Attempts at a Sustainable Lifestyle…

Well, it’s another milestone at The Baglady!  This is the 200th post, and all of you kind readers have made over 1100 comments!  In my 2008 goals post I briefly mentioned that I would like over 1000 visitors to this blog daily by the end of the year, and now I am up to 300 to 400 per day so it seems highly likely I could reach my goal.  Since then,   I also  joined a great community blog named Wise Bread and started a new blog about San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble.  Between the three blogs now my writing gets over 2000 views per day.  That’s a huge improvement from just 100 to 200 visitors daily 5 months ago!

In terms of blog income, I have gone from  $161 in January to nearly $600 this month.  All of the money I collect from blogging is currently donated to various charities.  It makes me happy when I see my articles earning money every day now, even when I am not writing.

With the growth of my blogs, I finally wrote  a Press page to showcase all the mentions my writing have gotten on top blogs and other press.  Check it out for some of the most amusing and useful articles I’ve written.

I want to say thank you all for reading my writing.  It really makes my day when I hear that my random thoughts have helped you or made you laugh.  I know that I piss people off, too, but getting any kind of reaction means that I made someone read and think a little bit and that is also rewarding.

The more I write the more I think that my writing could be the best legacy I could leave.  I would love for my future descendants to read my stories and my parents’ stories to get a glimpse of how we lived.  I know I love to hear my mom’s stories about  my grandmother’s family. So hopefully I will can preserve this blog for those that come after me.  I also think it is amazing that the internet allows this rapid sharing of ideas and lives.

With that, I leave you with some great Blog Carnivals in the recent weeks:

Carnival of Debt Reduction at Debt Free Revolution

Carnival of Personal Finance  at Alpha Consumer - I didn’t really submit to this carnival but they included my article under Four Pillar’s name.  Sorry Mike, I don’t know what happened there.

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It’s been a while since I translated a chapter of my dad’s story of how we immigrated to America and started a new life.  This is a bonus  story he wrote at the end of Chapter 3 that doesn’t have much to do with his new college life.  Anyway, it is an episode in our lives that is worth mentioning.  For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. Enjoy!
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In the winter of 1992, I received an acceptance letter from Kap’iolani Community College.  Since I was an international student, I did not qualify for the inexpensive in state tuition.  The rate for international students was more than $1000 per semester.  Registration was due on 1/13 and classes started on 1/18.  When I was about to start school, two events happened.  One was a good thing, and the other was not.

First let me explain the joyous event.  When Helen was in college during the late 1970s she was a translator for a group of American educators that visited China.  Because of this she met an elementary teacher from Pensacola, Florida named Betty.  Betty’s husband was a retired military man of the United States Air Force.  At that time Betty was more than 60 years old but she was extremely interested in China.  After she met Helen she was quite interested in Helen’s education and life.  They became penpals for many years.  Even after we were married they kept on writing each other.  After Xin was born Betty was quite interested in Xin’s growth and education.  Everytime Xin had a birthday she would send some books and gifts.  When Helen arrived in Hawaii, the person that came to pick her up from the airport was Betty’s good friend.

After Xin and I came to America, Betty wrote us a letter saying that she is preparing a surprise for Xin.  Right before Christmas we received a letter from Los Angeles from a woman named Lynn.  In the envelope there were three roundtrip tickets from Hawaii to LA and three tickets to Disneyland worth 56 dollars each.  The letter said that we were invited as guests of the Presbyterian Church to a Christmas in Los Angeles.  Later we found out that this was the surprise Betty was talking about.

This was our first Christmas in America.  Lynn had a Ford, and she drove us from the Los Angeles Airport to her home.  Lynn is also a elementary school teacher, and her husband is a professor at UCLA.  They have two children, one boy and one girl.  The boy is the older child and his name is John.  He just graduated from college and his major was English.  However, he joined a fishing company and worked on the oceans as a fisherman.  I heard from Lynn that being a fisherman is hard and dangerous work and the pay was not spectacular, but John was  young and wanted to broaden his experience.  His parents thought that it was a good idea and did not protest.  At that time, I honestly didn’t understand the mindset of American parents.  I always thought that when children graduate from college they should go to graduate school and join academia, and I would never allow my child to do such hard and dangerous work.  However, after being in America for a while I understood more of the American educational system.  I think perhaps this type of hard labor is a lesson   American parents hope that their children could learn.  Perhaps in those dangerous waves, John could receive the inspiration Hemingway had when he wrote “The Old Man and the Sea”.

That week, Lynn’s church had a volunteer to drive us somewhere every single day.  We went to Disneyland and Xin was extremely excited and had a wonderful time.  Additionally,  we toured Hollywood and went to many different museums.  Nevertheless, that Christmas we were extremely happy.  I wanted to thank Lynn and her family for being such gracious hosts so I bought a chicken from the supermarket and made a Chinese style roast chicken.  I put many different ingredients and also sticky rice inside the stomach of the chicken and baked it for three hours until the skin was crispy and brown.  Lynn’s family tasted my chicken and praised it quite a bit, and said that I should visit them more often.

