So, once again it’s Monday. I am taking a couple days off before I start my new job. Today my article about was an editor’s pick on I’m very honored that David picked my article. Another editor’s pick is Grad Money Matter’s . I read this article before it was featured in the carnival and wrote a pretty long comment on it because I have had some personal experience with that. Grad Money’s article is what is prompting me to write this article about how Asian parents influence their children’s success in life.

Anyway, when I was in college one of my friends was talking about Asian parents and we came to the following conclusion. Basically the following are the only acceptable careers to our parents: doctor, lawyer, engineer, and financial professional/investment banker. Then my friend mimicked his mom’s accent and said that these were the only acceptable colleges, “STANFURD, HAHVARD, YALE, and MIT”. The whole room busted out laughing and then one guy said, “Well, I guess we’re all failures since we’re at Berkeley”. We may have hyper-stereotyped our parents, but it’s funny because most of what we concluded is true.

Pretty much all of the Asian kids with first generation Asian parents I have met have felt pressure from their parents in choosing a college major that may lead to a high paying career. I think this family enforced career selection may be one of the many reasons why Asian households have the . I think it makes sense that parents want their children to be successful, but a lot of Asian parents’ perception of success is very narrow and consists of a high GPA and then a high paying job. So many children are pushed to be doctors and engineers whether or not they like it. I have known several girls who were pushed into engineering and medicine only to despise their majors and found their coursework to be too difficult. Not everyone is meant to be an engineer or doctor, and some Asian parents do not seem understand that. I have also seen Asian parents that pushed their kids to succeed to the point of hurting them. For example, a girl I knew in high school was scolded by her parents on her graduation day for not being the Valedictorian. That is just very unnecessary and cruel.

Cultural clashes occur between first generation Asian parents and American educated children because in America you are encouraged to think outside of the box, create, and be yourself, but in most of Asia you are expected to memorize, repeat, and obey. When Asian children step outside of the box of what their parents consider to be successful, conflicts arise and for the most part I think the parents are just worrying too much. For example, my second cousin was groomed by his dad to be a doctor and he went to an ivy, but he chose to major in photography instead. It didn’t please his dad at first, but now he is successful as a technical game artist. Generally people perform better in what they love to do, and people find success in all kinds of random things in America. I think it is much better to do what you’re passionate about than to go to a job you hate everyday. In fact, some of the pushy Asian parents really stunted their children’s success because when their children end up in a despised career they are usually lugubrious and do not care to excel in any manner. I have seen many examples of these engineers who absolutely hate what they do and want to get out everyday.

Despite all the slightly negative stereotypes about first generation Asian parents in this article I do believe that like all parents they want the best for their children. The parents are right in wishing a good career on their children, but ultimately for their children to achieve success they need to learn to make decisions for themselves. It’s problematic that a lot of these parents do not take the time to understand their children’s strengths and preferences and just try to push their children into a mold of what is considered successful in the Asian community. It’s true that when we are young we are not absolutely sure what we want, and parental advice is always helpful but I think it is unnecessary for Asian parents to throw a ballistic fit when their children consider a career in fine arts. There are many ways to succeed, and parents are human beings who can make mistakes too.

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Well, it’s been since my last update on the homes selling for less than their last sales price in San Mateo County. So today is the time for another update.

I found another 50 properties that have listing prices lower than their last selling prices. There were a little more than 400 properties in San Mateo County that were listed on Redfin in the last 14 days, so that means 50 properties is once again about 10% of new properties coming up for sale. Here are some highlights of these listings.

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Most of the homes in trouble were in Daly City and East Palo Alto, but some were also found in Menlo Park and Redwood City. In fact, the most expensive home on the list is , and the least expensive is, and both of these are in Menlo Park.

I am glad to see that it seems like the homes getting discounted are of larger sizes than previous reports. Also, I did a scan of the homes in my and it seems like none of them have sold. A couple listings were withdrawn but for the most part all of the listings are still active on Redfin. A couples of the listings also went through more price reductions in the last two weeks. The most drastic of these reductions was on . On 10/21/07 the list price was 649,000, but now it lists as 499,000. I haven’t seen any properties that really caught my eye yet, but some of these properties could be a good deal for people who are good at fixing up homes. So once again, the raw data is available on the . Enjoy, and keep in mind that I don’t have every single distressed San Mateo property listed here. I only grab what I see from Redfin, and that is by no means an exhaustive source. I am sure if you dug deeper you can find cheaper homes in San Mateo.

