Poker, shows, poker, eat, poker, sleep, poker, poker, poker...

Don't ask me if I planned to go to Pure, Jet or any other exotic nightclubs on the strip. First of all, I don't have any arm candy to get through the door. Secondly, I'm not going to Vegas to f-- people, I'm going to f-- them over, which is a subtle but important difference. The first instance generally involves hemorrhaging money (if not on escorts, then on the insane cost of drinks at these clubs), while the second involves parting fools from their money.

And I very much would like to be the hand of destiny which fulfills that proverb. Wish me good decision-making and a run of good cards. Or just luck--luck works too!

--
*A real concept: When the odds appear better than they really are and your hand can only get worse as the play progresses, which should generally lead you to fold since you won't be getting sufficient odds.
**Never have gone solo because late one night, at almost 2am last call, my friends were at the bar getting drinks, and about 3 'dancers' came by one after another to asked if I was alone and if I'd like their services like I was a defenseless mark in a dark alley!
***When emotions take over after a bad run of cards.

Good Old Times

to the alcoholics,

There are two signs you need to look out for if you want to know if I've reached my 'buzz point': 1) I start getting real philosophical and honest to the point of political incorrectness, and 2) I start using the F-word as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, and even conjunction, preposition, and interjection. It's really quite extraordinary as I try to use correct grammar as I modify all the different forms of the F-word. In high school, my peers used to ask me calculus questions after I polished off a fifth of a fifth of Patron, and yes, I could still do calculus after all that. Now that I forgot all that calculus nonsense (which is good for nothing except telling people who know or care that you 5'd the Calculus BC AP along with 7 other tests), all I can do is tell you random stuff that doesn't really matter all that much but makes you think that I kind of know a little something about something.

But since I'm still slightly inebriated, I'll be a bit honest with you: Truth is I don't really know all that much about stuff that really matters (in my opinion). And it scares me. It is a wholly unsettling feeling that I'm not the badass I pretend to be at the important sh--.

At the 'buzz point', the next alcoholic beverage will send me straight to the porcelain god or passed out with a future trip to the aforementioned god (which likely has more followers than the traditional Dude whom* people praise). I feel completely honest with myself which is sad considering it takes a foreign substance to make me face up to my most protected thoughts. It is a precariously golden moment of [false?] enlightenment.

I tell people the honest truth about how my latest job got cut, and how I kinda expected it to happen and how I kinda wished it would happen.

I tell people that my job made me feel dishonest while I smiled and told customers I wished they'd come back when I secretly deplored them for ever gracing my sight.

I tell them that I have done absolutely nothing in the past 2 weeks and how it feels absolutely amazing to not have to work, disregarding the fact that they have to cram for finals in the next couple of weeks.

I abhor and then console myself for assuming the professional pharmacist role while giving a mini-speech to pharmacy students: I mustn't tell the kids that Santa Claus and the Easter bunny aren't real--they will find out for themselves soon enough if they don't suspect already.

Because who the f-- cares! I've paid my dues in time and money and mental health. It is the time for rebirth into the new me or the old me or the better me (or worse me).
--

Sometimes I think of myself as a broken man with no purposeful intention except the innate desire toward self-preservation through food, shelter, water, and sex. And is that all life amounts to for a young adult male? Food, shelter, water, and sex, and not necessarily in that order?

It is abysmal sometimes when I go out and get to that wasted, veritable state where I look at other guys and think that if they could get with that one girl they were staring at the whole night that their life would be magically cured, that somehow the other flawed human being would make them perfect. But sadly it likely isn't true. Two wrongs don't make a right, and two imperfect persons do not make a perfect one.
--

'I had a good time tonight.'

'Yea, it was kinda like old times a couple of years back when we were in school, when I was driving you around from place to place.'

'Yea, kinda like the good old times, bro..'

With that, my friend exited the car at the University parking lot. I checked the door locks manually to make sure it was secure (can't be too careful in the ghetto), made a semicircle out of the parking lot and onto the road to the freeway..

Cruising down Gulf Freeway, I activated the cruise control at 60 mph to take the speed variance out of the equation for the Friday night copper. But the folks in the right lane were moving at an even slower pace, so I disabled the crutch and took over completely.

And I started to think about my life and how it isn't really all that bad in perspective and how I can really start digging the person I am or will be. So after all the years in between high school and now, I've arrived at the same point where I've started, just a little different, hopefully a little more grown and a little less green. And you know what? That's okay..

