It Is Not Hard to be Thorough

One useful trick in dissecting a complex problem and performing thorough analysis of it is what statisticians called Factorial Experiment.  Intuitively, in analyzing an phenomenon, once one identify some underlying key factors and their possible levels/values, one can generate exhaustively all possible combinations of these factors and values.   Often, with such a brute force exercise, one finds some surprises of missing cases which have not been noticed previously.

To appreciate what the techniques is, let us look at the smallest examples when there are two factors with each taking possibly two distinct levels/values.  Thus, in total, they constitute 2 by 2, or 4 cases.

Professor Daniel Kahneman has the following discussion of decision makings with what he called “the fourfold pattern” in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow.  He noted two key factors in making decisions with risks: one factor is the perceived value of the outcome which can be gains or losses.  The second factor is the likelihood of the outcome which can be high or low.  Four cases or patterns can thus be identified:

1. High probability of gains
2. Low probability of gains
3. High probability of losses
4. Low probability of losses

 Now, one can systematically analyze easily the behavior of people when they are in each of these situations.  I bet you would agree that people tend to be risk-averse (i.e., prefer certainty) when in situation 1 and 4, and be risk-seeking (i.e., prefer gambling or taking a chance) when in situation 2 and 3.    Kahneman’s examples include: being risk averse for case 1 and 4, the acceptance of unfavorable settlement when there is a 95% to win $10,000 and 5% chance to lose $10,000, respectively.   The formal is the reason why many settle a law suits even when there is a chance to win much bigger and the latter is the reason why insurance business exists and why people buy insurance even when it is overpriced.  And being risk seeking for case 2 and 3, the rejection of favorable settlements, when there is a 5% chances to win $10,000 or 95% chances to lose $10,000.  The former is the reason why gambling business exists and the latter is the reason why some people refuse to be relocated during disasters or eminent domain cases.  

I am sure you can relate or find more interesting examples and observations using such fourfold pattern or factorial design trick.  Here are two interesting ones to get you going.

Two decades back, I heard in a Broadband Networking Conference what I thought was the best characterization of the difficult notion of “virtual”.  At the early part of his keynote speech, Bob Kahn, one of "the fathers of the Internet" (along with Vint Cerf), drew on a transparency a two by two grid.  In one dimension, he noted the factor of visibility (of an object) which can be visible, or invisible. And in the other dimension, he noted the factor of existence which can be yes (is there), or no (is not there).  While we are familiar with the physical world where objects are visible and there, networking researchers have created long ago a world of virtual objects and resources which are visible but not there!  This is actually one fundamental reason why Internet-based services can be inexpensive but more volatile.   Now I think you can understand easily and intuitively what all these virtual xyz’s (world, game, reality,…) you have been hearing about are.

In closing, let me give you one more example of fourfold pattern.  In my previous life as a manager, one report of mine related the following quiz to me during our annual performance review discussion.  He asked “How would you rank order the following four types of employees?”

1.  Smart and hardworking
2. Stupid and hardworking?
3. Smart and lazy?
4. Stupid and lazy?

His insight is that stupid and lazy is preferable to stupid and hardworking since the latter produces far greater negative impact and rework to the team!  Can you guess which type of employees is he?

Talk to you soon!

About Pain

Recently, I have had an episode of severe pain caused by a kidney stone in ureter (that propels urine from the kidneys to the bladder).  The pain was so intense that I was woken up in the middle of the night and after half an hour, I had to asked to be taken to the emergency room.  According to some statistics, there are more than 1 million incidents of kidney stone reported each year in U.S.  and one in ten people will experience such an episode at least once in their life time.

Of course, every one of us has had experienced pain of varying degrees in our lives.  Pain, while unpleasant, is a necessary mechanism to protect oneself to survive in the world.  Can you imagine the consequence of not feeling the pain when you are being burned, broke your leg, or sprain your ankle?  (By the way, I am limiting myself here to the discussion of physical pain which is already complicated enough.)

Yet, until 500 hundred years ago, pain was not well-understood.  Many well-respected scholars thought it was subjective and postulated it has something to do with external and spiritual world.  Some went as far as proclaiming it as a punishment by God.

With the advances of science, we now understand pain a lot more.  Significant discoveries have been and continued being made about the mechanisms of the sensing of pain and how to help relief and manage certain pains.  The basic model now tells us that there are millions of nerve endings with sensory neurons called nociceptors that can detect pain for skin, joints/bones, and body organs. When the received stimuli that are related to pain (including nerve damage) reach certain thresholds, particular neurons will signal and register the pain in the anterior cingulate gyrus of the brain and trigger appropriate responses.

Intuitively, pain has many dimensions and characteristics.  Obvious attributes include duration (short, long and continuous, and chronic), character (sharp, dull, throbbing), etc.  There are vivid verbal descriptions of experiences of distinct level of the intensity of pain too.  Among the severe pains, apparently it is true that pain can be so intense that one looses consciousness because of it, be it due to accident or torture.  Pain can also be so excruciating and have no obvious end to it that the thought of death is preferred to prolonged pain is real for many.  Severe pain with the hope of an end to it can still impair one’s judgment and potentially make one behave irrationally.  I would consider the pain caused by the kidney stone belong to this category.  First time in my life, I had reached the point of feeling so desperate that I was ready to plead for a powerful pain killer that would take my pain away immediately!

