On Saturday morning, I started the weekend chatting with one of my dorm mates at CUMT who is a civil engineer in Guangzhou. He said he just watched Transformer of which the contents I totally forgot. These super action movies are pretty similar, so it's hard for me to recall all the scenes after watching them. I also talked about workout with another dorm mate whose family currently resides in Toronto but he himself recently went back to Beijing to run business for his Canadian employer, probably, I didn't ask him to elaborate. His daughter is going to graduate a pre-med degree from McGill and applying US medical school. It sounds her daughter's higher educations have cost him a great deal of money. I never spent time to learn about Canadian colleges, so don't quite know about it but do know it ranks pretty high globally. I left a message in our group chat board on Wechat that his daughter will make a lot of money after medical school before I left home for gym.
Stopping by McDonald's to have breakfast, I ran half an hour on treadmill, lift weight 150 times and was on bike 20 minutes. Driving to Safeway to refill my medication this morning, I witnessed a mad man arguing harshly in front of me while I was picking up. I didn't quite understand the situation but could tell that his insurance company wouldn't pay for his medications as he was explained at the counter.
After lunch, I went back to my bedroom to catch up some college football games. College gameday ran into 6th week. I am still planning to go watching some bowl games in person during Christmas break in December. It depends on how much money it will cost.
Keep chatting with my classmates at CUMT back in 1980s on Wechat, I shared my political and economic views with them: China should keep pursuing a modern socialism but not the one so called "Chinese Socialism" by their government. I introduced my understanding of Scandinavian Social systems and Swedish Economic Models but warned that those smaller countries' practices might not be applied to other countries. I told them that US is the only country in advanced economy, which doesn't have a comprehensive welfare system but may be much more dynamic than others. A successful Socialism requires people to contribute because the welfare system is built on productivities and higher taxes. Chinese government has required their people to sacrifice in the past almost 70 years, their officials should be the role models themselves. One classmate might run his own businesses in Guangdong whom told me that he learned Chinese taxes were rated the 2nd highest in the world by some international researching institutions. I speculated that the structure of Chinese tax system might be set up ineffectively and allocations of tax revenue might be misplaced. I believe Chinese officials don't understand modern economic models. For example, how to effectively adjust between different components of GDP. Though formula and definition of GDP are simple, they don't know how to arrange them in a complex system.
Due to a trigger in the last several days, I had checked about one of the houses I used to own 10 years ago. Surprisingly its appreciation after 12 years is only 21% while that of my current house after 6 years ownership is already 23.6%. More luxury houses appreciate less in this area. A house in the same neighborhood we had bought in 2000 before selling it in 2003 in order to buy that larger one might have appreciated 53.8% after 15 years. However, I found all the information I wanted to know on Snohomish County Assessor's website: I have officially given up that ownership 5 years ago and I don't have any obligation on it either. I pulled the following price change line for my current house from Zillow as following:
US Men's National Soccer Team played Mexico in CONCACAF Final at Rose Bowl. Mexicans played better but the match itself was decided within the last several minutes in overtime that Mexico would go to Russia for Confederation Cup in 2017. Former Sounder Yedlin passed a ground ball to have another new sub score to tie before they finally lost. It's an exciting match and there were many enthusiastic fans both at the stadium and in front of TVs at home. I am the latter, of course.
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