With that, I cranked up the pathetic speakers in my ride and faded into suspended consciousness while navigating the miles of concrete, passing the familiar food dives and sleazy strip joints, past one of the adult video stores where that priest got caught for 'public lewdness' for touching himself, to mi casa in the suburbia boonies..
--

Don't live life on autodrive; don't live life like your choices don't matter. Because

'lately I, am beginning to find that I,
should be the one behind the wheel.'

..and when you feel inspirational (through natural or chemical means), write it down, because you'll forget it the next day when you're looking at the receipts and wondering how the f-- you spent so much the night before..

..but I suppose you got to pay tuition for those life lessons..

--
*yes, that is the correct use of the word 'whom', so I think..

Esquire Survey of American Men

Dear the metrosexual,

A shorter post today.

A couple of years ago, I had a discussion with a good friend of mine about which magazine subscription to get for general manliness (as in how to be man, not how to get men). In a way, it reminded me of the Superbad opener where Michael Cera and Jonah Hill describe the perks/downsides of subscriptions to particular porn websites. Except ours was a serious discussion and not a debate between the post-pubescent absurd. (Since we all know that [website expunged] has the best stuff for free!)

We narrowed down the choices between GQ, Esquire, and Men's Health, all very nicely put together magazines. Maxim et al did not make the cut since we're classy guys.

'Men's Health has articles on workout regimens and stuff. It also has some nutritional primers in addition to how to dress.' 'Yes, but GQ and Esquire go into more detail about fashion and accessories.' As you can see, the conversation was graduate level in its complexity and simplicity.

I'm not quite sure how we manage to not drown in the reflecting pool while admiring our Narcissus-ine qualities. He got married, and it's working for him. I drink, and I guess that helps.

Joking aside, those magazines really have some good articles in addition to the stuff pandering to men's baser instincts. There was a Fall guide in GQ I recently perused about the closet essentials. I knew most of the stuff on watches (I prefer slim and elegant vs the cheap, chunky monstrosities that some guys choose to sport), but the guide on mixing & matching colors and textures was truly enlightening. It takes confidence to fly in the face of the color wheel once you've learned what colors work and don't work together.

And at least for guys, you can get a few essentials in high quality and then mix everything else in. There's almost no need to redo an entire closet; just pick a staple, add some flair, and walk confidently knowing that you're worth a million bucks. Because at least to some girls in the world, you are worth that or even more. Excuse the hopeless romantic. -5 man cards.

--

This morning on the Today Show, there was a segment about a survey done by Esquire of 20 and 50 year old men. Of course they hyped it up and advertised it for about 2 hours before actually getting to the interview with the editor (or whomever), and it was almost kind of worth it.

On the segment, they played up how it seems that 20 year olds may have a more conservative lean towards relationships and such. They cited 2 survey questions in which more 20 year olds than 50 yo said that 'divorce was never an option' and that they (20 yo) preferred their wives to be stay at home moms. After reading through the survey myself, I think the subtle difference was overdone. People love to cite proof which contradicts common opinion/knowledge (that 20 yo are out sticking their members in anything that moves).

But weak evidence aside, I've noticed personally that in my generation of early 20 year olds, there seems to be a higher frequency of commitment vs the dudes in their late 20s. Five of my friends are married, and more are dropping like flies. One of them is even having a kid. (This is a sample size of college graduates or soon to be college graduates in the South). If this trend continues, the CDC will have to get involved.

It is all quite a bit upsetting to me, as you can well imagine. Even if one feels that one is making a good decision by being promiscuous (or, more accurately, having the option to be promiscuous), when one's friends are all enjoying (or succumbing) to the married life, one starts to reconsider one's lifestyle.

Don't hate me, but I think the only mistake Tiger Woods made was to get married when he wasn't ready. If he was single, who would care about his multiple sex partners and his slight deviance towards sadism? And it's not like he had to get married to get action--this dude's going to be worth a billion bucks by swinging at a stationary object.

So I'm guessing commit if it works for you? Otherwise, hold off until you're sure? I am Catholic so there's the whole if-you-divorce-you're-going-to-hell-because-of-the-hardness-of-your-heart thing.

Anyway, read the survey if you're bored. Chime in if you're irate at my Tiger Woods' comment.

Family Shackles

Dear involuntary wedding guests,

I'll get to my Commie-leaning stance tomorrow. Today's post is about a random sore subject endemic to my immediate family, and possibly other Viet Catholic or Viet or Asian families: the obligation to go to family events.