So what can we do about pain?  Pain killers come to mind immediately that is what most of us have done from time to time.  Over the counter pain killers come in various brand and packaging with ingredient such as aspirin, acetaminophen (e.g. Tylenol), ibuprofen (e.g., Advil, Motrin) and naproxen (e.g. Aleve).  These drugs all belong to the family of non-opioid analgesics that work to inhibit an enzyme known as cyclooxygenase (COX), a catalyst for the production of prostaglandins that causes pain, inflammation and fever.  Depending on where the inhabitation takes place (in central vs. peripheral nerve systems), some pain killers are more effective for headache and others are more effective for muscle or joint pains.  Except for acetaminophen, others examples above are NSAID (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflamatory Drug) that can also reduce inflammation.  They all provide temporary reliefs for minor pains and are considered fairly safe albeit with some possible negative side effects. 

To manage more severe pains, potent and stronger pain killers are often prescribed by trained physicians.  Various opioid analgesics like morphine, hydrocodone and oxycodone come to mind.  They are either found in, or derived from, or synthesized from opiate alkaloids in natural opium poppy plants.  Remember the Opium Wars (the First Opium War from 1839 to 1842 and the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860) between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty of China that marked the beginning of the modern China?  Yes, Opium Wars woke up China from its deep isolation and ignorance.  Yes, the wars were triggered by the ban of opium and the seizures of the opium supplies of British and American merchants by Qing Government. 

As one of the world’s oldest known drugs, opioid works by binding to opioid receptors in our central and peripheral nervous systems and gastrointestinal tract.  The net effect is reduced the perception of pain, the decreased reaction to pain and an increase our pain tolerance.  It does have adverse side effects if not used properly.  It is addictive and often abused because of the euphoria it can produce.  But for medical use to treat acute and severe pains, it works magicv!   I was given some morphine through IV (Intravenous therapy) together with Zofran, an anti-nausea/vomiting drug to alleviate possible side effect of morphine.  Within a short time, I no longer feel any pain or discomfort (no, I did not reach euphoria)!  That was actually pretty much the end of my short kidney stone episode.  Two weeks later, the 3 mm long trouble making kidney stone was out of my body on its own without difficulty. 

In all, two things I learned from this painful experience.  I used to brag about my pain tolerance and tease those who take strong pain medications.  No more!  I have to admit that a little morphine brought me back from the hell of pain in the midst of my kidney stone episode.  I was able to breathe and talk normally not long after the IV.  Secondly, now I can honestly say I appreciate women’s worst physical pain.  The emergency room female doctor who treated me told us that pain due to kidney stone is considered comparable to that of giving a child birth.  The price I paid for this knowledge was no more sympathy from my wife.

Talk to you soon!

Home Vegan: the first 100 days

It has been 100 days since I began my home vegan diet as discussed in my July blog Time for Drastic Measures 釜底抽薪.  Here is a quick update of my experience so far.  By the way, Home Vegan simply means one eats only non-animal products at home - no natural or processed foods derived from animals including meat, seafood, eggs, or dairy products. 

My motivation was simple –to reduce long term health risks such as heart diseases, stroke (perhaps certain types of cancer too?) without changing my social life.  While it will take some time to get indirect measurements of any sustained improvement (such as cholesterol level, blood pressure, etc.), some immediate trivial benefits are evident. 

First off, I have lost about 5 pounds of weight without any change to my other daily routines.  This should not come as a surprise to anyone.  Simple arithmetic would suggest a significant reduction in calorie intakes is possible when one swaps out animal-based food with natural high fiber vegan food in one’s diet.  The fact is that pound for pound, most vegetables and fruits bring you only a fraction of what the leanest meat would.  And the common rule of thumbs tells us a cumulative reduction of approximately 3,000 calories may bring your weight down by one pound. 

The good news is that switching to a home vegan diet wasn’t as difficult or dramatic as I had feared initially: we simply stopped buying any food that contains animal products and here we went.  Perhaps we are lucky that we have been used to a diet with a lot of vegetables, fruits and high fiber foods (such as brown rice) to begin with.  Further, there are a lot more variety of vegetables in Chinese markets and grocery stores than in average American supermarkets.  It includes a large selection of soybean based food with different textures and flavors.  By the way, if you had previously prepared and eat vegetables in the more limiting western styles, a simple and fail-safe way to prepare these unfamiliar vegetables (especially the green leafy ones) is to sauté them with a little cooking oil, salt (and garlic); something even a kitchen dummy like me can do. 

Side benefits that I did not expect or have thought of:

• Saving time in grocery and supermarket shopping: I now skip the majority of the sections/departments in the market.
• Saving time in cooking: how many different ways and advanced preparations can you do with fresh vegetables?
• Saving money with grocery shopping: while you may spend more per unit for some healthy and fresh food, changes in quantity and ratios will offset it and more.
• Much less often in having food caught in between your teeth
• Helping with environments: it is well-known that excessive animal agriculture has had negative impact on our planet from water, deforestation, to greenhouse emission.

One big surprise is that I seem to eat less without feeling hungry soon after I started the diet.  There are many theories about why that is the case.  My doctor’s simplified explanation is that one’s body adapts quickly to the new condition and naturally expects less.  The bad news is that I seem to have hit the plateau in about 2 months after losing 5 pounds, not unlike the experience of those who do fitness routines to lose weight.  While determined to continue with my home vegan diet, I guess I need to pull out the exercise DVD my friend sent me and start doing them too!