Well, I haven’t done a carnival roundup for a while. Today was my last day at my job and this entire week has been quite crazy.

at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already. My post in this carnival is about .

at Millionaire Mommy Next Door. My article in this carnival showcases theI have met.

at My Adventures into the Street. My post in this carnival is .

included my .

hosted ! Check out the carnival for some awesome stories from all more than twenty personal finance bloggers.

Finally, the story about my got a 4th wind this week since it was linked on one of the MSN Money Central blogs and then linked by JD over at . My ex-bf wants to say that the part I exaggerated about is the 25 cent spaghetti, and I want to say I didn’t really break up with him because he is cheap.

I am so pissed off right now because my mother harassed me for 12 hours straight about my last post even after I took it off last night. Her harassment consisted of spamming this blog with comments and calling both my husband’s and my phones from 11pm to 7am. After my dad and husband both tried to convince her that I already took down the post she continued to harass me and I had to block her IP. Then my dad found out that she didn’t even read that I took down the post and just continued to harass me anyway. Because of this the both of us didn’t get a good night sleep. All I wrote about was that my parents bought two homes and lost money on the second home because it was bought at the peak of the housing bubble. This is probably a situation faced by many couples all across the world. I posted no names, no addresses, and no extremely private information. Past and present housing prices are all public information anyway so I don’t see what the big deal is on posting that without pinpointing the actual addresses.

Her argument was that I gave too much information about their personal finances without permission, but what I don’t understand is that they talk about their personal finances in detail all the time to everyone they know. They brag about the stocks they own, the houses they own, and their jobs constantly so I always had an impression that they are pretty open about this topic. They also tell their friends and friends of friends about my personal finance without my permission. This incident actually brought back the memory of when they bought the second home. When I went to see the place my mother flat out told the loan agent how much money I made at my job without prompting. Then the loan agent said to me, “you should buy a house.” This was when I was making $60,000 a year by myself, and THAT really pissed me off too. I felt like they were just mocking me for no reason and looking back it is like they are throwing me to the wolves of the real estate industry.

Dear readers, isn’t what they do to me much worse than anonymously telling random people about a nameless couple? The difference between what I wrote and what they do all the time is that what I wrote is anonymous and what they do actually affects me in real life because all those Chinese parents that they talk to know who I am and they tell their kids to look up to me because of how much money I make. I’ve actually been introduced by a Chinese dad to his daughter by my networth and that was rather disturbing. I really don’t want to be defined by my salary and networth and yet they continue to do exactly that without my permission. This is really a flaw of the Asian culture because so much of who you are is based on money, but I could really write an entire series of rants about Asians and money. It’s really bizarre and annoying to have such hypocritical parents, and on top of that for my mother to act like such a vainglorious and spoiled brat really amazed me.

The original text of this post is preserved elsewhere. I didn’t expect this but my parents went PSYCHO over the post and spammed this blog with crazy comments and flooded my cellphone with messages. They went as far as phoning my husband at work about it. I didn’t write anything bad about them, but I think the post really hit a nerve because I wrote about the reality of the real estate bubble and how they were affected by it. I really don’t understand why they are always bragging about what they have and at the same time they are afraid to face the truth. What annoys me the most is that they’re still preaching that real estate is a great investment to me using the numbers of years past and that isn’t realistic at all. I wrote the post because I thought it was a pretty interesting story that I lived through personally and I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I also wanted to put the story out there to show that once upon a time houses in the Bay Area were affordable and it made sense to buy. My parents’ objection isn’t that I wrote about the truth, but that I wrote their story. Maybe it’s the Chinese custom of “saving face” that I violated, but I believe that I shared the information quite anonymously. I hope that they realize noone really knows who they are except for themselves. I guess I am still quite in shock that they reacted this way because a lot of bloggers write about the good and bad in their lives. Also, I didn’t react as crazily as they did when my dad plagiarized multiple articles from this blog and posted them on his blog without crediting me as the author. I really think the entire point of blogging is that we learn from personal stories like the one I wrote. For those of you who read the original story, would you say that I revealed too much? Do you think that the story was mean-spirited in any way? Comments are definitely appreciated on this matter.