We could never forget that event and Betty’s love for our family.  A little over five years ago I and Helen visited Betty in Florida.  At that time, she was more than 80.  I cooked several Chinese dishes for her and when she heard that we both had great jobs and Xin was studying at UC Berkeley she felt very relieved.  Today, even though Betty already left us, her smiles and voice is still often remembered in our family.

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Addendum from Xin:  I still remember that Christmas really clearly even thought it has been more than fifteen  years because it was beautiful.  The funniest moment I remember was that Lynn’s family sat down to pray over the food, and my dad didn’t quite understand it.  So when they said something like, “Thank you for this food”, my dad blurted out something like “no problem!” because he cooked the chicken.  My mom was embarrassed and then explained it to him later.  It’s still pretty funny when I think of it.

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This story comes from my friend The Retirement Hobo.  He has really finished working and is now traveling around Asia like a retirement hobo should.  He is sending his friends emails and I really liked this story so I asked him if I could post this story on my blog.  He said YAHHH!!! So here it is!
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Just wanted to share one day with you all.

A few days ago, a friend introduced me to his private mountain.  That’s right, a mountain.  He bought it years ago as an investment property but the license fell through and now he turned it into a farm where he and his family can camp out and eat fresh organic vegetables and tropical fruits he grows and barbecue fresh farmed trout from their pond.

We entered the gate that marked the mountain he owned…that’s right, a mountain…and it was so nice.  The weather was semi-tropical, a slight mist in the air, with the sunset beaming the day’s last rays through the myriad of trees, scattering light onto the stone path.  We drove a few hundred meters and reached his man-made cottage and barn.  There was some ducks and geese chilling by the lake and a bunch of vegetables and fruits growing in an orchard.

One of the fruits, when literally translated from Chinese (neither of us knew the English name) is called the “Fire Dragon Fruit” and was named because of its fire-reddish color that mixed in shades of orange and yellow (kinda like a mango) and it’s skin made it seem like it had scales (kinda like an artichoke).  It grew on a huge cactus that vined around and its flower was a huge tropical-looking red blossom (kinda like that plant that kills you in the movie, Jumanji).

His cottage had electricity and running water somehow (I’m guessing magic), and he put on a hot pot of water to boil some organic fresh tea he picked straight up from the garden.  We took a little hike and he pointed out the pond of fish, a waterfall and a creek, and various small reptiles and lizards.

We settle down on his porch and he tells me to get ready for some show that his magical mountain…that’s right, a magical mountain…was about to start.  He turns off all the lights and we wait.  A steady stream of water, frogs ribits, and other loud insects keeps the silence away while we wait.  Then a flicker of light flashes in the trees…too quick and sudden to be the sun, which has already completely set.  Then slowly, a chorus of small flashing lights, like lighters at a P-Diddy concert remembering B.I.G. while he raps “I’ll be missing you”, lights up the mountain.  Turns out, it was mating season for fireflies and his private mountain….that’s right, fireflies….was one of the few places left that had the right amount of water, humidity, firefly food for us to view them in the density that we saw.

Thousands of lights twinkle on and off lighting the forest.  We were able to catch them in our hands and make them flash lights to the music of Kanye West’s “Stronger” bumping from my iphone.  Well….not really, but we were able to catch them and that was kinda cool.

Anyways, that was one of my better days.  I hope the excruciatingly painful details I provided was a good alternative to my usual banter of falling off fences, psychobabble about father and son, and dudes that looks like ladies.  I’ll write some direct replies to your emails now too since I have all day on the internet today.

Until next time, kids.

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Today I saw a headline in Boston.com that listed 8 reasons why those under 30 belong to the dumbest generation. I read on, and apparently it’s a gallery based on a new book by Emory English professor Mark Bauerlein titled The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. Here is a blow by blow of his points with my comments.

1. They make excellent “Jaywalking” targets - Here Bauerlein makes an argument that young people do not know anything beyond friends, work, and Facebook. Well, I know many people older than 30 that do not know anything beyond money, cars, and sports. Basically, I don’t think it’s unique to our generation to focus on things that are narrowly important to ourselves. Jaywalking is a TV show segment that picks out the most hilariously dumb people on the streets, and I have seen Jay find dumb people of all sizes and ages.

2. They don’t read books — and don’t want to, either - I don’t think this generalization could be blanketed onto an entire generation. Some people love to read and some don’t. I am one of those people who used to read almost a book a week, but these days I just don’t have the time to dig through the thousands of books that are written everyday. I do read a lot of news, and I don’t believe that young people don’t want to read books. If we didn’t read books then how do giant bookstores like Amazon sell so many books that are interesting and targeted to our generation?