Last but not the least, do make sure your friends know the distinction between a HOME vegan and a vegan if you choose to be one.  Some of them may get a little concerned if they should go out to eat with you.  On the other hand, it may be a positive if some of them no longer want to come to your house for party?!   Happy Home Vegans!

Time for Drastic Measures 釜底抽薪

Over 2,200 years ago, the first Chinese encyclopedic classic - The Annals of Lü Buwei 呂氏春秋 wrote: 今世上卜筮禱祠，故疾病愈來，譬之若射者，射而不中，反修于招，何益於中？夫以湯止沸，沸愈不止，去其火則止矣。故巫醫毒藥，逐除治之．故古之人賤之也，為其末也。《呂氏春秋．季春紀．盡數》. Translated into English, it stated “There is an increase in illness as people resort to prayers and divination that is like moving the target to improve the score of an archer.  How could it possibly improve the skill of the archer?  To give another analogy, how could one stop a pot of water from boiling if one keeps adding hot water to the pot?  What one should do is to turn off the fire instead.  That is why our learned ancestors looked down on shaman and medicines for temporary reliefs; they don’t address the root cause of the problems.”

Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Dr. T. Colin Campbell, the Jacob Gould Schuman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry of the Cornell University, did just that.  He went after the very foundation of our health and examined the impact of nutrition/diet on our long term health.  With rave reviews and half a million copies sold of his 2005 best seller The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health, Dr, Campbell’s advocacy has been drawing a lot of attention.  The work also led directly to the drastic change of diets of at least one high profile case – that of the former President Bill Clinton after his second heart surgery in early 2010.  Here is the Nov. 2010 Clinton’s interview with CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer on this subject.


So what is this fuss all about?  If I can sum it up in one sentence, it is pretty simple and straightforward: Whole food, plant-based diet is good for you.  Note plant-based diet does exclude ALL animal products, fish, eggs and dairy products included. The emphasis of whole food is important as well.  Highly processed and refined carbohydrates found in white bread, snacks, junk food are NOT whole food and are not good for you.

Being an established and highly respected leading scientist, Dr. Campbell challenged the conventional wisdoms from with-in.  He took a revolutionary approach to make sense for us the hopelessly confusing relationship between nutrition, diet and health; something most of us don’t think much of it till we are hit with serious health concerns or if and when we do, we can’t figure out how true each of the contradicting claims is.

Conventional scientific and medical researches focus on isolating individual components/factors and finding combinatorial and statistical relationships between such components and markers/indicators of diseases.   Further, for many decades, much of the attention and resources have been directed at research of medicines and technologies that would alleviate acute problems and extend one’s life temporarily as opposed to help preventing diseases and improve our health and quality of life.  Take heart disease as an example which is the leading cause of death in U.S., the advances of heart bypass surgery and angioplasty has dramatically reduce the death rate during a heart attack to about 15%.  But did you know that “79% of patients showed impairment in some aspects of cognitive function seven days after the operation”, and that benefits of these procedures do not last -“Within ten years, half of the bypass patients will have died, had a heart attack or had their chest pain return.”  It is clear that surgery, while saving lives, is not the answer.

What I and many did not know was the impressive finding by few prominent physicians like Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn (formerly with Cleveland Clinic) and Dr. Dean Ornish of U.C. San Francisco in last three decades.  They offered convincing evidences that diet and lifestyle changes alone can effectively stop the deterioration and even reverse the coronary heart disease!  Dr. Ornish and colleagues published in 1990 their famous Lifestyle Heart Trial (that Bill Clinton cited in his interview above). The results reported that 82% of the heart disease patients in their experimental group that adopted a low-fat vegetarian diet, stopped smoking, took stress management training with moderate exercises showed regression in their heart disease after only 1 year without use of lipid-lowering drugs!  By the way, the patients of the control group who received the usual care did not fare too well with worsening chest pains and increased coronary blockage over the same period. 

The story did not end with the diet and heart disease.  Dr. Campbell presented similarly impressive findings with many chronic health problems such as obesity, type II diabetes, some autoimmune diseases like type I diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, and some common cancers including breast, prostate and large bowel.  While one may argue that for each disease the conditions and component culprits are not exactly the same, one common factor, when looking at the larger picture, emerged consistently that is the linkage to animal-based diet, dairy products included.  Indeed, even for the most feared disease of cancer, Dr. Campbell cited studies and experiments that showed certain proteins found in dairy products and animal-based foods promote the growth of tumors.  He noted the clear pattern of “nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decrease tumor development.”   It is also encouraging to know that compared to bad diet, genetic pre-disposition and occasional exposures to carcinogens are NOT nearly as critical as we might think in the development of cancer.

What does China have anything to do with all these and why was Dr. Campbell book entitled The China Study?  It is perhaps not surprising that there have been a lot of arguments and attacks against the findings of benefits of plant-based diet which is difficult to perform large scale epidemiologic study in developed countries like U.S. as one would be hard pressed to find enough samples of subjects with a more plant-based diet.  Luckily, in early 80’s, Dr. Campbell, Dr. Junshi Chen (then the Deputy Director of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene of Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine), and Prof. Richard Peto of the University of Oxford pulled off the famous China-Cornell-Oxford Project in China where diseases of affluence and excess (that is what most of the diseases discussed above!) were not present.  With the support of Chinese government, the research team was able to take blood samples and conducted detailed interviews and survey, and performed thorough analysis of the diets, lifestyles and diseases of 6,500 residents - 100 samples from each of the 65 rural counties - across China.  The data provides epidemiologists unprecedented opportunities to examine and establish clearly the links between diets and health. 