Mama came up to my little den area, my brother's old room which I had redecorated with my TV, sofa, and weight set. There is a 2nd floor communal area which would probably be a more appropriate area for a TV, but it is visible from the street. Though we're in the suburbs and the street does have a moderate traffic flow (unfortunately with some idiots banging their muzak or revving their crappy midlife-crisis bikes), you can't have anything nice and visible in a major metropolitan area. Even in the suburbs. 'If people weren't poor, they would not need to steal.' Not true: poverty and theft are not perfectly correlated.

Some neighborhood kids broke into one of our cars to steal floor mats. Floor mats! So no, my TV is not to be visible from the street.

Mama has never understood the concept of privacy or of respecting personal space. When my bedroom door is locked, she jimmies it until it opens, thinking it must have been a ghost who moves the knob from horizontal to vertical. But the door was open this time, since you have to let the heat dissipate from the room when the thermostat has a hard-floor of 83 degrees.

She's smiling. She's always smiling whether she's sad or happy, whether she's angry or elated, whether she wants to put a kiss on the cheek or the switch to the backside. She disarms a lot of people but not me. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

'Oh, you have the internet on?' She doesn't wait for my answer; she sees the USB cord hanging from my laptop to my phone. 'Hey, my friend from work told me about this 18-month old who smokes 2 packs a day. Can you search for it?' She knows I can search for it, not because I'm some tech nerd but the fact that I'm under 25.

So I search for the stupid thing which had been on the news all the while thinking, 'Who the [copulate] cares?' and found the kid's name, then youtubed it: Ardi Rizal. 'Haha,' she laughs. 'Do you think it's real? Do you think he's 18 months?'

'Sure it's real.' I refrain from a metaphysical explanation of the reality of things shown on Youtube. 'They show it on TV; it must be real.' I pick the simplest, albeit fallacious, explanation to facilitate my ends: getting her to stop bothering me while I'm watching the NBA Finals.

'It's not in the U.S. right?' she asks.

'No, it's in Indonesia,' I respond easily, taking the word of some uncredited source on the internet. 'You can do whatever you want there.' I continue to leave my critical thinking on cruise control; ignorance is bliss as they say. It's easy and pleasant to be ditzy, and I can turn my hair blonde on-demand.

She watches me a little further, while I continue paying my bills online. She glances at the TV, hoping I'd say something more, to continue a dying conversation. But I had learned to be withholding from the pro sitting to my left.

She buckles, 'Hey, there was that news story about my workplace. Can you pull it up?'

I search grudgingly, then earnestly as I wonder if it was possible to find the news story. But I lost interest, and made up an excuse, 'It was a news story?'

'Uh huh, they came to the company and we had to wear uniforms. We never wear uniforms.'

'What happened?'

'Nothing, just something to get attention I guess. My friend had found it on the internet after they showed it on TV.'

Like that means anything. I make some more faux searches, and then point at the TV. 'You see that commercial there? You see it now, and you can probably see it online somehow, but it's going to be difficult.' She senses my irritation. She's really good at sensing non-verbal cues, but she's even better at ignoring them.

But she gives up this time. She starts up from the couch and probably caught my half-smile that signified my victory. Halfway to the door, she casually asks, 'Did you find those car rental prices?'

'No.' I might as well get it over with. To delay something that may take care of itself tomorrow is a potentially profitable way to procrastinate. But to delay something that will only come back tomorrow is plain lazy especially when the tools to do the job are in your hands. I should follow my advice more often.

alamo...national car rental...avis, et al all go one by one into Google's omniscient, omnipotent bar. Then I get smart and do a Priceline search to show all the rates at once. Channeling the voice of an old African-American sage playing dominoes at the park, 'Think long, think wrong.'

'Bossman, two out of three ain't bad.' (the one out of three being my inefficient searching).

I imagine him responding, 'No it ain't, son, nah it sure ain't,' while wondering if he thought what had been the two out of three I had gotten correct.

'Mama, you can save $5 if prepay now, but if you cancel you have to pay $5 cancellation fee.'

We get into an discussion about the prepay discount. 'When your aunt reserved it, you can cancel anytime you want.' 'I understand that, but I'm trying to save you some money.' 'What about the others?' I echo, 'What about the others?'

She continues to waste my Lakers vs Celtics time. 'You're not going to cancel, right? You're going, right? So it'd be cheaper if you prepay.'

'But I might not go or she could find someone else to bring her.' Finally, the crux of the matter. My family has a habit of complaining (as you can see from my own belly-aching).

'Don't go then. Why do you have to go?'