3. They can’t spell - In this point Bauerlein states that young people’s vocabulary and spelling have been defiled by IMs and text messages. Well, I do a considerable amount of instant messaging every day, and I do use shortcuts sometimes because they are easier to type. Bauerlein seems to miss the point that texting and IMing are forms of communication equivalent to speaking. When you talk to your friends it is completely acceptable to use slang and colloquialisms that are not applicable to formal writing. I think most people I know are aware of this fact and are completely capable of spelling correctly in formal papers and reports even though they IM things like “LOL” and “luv u”.

4. They get ridiculed for original thought, good writing - This is one of the dumbest points I have read. Basically the author states that when a young person actually formally composes something original on MySpace they are ridiculed for their spark of intelligence. Well, guess what, MySpace is not a place for literary greatness, and buddies are ALWAYS making fun of each other on sites like that. My husband writes an extremely intelligent blog about games, and I have never seen him ridiculed on his blog. There is a place for everything, and Bauerlein shouldn’t be scouring MySpace for intelligent discourse.

5. Grand Theft Auto IV, etc.- Ah, here is another required bashing of games and other digital entertainment for the dumbing down of my generation. My husband could probably write a ten page rant about this since he is a video game developer and he gets a bit riled up whenever the media blames video games for the downfall of modern society. Whenever I hear people bashing video games, I wonder if they have ever played a great video game. Yes, there are a lot of dumb games, but there are a lot of dumb books and movies, too. Any piece of entertainment reflects the skill and art of its creators, and I’m sure not all of the trashy pieces of entertainment we see are created by 20 somethings. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the author of this book doesn’t have 1/100th the ingenuity and creativity that goes behind creating a great game.

6. They don’t store the information - Here the author’s point is that young people have access to a lot of information at their fingertips so they don’t make an effort to retain the knowledge they obtain. Instead, they look it up and move on. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. For example, I am a software engineer by trade, and I don’t make an effort to memorize every defined function in a computer language because things are changing all the time. So when I need to write something I am unfamiliar with I search for functions I need and read documentation. I know pretty much all of my colleagues young and old work the same way. Some of the older people may have stored more in their heads just because they have programmed in a language for a longer period of time, but that doesn’t make them smarter. We don’t store information because there is just so much information we need to know these days. Life isn’t as simple as knowing your multiplication table and this behavior of research instead of memorization is not stupidity. I would argue that it’s actually better than memorization because we constantly obtain updated information.

7. Because their teachers don’t tell them so - Well, this point actually says to me that the teachers are dumb. I have had teachers I needed to correct. The last time this happened was in college in Physics class. There were three problems on a midterm and two of them had wrong answers on the answer key. I had to email the professor and tell him he was wrong. I just want to say that just because there are teachers that do not do their jobs well it doesn’t mean that my generation isn’t learning and thinking.

8. Because they’re young - I made a comment on Can I Get Rich on a Salary saying that it is probably unfair to judge the money habits of generation Y right now because when we are in our 20s we are in a grand stage of transition. Life is confusing and abruptly changing for any generation of people at this age range. Anyway, this is an extremely retarded reason to call an entire generation stupid. It is almost as absurd as calling my friends’ children’s generation dumb just because they are all babies that can’t do anything but poop and eat. I really wonder if Bauerlein admitted how stupid he was when he was young in his book to support this point.

Anyway, I personally know more brilliant 20 somethings than smart older people just because most of my friends are about the same age as me. I researched this Mark Bauerlein a bit and it seems that his students think he is a very condescending guy. I am not surprised, and I am pretty sure he wrote this book to stir up controversy, and also make a bit of money so he is a little less angry about dumb twenty-somethings like me being paid more than a highly educated English professor like him.

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Well, I’m sitting here waiting for the hubby to get out of the shower to take me to work since my car is still in the shop. The good news is that nothing in the undercarriage was damaged so I just need the tires changed and get an alignment. I should get it back by the end of today or tomorrow. I drew a picture of what it looked like when the tires were killed by the debris and my hubby didn’t appreciate it. He said he has seen flat tires before. So I thought I’d share my art here on the blog:

Anyway, have a great Friday everyone.

Update:  The Bagmobile is back! The carshop put the good tire in front onto the back and got 2 new tires installed and balanced them.  It only cost around $180 for the tires and installation!  The car also got a lot of other needed work done.  Apparently the battery failed the load test because it is 8 years old.  So that got replaced.  Assorted oils and fluids also got replaced.  The windshield wipers are now new because the 8 year old ones were falling apart.  The reason the car had so many original parts is because I really don’t drive it much.  It has 47300 miles now, and it’s 8.5 years old.  The carshop recommended that I get my timing belt replaced because the manual states it should be replaced every 7 years or every 105000 miles.  They quoted me $725 for the service.  I have a 2000 Honda Accord EX so I looked around online as to how much that service should cost.  Apparently people on Honda forums quote anywhere from $600 to $900.  I just asked another shop for a quote on that job and I will get it done soon.  I am so glad the Bagmobile is back!! It’s no longer sad!  I really wish that I didn’t have to drive, but San Mateo is such an anti-public transit county that they blocked BART from coming through.  Sigh…

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