In his book, Dr. Campbell summarized the results of China Study that revealed “plant-based foods are linked to lower blood cholesterol; animal-based foods are linked to higher blood cholesterol.  Animal –based foods are linked to higher breast cancer rates; plant-based foods are linked to lower rates.  Fiber and antioxidants from plants are linked to a lower risk of cancers of the digestive tract.  Plant-based diets and active lifestyles result in a healthy weight, yet permit people to become big and strong.”  That is, Whole food, plant-based diet is good for you and (too much) animal-based foods are bad for you.

As I read the book, I wonder how come I did not know about these findings and wisdom?  How come my doctors continue giving me prescriptions of wonder drugs for some of my chronic problems and did not pursue with me the possibility of changing diet and lifestyle?  If you have similar experiences, we are not alone.  In fact, the little dirty secret is that most of our medical doctors are not trained with nutritional sciences and they are as confused as we are!

In his book, Dr. Campbell is critical about the existing medical-health care system and status-quo forces from scientific community, to industries and government.  To begin with, it is probably a defect in human nature to dream of finding silver bullets and magical pills that will fix all of our health and longevity problems, ignoring the impact of our daily diets and lifestyle.  In reality, such a distorted priority merely offers opportunities for research papers, proposals, and grants to conduct gazillions of experiments and opened the doors to more confusing and conflicting results from observations of seemingly related phenomena from ever-so-slightly-different angles and assumptions.   You can find anecdotal stories of turf battles and NIH (Not-Invented-Here, not National Institute of Health) syndromes interspersed throughout Dr. Campbell’s.  Worse, business interests take advantage of the confusions and often fund purpose-designed research and lobby school curriculum to advance their agenda.  To complete the web, the industry craft clever and misleading promotions under the cover of sciences and health to further maximize their own profits.  Do you know that the dietary supplement industry recorded about $20 billion dollars sales in U.S. last year and that the pharmaceutical industry is more than 15 times larger?

Many of us have learned at one time or the other that carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are the basic macro-nutrients that provide our bodies with energy that can be measured in calories.   But how many of us know how much calories each of us needs daily to maintain a healthy weight given a particular level and style of activities?  And after consulting various tools and tables to find the reference figures, how many of us remember how much calories are in each of the foods we bought, cooked, and consumed?  Do you know roughly there are 4 calories in a gram of carbohydrate or protein and 9 calories in a gram of fat?  But do you know how many grams of carbohydrate, protein and fat are in a 10 oz. ribeye steak or a bowl of rice you ate?  Do you know how many carbohydrate, protein and fat are in a plate of Spaghetti with meatballs you just had?  And how does cholesterol fit into all these equations? 

Let us say you do know all these number.  How does it help you to maintain good health for yourself?  Do you know you can have a diet meeting the “recommended” nutrition level and calorie but will kill you?  The reality is we do consume foods in whole and not in its components from Vitamins and minerals of A to Z, proteins, carbohydrates, etc.  Foods are delivered with their nutrients together in one “package” of various forms and get absorbed and transformed in a not-completely-understood fashion by our wonderful body with a complex adaptive digestion system.  Oversimplification can be dangerous and can have unintended consequences.  For example, many had been led to believe carbohydrates are bad by the popular low-carb Atkins diet when in fact carbohydrates from fiber rich natural vegetables and fruits are essential for good health.  Similarly many, especially those in developing countries, were led to believe that animal-protein is of higher quality and more efficient and desired in bridge the “protein” gap when too much of animal proteins are known to be bad for our bodies.  The list goes on and on.  

The beauty of Dr. Campbell’s work is that in one fell swoop, he showed us a way out of this maze.  He demonstrated that while we may never understand all the interactions and positive/negative effects of component nutrients, we do know for sure that unlike animal-based diets, there is no adverse effect of whole food, plant-based diet in quantity.  He argue convincingly that as long as one makes sure that one gets sufficient Vitamin B12 (which can be obtained through supplements), persistent whole food plant-based diet alone can improve one’s long term health significantly, along with moderate exercises and without any health supplements or long term medications.  For people who have some of those long term health concerns, there is absolute no reason why one shouldn’t take up on Dr. Campbell’s advice seriously.

It may not be easy to change one’s diet or lifestyle drastically overnight and sustain it when these habits are shaped gradually over decades in social and cultural context.  I think one practical way to make the change quickly is to first become what I would call a “Social Omnivore” or a “Home Vegan”.  Just like a “social drinker” who drinks on social occasions only, if one eats only whole foods, plant-based diet at home (which is most of the time in my case) and usual diets in social occasions or when eating out (which is infrequent), one can reduce the consumption of animal-based diet down to a very low level by my calculation.  I would not be surprised that even with such a modest attempt, one stands to reap most of the health benefits.

I am excited about what I have learned from Dr. Campbell’s book.  I am optimistic about the prospect of improving my long term health through changed diet and plan to implement it shortly.  Wish me luck.  If you are interested in knowing more about this subject but don’t feel like to read Dr. Campbell’s 417 pages 6”x9” book, you may want to watch the newly released 90 minute long documentary movie called Forks Over Knives that traces the journey of Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.  Talk to you soon!

