I went through local to dodge the congested sections on I-405 to the office again on Thursday morning. However, it might not jam very severely on it anyway.
Coming back home to have dinner, I went to gym to workout after catching up diaries while chatting with my classmates at CUMT. When I came back home from gym, it was almost midnight again.
Receiving Businessweek Special Issue, I was interested in reading its first section - Global Economics, yes, Global Economics instead of Global Economies. It sounds editors at Businessweek care about the theories combined with practices rather than facts only.
The section covers Americas, Europe and Asia by bringing in China, India, UK, Korea, Greece, Russia, Venezuela, Sweden and US into the spotlights. Africa may still not be very relevant and Oceania may still be relatively isolated.
My homeland by birth, China's problem is domestic demand;
India's challenge is tax reform;
UK's confusion is the membership of EU;
Korea's issue is into aged generation as Japan;
Greece's deadlines are set for fiscal discipline;
Russia's trouble is bank loans;
Venezuela's hot seat is burnt by GDP's significant drop;
My favorite wonderland, Sweden's dilemma is refugees' crisis;
My true homeland today, US's dream is retirement community, which is also my dream.
It is Veteran Day today, so many celebrations including parades are held across the country. I had a pleasant chat with my neighbor Dennis who is a veteran when I arrived at home after work.
It is also a funny holiday Chinese created years ago - Singles' Day. Alibaba has been capitalizing on it for quite a few years. However, it hasn't successfully influenced Americans to celebrate it. Though I enjoyed my single father's life very much and even hesitate to date a girlfriend because I can't imagine that I will have to share my time with her to do something I don't enjoy, I don't want to promote this holiday. I expect my son to date a beautiful, smart and kind girl to get married, then I can enjoy looking after my grandchildren from time to time. He should have a happy normal life with his family in his whole life. People like me have gone through decades' turmoil, it may be why we are living an odd life. My number as a soccer player was No. 11, it's hilarious and may be my destiny.
When I woke up at 3:00 in the morning, I read through my classmates' chats on WeChat and noticed an interesting problem one of them posted. He mentioned it was a question in the quiz for him to qualify for trading with margin, something like that.
"How many bottles of beers can you drink if the following conditions are set up?
RMB 2:00 per bottle and you have RMB 10:00
2 emptied bottles to exchange a bottle of beer
4 lids of the bottle to exchange a bottle of beer"
When I read through to the end of the chats, they had posted the answer: 20 bottles. The scenario I interpreted was:
I went to a restaurant to sit down to order 20 bottles of beer and drank them all, at the end, there were 20 emptied bottles and 20 lids left on the table, adding RMB 10:00 I had, 20 bottles in total can be figured out:
20/2+20/4+10/2=10+5+5=20
This is in China, so there is no sales tax and tip.
However, my thought process at the beginning was to pay in front:
After 12 rounds, I would drink 15 bottles and left 1 emptied bottle and 3 lids on the table.
You can find this type of problems in textbooks frequently, but eventually I figured out that they were teasing the hostess of our chat group who rarely posted chats herself. The pronunciation of her name in Chinese is Bottle of Alcohol. Later on, this gal who was our one of the only six female classmates back in 30 years ago finally greeted us. These guys must revise the original quiz problem for their purpose.
It's almost midnight on Wednesday, I just came back from gym and am wrapping up my diary for Tuesday.
So many people tried to get home earlier to watch GOP Presidential Candidate Debate on FOX, but I arrived at home half an hour late. I still don't know what they had been arguing in the first 30 minutes but happened to catch my most interesting topic - taxes. These guys are competing for the top leader of the most powerful government in the world and taxes may be the most key component of fiscal policy.
Today, I read several articles online, which discredited every candidate's tax plan, so I don't need to elaborate too much. Basically, their plans can't have US government running. As we all know, Republicans love complete free market, tax reductions and small government. This actually would make the entire national economic system imbalance. Just like I tweeted last night, free market meant to have more wealth generated, tax revenue will be much higher and a powerful government needs to be run to manage the flows. The nature of free market is competition and it could become pretty brutal, weak government wouldn't be able to direct the entire economy sufficiently. If taxes can't be used to minimize the inequalities, the society may become unstable.
I didn't watch the debate through the end because of falling into sleep pretty badly. When I woke up, it's already 3:00 o'clock in the morning. I had a bad dream, which was probably caused by a scared memory on last Saturday: After having lunch at New Star, I drove onto 4th Ave on which three lanes were blocked due to construction. When I tried to get over the intersection, the traffic light suddenly became yellow and I should have sped up but stepped on the brake. The road was very wet due to the rain, I realized I wasn't able to stop the car and released the brake to get through anyway. After doing it, I was a bit scared if the people started passing after seeing me trying to stop the car, I might have hit them. The good thing was everyone followed the traffic rule, so didn't start walking then.
It's 5:23PM on Wednesday already, I am catching up my diary for Monday now.
Coming back home pretty late on Monday night, I ate the dinner and slept for several hours, then went to gym to workout until almost midnight.
While catching up my diaries for the weekend, I chatted with my classmates at CUMT until 2:00 in the morning on Tuesday.
As I had shared before, International Trade changes the scenario of relationship of domestic demand and supply. It is based on one country's comparative advantage, which is driven by three sources:
Differences in Climate
Differences in Factor Endowments
Differences in Technology
Our country has been following free markets concepts very well compared to the rest of the world. There are two major protections from International Trade:
Tariff
Import Quota
Two major challenges to globalization are:
Inequality
Outsourcing
Economic Plan of my 2016 Presidential Campaign for International Trade is while pushing other nations to open their markets for competitions, we should tight our import control to protect our citizens.