'It's your grandmother's brother's kid, Dad's cousin. Your grandmother has to go, and I have to go because none of your aunts and uncles want to drive her there [New Orleans].'

'Who cares? The groom or bride won't care, probably won't even remember Dad even if he were to show up. All they want is your money [Viet wedding gift], so send it and be done with it.'

'But they invited your grandmother and Dad, because he's the oldest child. Your great uncle felt obligated to invite them because it wouldn't be right if he hadn't. And it's not right if we don't go.'

'What? You couldn't just lie and say you're not in town? It's not like you've never done that before. See? Easy.'

She's frustrated. As independent of a woman she is, she is still shackled by the conventions of family and family obligations. I had thought about how we didn't have grandfather's portrait on the wall of the house, and thought how unconventional the absence had been. Then I realized that it was because we just haven't hung it up post-Ike; it had been in the living room of our old condo. The Catholic missionaries had not squashed our ancestor worship, and the somber black-and-white portraits in every older Viet Catholic's home is ever present next to the Christian altar.

She backtracks, using ad hominem attacks, 'Your aunts and uncles are disgraceful. None of them will go, and so I have to go.' I sit in silent agreement. 'Your brother would go. He said he'd drive as far as Lake Charles and stay there while I drove on to New Orleans. But not with your grandmother in the car, never with your grandmother.' Grandma had called my brother a 'gangbanger' and had basically disowned him once grandfather died.

Mama says that last bit to try to cajole me to offer to drive her and grandma to N.O. Nice try.

We talk some more about the prepay discount, and then she drops the car rental subject. 'Maybe someone will be going there too, and I won't have to drive.' Not likely.
--

It will be the death of her, this family business thing. America is not like Vietnam. In olden Vietnam, there's nothing to do but live in your little village doing your bit of subsistence farming, while enjoying the little weddings and such that intersperse the daily drudgery. But these things are only grudging obligations in this fast-paced society of Google, Facebook, iPhones, and silly videos of an 18-month old smoking on Youtube.

You can't live in two different worlds and maintain consonance. You cannot serve both God and Mammon, except in this case you don't know who is God and who is Mammon (though a bunch of people think us Americans as Devil spawn).

Well, she'll go to that wedding and I won't. And the next. And she'll smile all the while hating that she had to be there. And I'll smile sincerely as I sleep away that free weekend.

Another Benefit of the Roth IRA or a Miscalculation

Dear Tax-haters,

So maybe you’ve read up on the Roth IRA like I suggested. But probably not. Money is interesting in that it’s a made-up idea yet it consumes so much of our thoughts. I'm beginning to understand that when you have a sufficient amount of money, any extra is just gravy. But a lot of gravy is nice. So skip to the next section to get to the Roth IRA stuff if you want to bypass an embarrassing story of my miscalculation.
--

Back in high school I was captain of the science bowl team (go ahead and snicker), and our team made it all the way to nationals. Though I was proud, the qualifying regional was like playing in Conference USA; it wasn’t much of a challenge to get an automatic bid to the show. It was a several day affair in D.C. at a place that had dorms to sleep in and ballrooms in which to display our math and science prowess. I wonder how far it would set back American technology if something were to happen to that place during nationals; some of those kids were extremely bright yet extremely dull (myself included). Out of the 10 round robins, my team won a grand total of zilch. Needless to say, we didn’t advance.

Besides the main event of science bowl, there were side competitions like designing the best hydrogen fuel cell model car. The hydrogen fuel cell in my view at the time, was redundant. The reaction that powers the system is the combustion of hydrogen to make water and energy. Chemically, hydrogen + oxygen = water + energy. Though containers full of hydrogen is undoubtedly a very safe thing*, the way we got the hydrogen to fuel the model cars is via a hydrolysis reaction (water + energy = hydrogen + oxygen) powered by alkaline batteries. Then to power the car, they’d just let the reaction go in reverse; there wasn’t an internal combustion of hydrogen which was quite a disappointment.

A younger, more naïve g: ‘I think it’s stupid that we’re using a battery to power another battery. I don’t see the point in this experiment. I mean, if we were combusting the hydrogen, then I can kind of understand the idea somewhat.’

The thing I learned a little later is that a reaction produces the same maximal amount of energy, no matter the way in which it occurs. Therefore, the same amount of hydrogen and oxygen would produce the same maximum whether you lit the hydrogen and let it blow or stuck some wires to make a boring battery. In fact, the battery method is a much more efficient in harnessing the energy than the internal combustion of hydrogen, so it would be preferable to have the controlled reaction that you see in the developing hydrogen fuel cell cars. And there's the benefit that your car won't blow up, but that's a minor advantage.