My Dad would be 100 Years Old Today

Today is the centennial birthday of my late father who passed away 6 years ago in January 2005. 

I don’t know anything about my dad’s childhood.  Unlike many others, I never got a chance to ask my grandparents “what did Dad do when he …” as I have never met or known my paternal grandparents; they passed away when my father, their only child, was little.  My dad himself did not have any photos nor could he recall much about his parents either as he was raised by his grandma.  Although the family wasn’t well off, he did receive a decent education with his uncle’s help and completed his high school at a reputable Methodist School – the Anglo-Chinese College鶴齡英華中學in CangShan 倉山District of FuZhou 福州City in China.  Late in his life when he visited us in U.S., he would tell us he did learn some English at that Christian school but could only remember only a few words.

After graduating from high school, it appeared that he had gone working for the Fujian provincial government.  He married my mother when he was 27 years old (relatively late in those days?) and she was 20.  Eight years later, after Japan surrendered and returned Taiwan to the Nationalist government of China, my father was sent to Taiwan with my mom and 6 years old sister in 1946 as a part of the effort to rebuild a new provincial government.  He was then a low level staff assigned to a government operated liquor distiller in the mountain town PuLi, not far from the scenic Sun Moon Lake.

Although my dad was never an alcoholic nor a heavy drinker, he did tend to drink a little too much whenever he had a chance in social gatherings.  As I grew up, it had become more and more an issue between my parents as my mother fought hard to stop him from drinking completely.  It was probably due to partly her worry about dad’s chronically high blood pressure and partly one of her own brother’s problem with alcoholism.  At the end, she reluctantly settled with a more en-forcible policy of “never drink at her presence except for special occasions”.  Even when dad reached 90 and lost much of his taste buds, he still liked to get a can of cold beer when he did his daily walks.  

My dad had always been a dedicated government employee and enjoyed his work very much.  In most part of my life, I remembered his primary job duty was to monitor and assist the fruits/vegetables and meat wholesale markets (of local governments) in managing the supply and price.  From time to time, commissioners of local markets may stop by our government provided house to visit him and discuss business.  Invariably, with the local custom of never visiting people empty handed, we would end up having some fresh or canned fruits for few days.  Once in a while, some might attempt to leave a “red envelop” which was always rejected.  What struck me the most however was that he never seemed to be listening to what the visitors were saying.  It is not unusual that he and the visitors appeared to be talking at parallel tracks with no intersection.  They were always cordial and polite but at the end, I was never sure what was actually concluded if any.  Was it how discussions were conducted and how things get done those days?  I don’t know and I would never find out from him now.  I do remember I said to myself then that I would not want to end up being like him and that I will listen attentively to people.

Like most men in his time, dad did not do much house chores like cooking or cleanings but he did enjoy taking care of the yards and growing flowers and fruit trees.  He tried to plant grape vines but failed to turn grapes into wine.  When my brother and I had to ride the bus for more than one hour to middle school and high school, he would wake us up every morning before 6:30 a.m. and prepared breakfast for us.  It usually includes a fried egg he cooked, and a bowl of hot soybean milk and a freshly baked biscuits he picked up from the nearby market.  Once when mom was hospitalized, my brother and I were impressed that he was able to cook a pot of soup for dinner with spare ribs and Bok Choy (or Napa Cabbage).  That is pretty much the limit of his cooking skill.  In the summer, he sometimes would take us with him on business trips to see places of the island.  Perhaps that seeded my interest in traveling?

Dad never commented much about daily routines or disciplined us which were more my mom’s job.  But we could all surely sense his concern on our school performance and he was proud when we did well and he was worried when we did poorly.  He seemed to feel his best contribution and support would be to make sure we eat well and be happy.  I still remember his encouraging smile with anxiety as he waited at a distance outside the classroom where I was taking the grueling middle school entrance exam.    

He retired from government service in 1973 when I was fulfilling my mandatory military service after my Bachelor degree.  I never asked him if my dream of going to a graduate school in U.S. had anything to do with his decision of early retirement.  He was the only bread earner in the house and received a meager monthly salary of a little over one hundred U.S. dollars then.  When he retired, he got a one-time retirement benefit of approximately $5,000, of which half was used to buy me a one way airline ticket to San Francisco and to supplement my partial scholarship at the graduate school.  I learned later that the other half went into a failed investment on his friend’s venture of making candles.  I guess after all I was a better return of investment!

Another significant factor of his decision for the early retirement might have been an opportunity to join a private company (which he did) found by a Chinese American businessman that became the first modern slaughter house in Taiwan.  I was probably partially responsible for his 2^nd and final retirement as well, when he finally agreed to come to visit us in U.S. in 1983.  When he rushed back home few weeks later, he found out, as he had feared and my mom had predicted that he had been relieved from his General Manager duty and was reassigned to become a consultant.  He never blamed it on me.  And I never asked him how he felt and offered him any words of consolation.  

Few months after my father’s birth, the Republic of China was born on Oct 10^th, 1911, rid of the Qing Dynasty with an armed revolution.  Dad liked to say, especially as he grew older, he was of the same age as the nation.  He liked even more to joke about his most “pride accomplishment”, surpassing those of the National Father Sun Yat-Sen and his successor, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek: his two daughters-in-law are from the Sun’s and the Chiang’s.