Stopping by McDonald's to have breakfast, I shared a photo with my classmates to tell the price, then someone posted another photo to prove the price in China not being cheap as people think.
Working out for an hour and a half, I drove back home to have lunch. My dad had asked me to take a photo for him by the side of a maple tree in our front yard last week, I did it on my cell but accidentally deleted it. As soon as I glanced at that tree when I drove onto driveway, I recalled. Getting into the house, I asked my dad to come out, then I took another one for him. He thought the tree was beautiful, I totally agreed.
After lunch, I watched one of MLS Cup Playoff match for a while, then decided to clean the bathroom on second floor I use. It took me more than an hour to clean the tub, toilet, sink and mirror, finally I swept the floor.
After taking shower, I ran down to the first floor to watch Sounders challenging FC Dallas away from home in second leg of Western Conference semi-final on big screen. It was about to kick off in seconds.
I had waited for this match a week and did expect Sounders to prevail, then I could go to CLink to watch conference final. Sounders didn't make many opportunities. I only caught one scoring opportunity when Valdez's shot was deflected by Dallas' defender to lead the ball almost getting through keeper's fingertips.
Ivanschitz passed a straight ground ball to Mears who ran into small box very timely, unfortunately he didn't pass it to the right position in front of the goal post. That one probably was the best chance for Sounders to score in first half but I didn't film it.
Frei saved several shots and this one I filmed was the most exciting one, so I called him hero for this save.
In the last 15 minutes, three goals were made to extend the match to extra time, which might be better for commercial reasons than the match itself. However, the goals made the fans so excited both in the stadium and in front of TVs. Sounders were exhausted in extra time, though Pappa was subbed in to be very active. It's lucky for them not to have Dallas score a goal. In Penalty Shootout, I didn't see much confidence in several sounders, they lost the match and were out of the season.
Though they seemed not able to win this match anyway, I still felt very frustrated. Though three of my classmates kept uploading clips and photos they snapped in their gathering dinner in Guangzhou since one of them went there on a business trip, I didn't respond in group chat but went back to bed to lie down without taking off the clothes. I just tried to transmitte one of their photos to my blog but failed, so had to use the camera to make a copy from my cell to post here. It must not be as clear as the original.
Wow, it's already 2:10 in the morning on Tuesday, I must go to bed to sleep for another 4 hours.
Dropping my parents at Ranch 99 Chinese Market, I went to Costco to buy other stuff. Checking out, I heard the guy who helped load the cart saying that price was good for hamburgers. I was wondering if he referred to ground beef because I didn't buy petties.
Picking up my son at his dorm, we followed his request to go to New Star Restaurant again. Today, we didn't order fresh seafood but Peking Duck, which was shared by us so quickly. It's very delicious. After the lunch, we just dropped him back and went back home.
Taking a nap, I didn't go to gym as I had planned but caught up my diaries for several days in last week. It's raining pretty hard today, especially at Huskies Stadium as far as I could tell on TV.
Huskies did a pretty good job at the beginning and held Utes punting.
UW's freshman QB Browning threw to their receiver who dodged Utah's defenders to get into Red Zone. Huskies seemed embracing their first touchdown of the game.
Though they hadn't made a TD in the earlier drive, Huskies did make one after this run. This one was ruled TD in the first place but called off after review. However, they did it eventually.
Utah had been leading most of the game but Huskies did make themselves catch up to be very close.
Anyway, Utah is a 13th ranked team, it's not a surprise they won at the end. Let's see if Huskies can win one of the two away games in the following weeks, then they may win Apple Cup at home to get a chance to a bowl game.
As I had shared that my son selected Drama 251 - Acting in this quarter. On Friday night, he watched The Cradle will Rock as a part of learning.
Most of the classmates in his Integral Calculus class are probably very competitive because those kids may pursue engineering degrees, but I encouraged my son to keep working on it without too much pressure. As long as he can pass it and is eligible to enroll the class for next one, it will be a victory. I told him when he gets into my age, he will realize the importance of having completed the thorough trainings of calculus in college. Differentiation teaches him to approach an object efficiently; Integration enables him to consolidate and summarize a subject effectively; Multivariate Calculus develops him into a dynamic universe.
However, in addition to Multivariate Calculus and Intermediate Macroeconomics, I will encourage him to select Drama 252 in Winter Quarter, which will bring him a lot of fun.
It's Friday morning, though was still pretty congested from I-405 Entrance at Bothell-Everett Highway to 85th Street in Kirkland, after it, it became pretty smooth. So I didn't get onto Toll Lane to save 4 bucks.
My son had planned to come back home on Friday night because he wanted to eat a big Chinese lunch on Saturday with us after we would buy groceries but he sent me a text around midday that he would have to watch a show at UW for his drama class that night. However, I called him after work that I would pick him up after shopping the groceries on Saturday to have him having the lunch with us together. Grandpa wanted to see him after three weeks as well.
Since gym would close at 10:00pm on Friday night, I went there at 8:30pm after taking a nap. There were only 5 gym staff there when I left close to 10:00 pm, so I was the last one at that night.
Chinese President visited Vietnam and met with Taiwan Leader in Singapore. It drew a lot of eyes all over the world. My classmates at CUMT also mentioned it on WeChat too. However, I don't care. I just enjoy my daily life to go to work every morning to get a paycheck bi-weekly and watch Sounders' matches and Seahawks' as well as Huskies' games every weekend.
After coming back home, I kept chatting with my classmates about US and Chinese Stock markets. They shared some photos and clips about the first snow in Beijing. I just found a clip on Youtube, which taped the scenes in Zhongguancun on Thursday, where my parents owned an apartment before they emigrated to US and I lived there for several years in early 90s in the same apartment building as well. I don't know if it had the first snow in Sweden or not.