As a sidenote, the controlled electric reaction of hydrogen and oxygen is still considered combustion since it is defined as the reaction of a fuel with oxygen. Are you still awake?

Thinking about the comment I made to my fellow competitors, I wonder how many of them thought I was a complete idiot. I totally missed the point: Making hydrogen requires energy, whether it be renewable or fossil fuel, but if we were to somehow make that process more efficient, we’d have a clean ‘burning’ fuel with only water as an emission. The internal combustion engine is a relatively inefficient (something like 33% gets converted to mechanical energy). To get the hydrogen in our particular exercise, we used batteries (redundant), but if it were a more efficient conversion of fossil fuels to get hydrogen like 45% instead of 33% at a hydrogen plant, then we’d possibly reduce emissions.

But money talks and so far, the money isn’t in hydrogen fuel cell cars. Earth, sucks to your ass-mar**.
--

After reading some more stuff about investments (I want to retire when I’m 40 and become a decrepit degenerate), I thought about the tax advantages of a Roth vs traditional IRA.

The common consensus among investors is that the Roth is the preferable vehicle if you can contribute to it, which I wholeheartedly agree with for the many important reasons reported repeatedly across the internet. (if you don't believe me, google it yourselves)

But there was one more thing I thought about, which may turn out to be another miscalculation of mine. Even if it isn’t, this advantage is so minuscule that it really doesn’t matter unless you make frequent trades in your taxable account.

Let's start with a truism: If the current tax rate and your retirement tax rate were the same, then the Roth and traditional IRA would have the exact same return, assuming the same annual rates of return, investment amount, and length of investment. Some website had a pretty graph, but I'll prove it to you mathematically:

Roth -
principal x (1 - present tax rate) = investment amount
investment amount x (1 + annual rate of return)^length of investment = net value at retirement
P x (1 - tax%) = I
I x (1 + ARR)^n = net value
therefore, P x (1 - tax%) x (1 + ARR)^n = net value

Traditional -
principal = investment amount
investment amount x (1 + annual rate of return)^length of investment = pretax value at retirement
pretax value x (1 - retirement tax rate) = net value
therefore, P x (1 + ARR)^n x (1 - tax%) = net value

So Roth would win if the retirement tax rate were higher than the present tax rate, which given the state of our national debt, is likely. Traditional IRA proponents argue that you'd be making less money when you retire than at present, so you would be in a lower tax bracket. I wouldn't count on that--40 years is a long time from now.

There's a lot of advantages/disadvantages I'm ignoring, and financial websites do them justice. I'm purely focusing on the numbers.

Finally getting to my point. Let’s assume some numbers:
Bank account/income for last quarter = $10,000
Roth/Traditional contribution limit = $5,000
Marginal tax rate = 25%

Average annual return in stock market mutual fund = 7% (that’s a nice, round lucky number)
Returns are based on dividends/interest and growth. Dividends and interest get taxed yearly, but growth isn’t taxed until it is realized via capital gains. So let’s assume that 2% is attributed to dividends/interest and 5% is attributed to growth, and you invest your taxable account in a buy-and-hold strategy.

Qualified dividend/capital gains rate = 20%
Length of investment = 35 years
No further investments in future years
Invest remainder of bank account in a taxable investment
Taxable investment return = 5% + 2% x (1 - 0.2) = 6.6% return (accounting for the tax on interest & dividends)

Roth IRA
Contribute $5,000. Pay marginal tax of 25% on $10,000 which is $2,500.
Ending balance = $2,500 in bank account and $5,000 in Roth

Traditional IRA
Contribute $5,000. Pay 25% on $5,000, which is $1,250.
Ending balance = $3,750 in bank account and $5,000 in traditional IRA

In the Roth:
IRA: $5,000 x (1 + 0.07)^35 years = $53,382 tax free
taxable acct: $2,500 x (1 + 0.066)^35 years = $23,412
after capital gains tax = $23,412 x (1 - 0.20) = $18,730
NET = $72,112

In the Traditional:
IRA: $5,000 x (1 + 0.07)^35 years = $53,382, taxed at 25% marginal rate
after tax = $40,037
taxable acct: $3,750 x (1 + 0.066)^35 years = $35,118
after 20% capital gains tax = $28,095
NET = $68,132