Dad had a pretty good life, I thought, thanks to my brother and sister-in-law who lived with him and cared for him.  His quality of life did go down quite a bit during the last two years of his life after two strokes.  Gradually he lost the ability to swallow food or drink liquid, then he could no longer speak clearly and later he lost the strength of his limbs as well. The cruelty of it was that he was deprived of two things he loved to do the most: eating/drinking and walking.  He passed away at the age of 93.  I am glad that I did ask and walk with him once on his routine afternoon stroll when we visited him before he lost his mobility.  He led the way down the busy city streets and paused from time to time.  We did not talk much but I could feel the same warmth and security of being able to be right next to him just like when I was a kid.  I wish I had told him how happy I was to be able to have a walk with him.  I wish I had walked with him more.  But it is now too late.  

Few years ago, I brought back from Taiwan an old family photo album that my late sister had put together decades ago.  It has photos of my parents from around the time when they got married.  In a few photos, there are some of their friends and/or relatives whom I don’t recognize.  There were places and background scenes they had been to that I can’t recognize either.    But I will never be able to ask them again. 

Look, don’t be like me.  Ask your parents any of the little details that might sound not so important to you now.  Do something with them whenever you can, as if they might be gone tomorrow.  This way, you would not regret later in your life that you could have known more about them and thus about yourself.  Oh, one other thing, dad asked me privately if I would take him to see a striptease when he was visiting U.S. the first time at the age of 72.  I am sorry that I refused his request as deemed inappropriate.  If I had a chance to do it again, I would make up an excuse to my mom and take him to a show.

Dad, I miss you.  I will see you when we go home.  If there is a heaven, I am sure I will be with you forever after I die.  If there is incarnation, I will be your son again. 

Dad, happy 100^th birthday; let us drink to that!

Contradiction 矛盾

Just when we thought we were finally done negotiating with the Chinese-American car salesman the options, purchase price and so on, this Indian-American business manager of the dealership threw one more pitch at us – an optional extended warranty of the vehicle that would cover road service and repair for mechanical/electronic failures in next 7 years.  My wife and I smiled at each other; we thought of the same thing simultaneously that this Indian-American would not understand.  We were both reminded of the story where the Chinese word for (self-) contradiction矛盾 (Mao Dun) originally came from.  The word itself literally means spear 矛and shield 盾.  Nearly 2300 years ago, famous Chinese philosopher Han Fei韓非, a leading legalist school scholar, wrote in his book Han FeiZi 《韓非子‧難勢》：「楚人有鬻盾與矛者，譽之曰：『吾盾之堅，物莫能陷也。』又譽其矛曰：『吾矛之利，於物無不陷也。』或曰：『以子之矛，陷子之盾，何如？』其人弗能應之。」 

What Han Fei was doing was to illustrate the notion of contradiction with a story a salesman who was selling spears and shield.  The salesman told his prospective customers that the shield he was selling was the best in the world which could stand up to any attack.  He then went on to sell his spears and declared the spears were the best in the world that can penetrate any object.  Of course, the guy was stuck when he was asked what would happen if he uses his spear against his shield.  The Chinese word for contradiction 矛盾was thus born.  How would you sell the extended warranty service contract of a Japanese car that you said is extremely reliable?

After almost 16 years, our family car, a ’95 Volvo 850, has finally reached the point that it should retire from the service.  I still remember vividly how I smashed its front-end including the axle right in front of children’s Chinese school only a month after we bought it.  After that, it hasn’t had any major injury or illness, other than the usual wear and tear, and few small organ replacements, nothing that an average mechanics can’t handle.  But when its heart and lung had deteriorated to the point that a heart transplant or an open heart surgery would be needed, we decided with sorrow that we should let it go.

Buying a new car is a serious undertaking especially for those who plan to keep the car till it dies.  It is an extension of yourself – it does wherever you go and yes, people judge you in part of what car you drive.  In practical terms, it is usually the 2^nd most expensive capital purchase for an individual right after the house.  Then there are so many choices from the type of car to the make, color, style and accessories.  

The most intimidating part of car buying is when you have to deal with car salesmen.  We the shoppers are at a disadvantage since the stake is high and yet this psychological warfare is something we don’t often get a chance to practice.  Worse, there is no secret that car salesman is one of the least trusted professions, after politician.  There are plenty of jokes and anecdotal stories about dishonest car salesman, especially for the used cars.  Luckily, with Internet, various free online car shopping services like Edmunds.com and Trucar.com have made the exercise much less painful.  It helps you with reference prices so that you can formulate your position before you visit the dealership.  That is exactly what we did.

Have you ever been curious about the car salesman profession?  What their job is like?  What does it take to be a “good” car salesman?  How much do they make and is it easy to make a living?  Do they have to lie and rip customers off and if so, how do they manage to sleep well at night?

If you are interested in getting some insights, you should read the fascinating article by Scott Jacobs who went undercover for Edmunds.com to be a car salesman for three months.  The article was initially published in Jan 2001 and was updated in May 2009.  After an interview and answering a series of personality profiling questions, Jacobs managed to get himself hired first at a high volume high pressure dealership of Japanese cars and later a contrasting no-haggle small dealership that sold American cars.  Here is what he wrote about when he had his first prospective customer came into his car lot:

“They turned and, in an instant, I saw the fear on their faces. Fear of me! Let me quickly add that I'm not the type of person who normally elicits fear from the people around me. I've been called shy, reserved and quiet — all euphemisms for meek, mousy and at times practically invisible. But here I was with my white shirt and tie, my employee's badge hanging from my belt. I had become the enemy. And they were afraid of me. 

