Dreams

Weird dream, I only remember one thing before waking up this morning. I could feel my eyes tired and swollen which happens sometimes when I wake up. In my dream, it was something like looking in the mirror and seeing my face actually was my grandmother's. Not sure if I was looking in the mirror or not. But the focus seemed to be on the old area around the eyes.

So what's the symbolism? I need to put more lotion around my eyes...? ;) Although true.... Thinking about tai chi? Not really. Need to think about family? Maybe. Going to Hong Kong/China? Hm....

If anything, temporally, it should be related to the phone conversation last night before sleeping, but I don't get the relation yet.

Don't waste the pretty.

Merry Christmas.

A gift all women should give to themselves, and I can use a reminder.

And I'm remembering the conversation we girls had the other day... so absolute... if ever our future husbands were found to be cheating on us, some of us would just up and leave immediately, with the kids and all. No room for second chances.

Digital books from Amazon.com means not having to wait to read books that you want to read now, even when stores are closed, and not having to drive to the bookstore and search for it, and possibly not find it there.

The clock is ticking. Seven days until the new year. What will I take with me from 2005 and what will I leave behind?

***

It would be much easier to hop on a plane and explore living and working in China if I didn't have a condo to pay for. It really is a nice condo, even compared to the other units in the same building. And I like the fact that I currently can actually do it without parental assistance. (Except that I do get other subsidies....) I suppose losing a salary for a year isn't so bad, but the taking the side-step with the career so early, who knows what I could do when I came back from that scenario. Especially since the things I could provide more value with over there may revolve more around English language than software engineering.

The governor may be on to something with his China-California relations in the environmental arena. Let's talk about a huge market for environmentally-related business.

The thought that grows and grows. Somehow, I can't picture myself staying in the place I've stayed my entire life, for the entirety of the next 10, 20, 30 years.

***

Again, revisiting the question, what will I take with me and what will be left behind from 2005?

Megalopolitan

I just found out that it costs 30k per year to attend the private school I went to. Back then it was more like 10k. That is more than 10% increase per year.

At this rate, the only people who will be able to afford to send multiple kids to private schools in the Bay Area are *dual* doctor/corporate lawyer/executive/Google stock options couples. Even in the current price, it would not really be possible for a single engineer income family to send two kids to private school.

So... for the school districts, that would mean I should start planning to buy a house in Palo Alto asap, or as big a house as possible so it could be exchanged for a house in Palo Alto in the future. Or Cupertino. When the market goes down, that's an opportunity to buy a bigger house.

Better be able to do it myself, especially since if my female friends and I are unmarried at the age of 35, we're going to become single parents and form an all-female commune.

But isn't that kind of weird and scary to be able to see the future... uh... since I'm imagining planning it right now, and it's right here.

So, instead, I should move to a different country. I picture it being a run-of-the-mill American existence if I ever lived in another area of the United States. So might as well go where it's interesting.

Really

How does one compare the cost of renting and the cost of buying a house? There are many ways...

I'll argue that for owning, a significant "premium" over the cost of renting an equivalent place is reasonable and sustainable, when comparing monthly cashflow. Without even assuming any real appreciation. Only assuming that the price of real estate just keeps pace with inflation over the long term.

Assume that the cost of owning includes mortgage, property tax, and homeowner's association fees or maintenance.

From most conservative to least:

1. Compare monthly rent and monthly total payments for owning.
2. The above, plus take into account the income tax deduction on interest and property tax.
3. All of the above, plus discount principal portion of mortgage payments.
4. All of the above, plus include expected gain from the inflation of the home price.

An approximation for the cost of owning as a rate on home price is then:

c = (m+p)*(1-t) + h - i

m = mortgage interest rate
p = property tax rate
t = income tax rate to use for tax deduction
h = maintenance as a rate (including HOA, etc.)
i = inflation rate

Current estimates (actually being conservative):
m = 6.25% for fixed-rate
p = 1.25%
t = 0.3
h = 1%
i = 3%

c = 3.25%

I estimate that renters in the Bay Area are being charged somewhere just under 4% of current property prices. As long as the difference between total payment rates and inflation is less than the rental rate, it pays off to own. Barring huge disasters, of course. And weathering price volatility. It actually costs less to own... the difference being the return for the risk assumed by owners.

People in the Bay Area are so sophisticated that the market is so efficient....

I haven't yet figured out why, in regions where rental properties are immediately cashflow positive, that not more people get into the business of landlording. Maybe it's the weather.

Yeah, only about 0.1% or 0.01% of the population would agree with me on this analysis.

Draeger's Bakery

This weekend's tasting...

Pear Tart - Too sweet and too much butter. Even the pears are too sugary sweet.

Mango Mousse Cake - good.

Chocolate Ganache? - good... rich.. but is it all butter? or cream? The individual cake portion is good enough for four.