Difference of $3,980. Small change considering inflation and what-not 35 years from now. The difference is attributed to the fact that you're putting 'more money' into the Roth, since those dollars have the tax rolled into it. With the traditional, the investment dollars haven't been taxed yet and those would be 'worth less' than the Roth dollars. To get the same IRA return from the traditional IRA, you'd have to invest $6,666 initially:

IRA = $6,666 x (1 + 0.07)^35 = $71,170
after 25% tax = $53,378
taxable acct: $3334 x (1 + 0.066)^35 = $31,223
after 20% capital gains tax = $24,978
NET = $78,356

So in this hypothetical scenario (the contribution limit for both IRAs is a meager $5,000), you'd be up $6,244 over the Roth.

Long, long, convoluted story short: With the Roth, you're investing a higher initial amount. But in reality, that little extra amount may not mean much if you're disciplined in you manage your taxes in your taxable accounts. You also aren't tempted to spend that cash you have lying around in your bank account.

In my opinion, the true advantage of the Roth IRA is that you're locking in your tax rate now. And although your tax bill may have seemed heavy, it's nothing compared to the 70s which had top marginal tax rates of 70%.

Why did I go through this whole ordeal to prove (possibly) a minor point, which probably isn't worth mentioning? Because it's good practice. And it doesn't even require calculus.

A quote from Warren Buffett: Investment must be rational; if you don't understand it, don't do it. From what I hear, he does pretty well for himself.

--
*come on, Hindenburg was a fluke!
**Lord of the Flies

The Rotation Files, the rotation schedule

Dear taxpayers,

The deadline has deemed and passed. I hope you didn't put up the frivolous argument that you weren't obligated to pay your taxes because you are a resident of the great nation of Texas and not of the United States. The tax-man wouldn't like that very much. There's a whole friggin section on the IRS website about arguments that won't fly, and I think I'd tango with Satan before I'd ever mess with the IRS.

Did you follow my money-making scheme about the IRA? Sure, millions of people could be wrong in using it, but then maybe you could be the wrong one in not using it (I'm sure this is a logical fallacy, but I can't quite put my finger on it). Don't worry--you can contribute for 2010 while the pretty graphs on morningstar point to the up and right, which is generally regarded as a good sign. Even though the money behind it is just a figment of our imagination, it's always nice to have pleasant dreams instead of nightmares.
--

Right about this time, my comrades have received their rotation schedules for their final year of pharmacy school (Woohoo!). The elation or pain of having received or not received their first picks have set in. So here's a couple of thoughts I have about the schedule, now that I've turned my vinyl over to the B-side:

Things change. Don't get too attached to your schedule if you're loving it. Don't start making babies with that piece of paper, because after all, it is still a piece of paper. And paper has a habit of changing on you (think about the varying value of the US dollar). Preceptors leave their jobs, they have babies (not with paper), they decide they don't want you*, etc. I think it might be safe to make living arrangements, but that's as far as that goes.

Things don't change except for good reason. Rotations can break up with you; you cannot break up with rotations. It's like the biblical days when the man could give his wife a certificate of divorce but not the other way around. Sorry--you're pretty much stuck with the cards you're dealt (excuse the cliche). Crying has helped in rare occasions, but it's generally regarded as a bad move.

The retail giants for the community rotation aren't automatically bad. Some of the best preceptors work in the busiest stores. And some of the worst preceptors work in the slowest stores. It depends more on your preceptor than the company you're stuck with.

Be careful when discussing your experiences. More for later once after you had a few rotations, but never ever speak ill of any preceptor even in confidence with a friend (saying a rotation is difficult is okay; saying a preceptor is difficult is frowned upon). Pharmacy is a very, very small world, and mouthings-off have a habit of being passed around like nosocomial infections, and like nosocomial infections, they're hard to get rid of.

You can be as clinical (or unclinical) at any rotation. You get what you put into it. Preceptors are disposed to teach you (preceptor certification is voluntary after all). I used a tacky Chinese proverb (don't you find that fortune cookie stuff horribly trite?) in a high school speech: Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself. It applies here even if the quote has the consistency of Cheez-Wiz.

Finally, it will all work out for the best. And if it doesn't, it's only six weeks of your life. To paraphrase another oft-quoted expression**: that which does not kill you only makes you stronger. If you don't learn anything, you will at least learn another method of patient assessment.

It will be okay. Trust me--I'm a doctor.

--
*that story is pretty sad. On a sidenote, the Washington Times has a surprising number of ads including distasteful pop-ups.
**Nietzsche