What were they afraid of? The short answer is, they were afraid they would buy a car. The long answer is that they were afraid they would fall in love with one of these cars, lose their sense of reason and pay too much for it. They were afraid they would be cheated, ripped-off, pressured, hoodwinked, swindled, jacked around, suckered or fleeced. And, as they saw me approaching, all these fears showed on their faces as they blurted out, "We're only looking!" ”

Now, does it jog your memory of how you felt when you went into a car dealer place and was greeted by one of the aggressive salesmen the last time? Don’t worry for Scott Jacob.  He was already equipped with lines for those “lookers”.  My favorite is "Last time I was only looking I wound up married."  Now, let us go to my office and …

Does this sound vaguely familiar?  Sales is not a job for the fainted heart or people who can’t take rejection.  There are a lot pressures especially for those who live on commission that include car salesman. The 1992 classic movie Glengarry Glen Ross got it right: it is all about closing the deal.  There shall be nothing else but the single-minded obsession to close! close! close! 

Indeed the system is designed around creating the max tension, earning and penalty included, to close the sale.  New car salesmen are typically paid at a regressive commission at 20-30% of the front-end gross profit of the dealership; the higher the profit, the higher the percentage.  Wouldn’t you be trying anything if your next meals depend on it?  Wouldn’t you be trying to increase the gross profit whether it is through higher price, lower trade-in value, or by stretching the truth?  When the manager’s whiteboard shows visibly you have only sold three cars this month when some of your colleagues sold 20, don’t you feel inadequate?  When you know you are at risk of being fired after not having a single sale for days especially after you did have client test drove the cars, wouldn’t you cranked it up another notch?

Oh, before I go, I should get back to the question about how much does car salesman make.  I gathered from various articles on the net that car salesman probably make around $30-100K a year.  A decent salesman moves about 10 cars a month in average.  It may not sound right as we all see so many salesmen standing idle around in the lot or office.  But if you figure into the long 60 hours a week with significant down time, this estimate seems not unreasonable.  As a reference point, Honda has close to 900 dealerships across the country and sold around 1 million new cars annually in recent years.  In other words, the sales volume of a Honda dealership would be around 100 cars a month and is operated at about 10 salesmen in average.  It sounds intuitive to me.

Do you still want to be a car salesman?  By the way, I have never met a car saleswoman?  Have you?  I did meet an Internet car salesman though.  When he told us that 60% of their dealership’s sales now come through their Internet channel, I figured car salesman’s modus operandi will go through significant changes if it has not already.

Talk to you soon!

Madadayo (“Not Yet”)

Just watched the wonderful 1993 Japanese movie Madadayo that means “not (ready) yet” in English.  It is the last film by one of the greatest film directors/writers Akira Kurosawa  黒澤 明 who brought world’s attention to Japanese films 60 years ago with his classics like Rashomon in 1950 and Seven Samurai in 1954.   The film Madadayo is based on the true story of Professor Hyakken Uchida and focuses on his retirement life after age 60.  Through the tidbits of little things in life and the annual birthday parties his former students organized for him, the film explores an old man’s attitude towards to life and death as he kept his humor, perseverance, compassion, and humility with the love and support of his wife and former students.

It was not a coincidence that I rented this movie from Netflix although I first got interested in it because at first sight, it is a movie about a teacher and his students.  After watching the movie and in reflection,  I realized that I seem to have done more things to get myself “ready” since my retirement, starting first by getting our wills, living wills and estate planning matter in order.   My ears and mind seem to naturally become more sensitive to news, statistics, stories, photos, music and literature related to matters on health, aging, and the eventual death.  I suppose before retirement, I, like many others, was simply too pre-occupied with living?  We hardly have enough time just to take care of urgent issues and schedules to get ourselves through days, weeks and months ahead.  How much time and energy can one spend on things might not happen in decades?   In the same token, why would or should young folks be concerned with things that might not happen in half a century?

Several weeks ago, I bought and began reading the book A Widow’s Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates (JCO), after I heard an interview on NPR (National Public Radio).  JCO is a 72 years old renowned and prolific writer who has been teaching at Princeton University for sometimes.  She was just awarded 2010 U.S National Humanities Medal by President Obama.   Her writing is full of emotion and grace that one gets distracted by the beauty of her language even for dreadful events like death of her husband of 48 years.  As she detailed and cherished her delicate feelings and memory of life and death with her late husband Ray Smith’s, we can only began to appreciate and imagine the enormity of the challenges brought by the death upon those loved ones who have to endure and continue their lives.  That is exactly the reason I wanted to read the book – to understand better what my loved ones may feel and face and to make sure I can do my parts to lessen their struggles.

The only comforting thought is that a recent longevity study suggests widows’ longevity does not appear to be correlated with if the widow remarries. NPR’s Brian Lehrer Show recently interviewed Professors Howard Friedman and Leslie R. Martin, the authors of that study The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study.  Their analysis was based on data collected by a Stanford University team started in 1921 by Dr. Lewis Terman.  The subjects were 1548 “high IQ” young students born in 1910 in San Francisco area. 