Prior tasting...

Lemon Cake - pretty good.

Chocolate Hazelnut Torte - too solid and too rich.

Fear and Courage

From a recent discussion came the thought that fear and courage are actually the same thing, or that one can have fear and courage about the same thing at the same time.

If one were in a serious relationship with someone who has visa issues, one might marry the person out of fear of losing the relationship and being alone if he had to return to his home country. This is what I thought of, fear. But someone mentioned courage, to do this. Courage to take a chance.

Then, on the other hand, someone like me, might not marry a person in any case except the genuine case. This takes courage and strength to risk giving up a good relationship so as not to sacrifice the self by doing a fake or half marriage. But along the lines of the new perspective above, this could be interpreted as fear, of taking a chance.

In the end, it doesn't change my mind. I still don't think I would ever do such a thing. The proof is in lives unfolding. Those who did the former, are still in half marriages, not whole.

If the scenario presented itself (and just so happens the U.S. citizen is female and the visa-holder is male in all cases known to me), why should the woman be the one to take the chance, giving herself to a marriage when the man has not asked her to marry him the real way? If the relationship were judged to have that much of a chance for real marriage in the near future, why shouldn't the guy take the chance and commit himself at that time to ask her to really marry him?

It depends who is doing more of the giving. It seems to me, that if the guy has shown he's not willing to take the chance, there's not enough in it for the gal to take the chance. At that critical moment, the guy has actually decided that he is unable to ask her to marry him. So it seems to me.

Opposite

It's always the opposite of what people think. I think.

I just read an article about Bay Area people moving to Reno. People might think that the out-migration of Bay Area folks to less expensive places means Bay Area real estate will go down. It might in the short term as the boom cycle finishes this round. But the Bay Area, and the Peninsula especially, serves as the hub to an ever-growing region, that is now including Reno, which is not even in California.

The term "Web 2.0" has gotten such overuse. I don't recall any economic boom or technological revolution that was coined before it actually happened. A more potent "Web 2.0" might actually be the electric power grid. It's been in Arpanet stage, and people are just starting to plug in solar-powered roofs to the network. The days when people plug in their cars to their solar-powered homes are just around the corner.

Although people are starting to take notice. Venture capital is investing in solar cell companies. I also read an article about how insurance and risk management industries are starting to take into account climate change risk, and this is having an effect on businesses.

I also keep reading about hi-tech companies planning to invest billions in India. This is great intention, but a country of one billion people is still finite. We already know the turnover rate for software engineers is like 40% and salary increases are somewhere up there too. I read that the enrollment in computer science in schools has doubled. When that happens, you know you have people who shouldn't be in the field in the field. So if companies are planning to double or more than double their headcount in India in the near future, what are they expecting to do with like 100% turnover? Sounds like year 2000 in the Silicon Valley....

The only grocery store in which I have ever thought to pick up a magazine while waiting at the check-out counter is Whole Foods Market. Grocery stores still stock the magazine rack by the check-out counter as if this were the 1950s when perhaps only housewives (and brainless ones at that) bought groceries. Come on. This is the Silicon Valley where people are all brains. And if you look at who is shopping and coming through the check-out counter, half of them are men. Grocery stores would sell more magazines at the check-out if they stocked them with magazines about computers, business, literature, and other alternatives.

Solar-Network

Several years back, I was thinking that when the Silicon Valley recovered and went into its next expansion phase, it would be the ones who could span the distance between here and Asia who would be among the most successful. And also that the next boom cycle would likely be fueled by environmental developments. Though I wondered if I was thinking one decade too far ahead.

Since the global workforce is so mobile, the cost of living, especially housing, seems to be the same in major cities around the globe, even if the average income in that country is a small fraction of ours. But I also hear that quite a lot of people make an enormous amount of money in various countries in Asia. Funny, then it'll be people from overseas who can afford to live here, while people who live here can't.

People are in fact voting with their dollars, and are willing to pay significant amounts of money for environmental and health concerns. Before 2002, one hardly ever saw a hybrid car... around 2002-2003, they started to blip on the radar and everytime I saw one on the road, it was like Wow! Now they really are just about as commonplace as the next car, at least around here.

Hybrid cars and organic food are just crossing into mainstream. Solar panels will follow. Right now it's only the early-adopters, but if it's anything like the aforementioned, we'll see some very interesting developments in the next few years. A significant fraction of the Palo Alto population already volunteers to pay a premium for "renewable" energy.

If there are 3-4 times as many people in China as there are in the United States, and similarly in India, once everyone starts to own a car and other things... imagine their rate of pollution and energy consumption increasing until it reaches 10 times the level of the United States' contribution to world pollution. At this rate, we'll see the human race self-extinct ourselves in our own lifetime. I'm only half-kidding.