Among other things, the study found, perhaps not surprisingly, a strong correlation between longevity and social ties/networks (loners be careful!).  What is interesting however is the existence of gender difference.  For one, widowers who remarried tend to live longer while such correlation does not exist for widows!  The reason given is that men have more of their social ties from work and rely more on wives for their social ties.   Now I can appreciate more those anecdotal stories that many widows had little interest in getting married again.  Quoting an outspoken widowed mother of one of our friends, “why do I want to wash the dirty socks of a man, now I can finally enjoy my days traveling and playing Mahjong with my friends!

Joyce Carol Oates remarried to Professor Charles Gross of the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Institute at Princeton in early 2009, a year after her husband’s death.

Back to the meat and potato business.  Like most, I had my shares of grieves when family members and closed ones had serious health issues or passed away.  For the cases of my parents and my sister-in-law’s father, there were significant expenditures of long term cares even though they lived in Taiwan where the care cost is much cheaper than in U.S.  The concern for the financial impact prompted us to look into the possibility of purchasing an increasingly talked-about Long Term Care insurance.

According to the agent we spoke to and the insurance company literature, close to 1 in 2 people in U.S. ended up needing some form of long term care for some period of time before they pass away.   This ratio is probably increasing as we speak as we tend to stretch our lives with modern medicines and medical technologies.  Clearly such a high rate of occurrence suggests more needs for financial preparedness.  Unfortunately, it also suggests that there is a much more limited risk pooling effect that tends to result in higher premium for such an insurance policy.  Worse yet, reasonable insurance for catastrophic events don’t seem to exist.

I also learned some interesting data and statistics such as the average length of use of any kind of long term care (at home, assisted living, and nursing care) is about 2.5 years and the average length of stay at nursing care facility is about 6 months (I guess a majority of them never returned after the stay?!)   For us who live in a high cost area like New Jersey (and for the matter, California), it turns out that for at home care, it runs about $20-$25/hr with a minimum of 4 hrs.  For assisted living, it costs about $4-$6K/month.  For nursing homes, it costs about $6-$9K/month.  You can do the arithmetic to know any non-trivial length of needs can make a huge dent to one’s nestegg.  The good news is that Medicare (for those beyond 65 years old, for now) covers 100% for the first 20 days and 75% for the subsequent 80 days after each incident.  If your asset beyond 1 car and 1 house is gone or used up, Medicaid assistance is available but don’t expect 4 star services.  Dollars and cents aside, the biggest emotional challenge is that such an event could put your loved ones and their loved ones in a difficult or conflicting position while trying to balance the financial burden with quality of care.

When all said and done, I figured that a better way to think of the Long Term Care insurance is to consider it a form of investment just like you buy stocks and bonds and mutual funds in your diversified portfolio.  The way many policies are formulated give rise to a distinct “use-it-or-lose-it” characteristics of the return on investment (or anti-return of investment). If you are “unlucky”, the annual premiums you paid (the “investment”) will generate payouts up to a contracted maximum amount (the best-case “return”).  If you (and your loved ones) are lucky, you could lose all your investments.   The net result is if you purchase such an insurance, it could provide an additional financial cushion for your loved ones.  The only question is if it is worth it.  Of course, you have other alternatives such as putting away the premium (or other amount) for the explicit purpose with a more predictable but likely smaller returns.

We don’t know yet if the insurance company consider us “insurable” and how much the actual premium will be.  It turns out that the Insurance Company we spoke to assess the risk rigorously.  They so far have done a phone interview with us by a registered nurse.  Among other things such as getting our health history, the nurse conducted some cognitive and short term memory tests over the phone but I already forgot many of the questions she had asked!

In all, I found all these exercises educational at the least.  The planning and preparations help me to put my mind more at ease, knowing I have done my best for my loved ones.  I have neatly put all documents and directives in place so that they can have the least amount of burden, anxiety, and stress whenever the eventuality strikes or when I can no longer think coherently or express myself.

Now I shall relax and enjoy more my retired life.   Before I go, I must ask you “Mahda-kai?” ("Are you ready?")

Inaugural Notes

When they learned about my decision to retire, many of my family members and friends asked me what I was going to be doing. One of the things I said I would like to do was to blog. So here I am.

I gave some thought about what I would name my blog, etc. Being a humble know-it-all, I thought creating themes around the little harmless and nice FROG would be cool, as there are so many interesting stories and fables about it. In particular, there is this famous Chinese fable about a frog in Qiu Shui (秋水), written over 2300 years ago by Zhuang Zi 莊子, one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Thus I have chosen to call myself iFROG 井底之蛙 (i stands for intelligent and ignorant), after sitting in my comfortable well for a very long time. I will share with you my thoughts as I reflect on my learning and observations of the world, and I shall call my blog froglyspeaking or frog frankly speaking. The Chinese idiom 坐井觀天 following it literally means observing the world from within a well. It came from Yuan Tao 原道,a late 700 or early 800 AD writing by Han Yu 韓愈,one of the most important and influential writers in Chinese history.

I will also share with you travel pointers and planners, among other things, that I am putting together for friends and family under the label fravel which stands for frog travel. The first one being completed is for Paris, France. You can download the latest version from fravel_paris. There will be more to come and new labels as I blog along.

Talk to you soon!