Raising Rockstar

1) Proving it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game 😀 Golden Retriever Loses Obedience Competition, Wins Your Heart.

JD sucks at Obedience trials/competitions to this day btw. The popular ones we tried back in the day in Singapore, you’re not supposed to say anything to the dog while they’re in trial/competition. So I would stand there, back straight and arms at my sides and will her to note my facial expression when she is scratching, yawning, looking everywhere, and – wait for it – scooting her bum closer and closer to me (but not actually getting up). Anyone who’s had a female border collie will understand this – they look for loopholes.

Because she couldn’t pass Obedience, they used to bar her from proceeding to Agility, long ago back in Singapore. That didn’t stop her from going on to winning a Hong Kong International Advanced Agility Relay event before the Rockstars were born, when we moved here. (She’s placed or won other Agility events too, but that one was probably the biggest. To this day though, I don’t think she can pass the original 3 minute sit-and-don’t-move requirement.)

Anyway, note in the embedded vid the handlers are tweens or teens. I’d say something about dog/ pet training being excellent child training (you have to earn the animal’s trust and you need to exercise patience and restraint in order to train an animal – and because it is an animal, not a human/parent, it’s not going to cut the child slack/ rationalize with the ole’ “Ok, close enough, good enough” moniker – it’s just not going to get trained).

BUT it might not be fair to the dog. One of the mildly disturbing things I used to see when Kings and I would drive up to pet shops pre-JD was little kids going “Daddy, Mummy he’s so cute! Can we get him, can we can we can we??? But I want him, he’s soooooo cute!!!“

Please, please be prepared to say no. Or a very well thought-out yes. (Or just don’t go near the shop :D)

We were turned down by the SPCA in Singapore when they heard about our working hours. “It’s not fair to the dog,” they said. Months later, we then ended up buying a freaking BORDER COLLIE, of all things, on the spur of the moment just because we couldn’t leave her in the puppy mill-esque place. I gave up all gym/ hip-hop/ jazz classes and “trained” her from day 1 coming home to get used to hours of walks at night when we got off work, feeding her her big meal right before we left each morning. We also took turns working from home, coming back at lunchtime NOT to play with her – it was all unbeknownst to JD (we didn’t want her to expect any action during times we would normally be at work) – but just to observe how she spent her day before we got back. WOW those were the days. Details in my old entries.)

–

–

2) Anyone who has a cat will apparently understand this.

–

– 

3) (Yet another) So This Is What We Have To Look Forward To With The Kids. Dad finds horrifying letter from 15 year old son. Some of the comments are pretty funny too.

–

–

4) Landscape photographer parents bring their young children with them. Very inspirational for traveling with little kids by yourself. Kids come with a lot of baggage. So does photography equipment. Kids + often fragile and expensive photography equipment = n-ot an easy one either.

Respect.

Really. Respect.

–

–

5) This one takes the dog along for photo shoots also. No, not a teacup poodle, not a chihuahua. A freaking Weimaraner. 

O.M.G.

–

–

–

6) 25 Incredible Breakfast Ideas After Thanksgiving. Neither here nor there, just incredible. I don’t cook very often (don’t, not can’t), but I love the concept of enjoying leftovers.

Dis is art. (And stuffing waffles with cranberry sauce – yums!)

–

–

7) Public service message: Black Friday is no longer where the best deals happen. Not… that I think anyone’s actually out shopping in Hong Kong specifically for BF, but this was just a note about shopping. From someone who, even at the height of her career, rarely bought big ticket branded items full-priced.

I loathe shopping crowds and think there’s a tradeoff and all that, but seriously, you can save so much money from shopping in warehouses or off-season. (I buy online way, way in advance, or way off-season, and squirrel stuff away around the home. I think it’s a manifestation of my mild OCD in general. And Rockstar isn’t the kind of child who will go around trying to find where his presents are squirreled away. Just tell him Your Present Is Over There. Leave It Alone Unless You Want To Spoil Your Own Surprise.)

To begin with, I’m fidgety, and in the absence of having any actual trades by my RM’s clients to run through in my head over and over again nowadays (ay, kept me virtually error-free for almost my entire 11 years ok, even in the worst of busy moving markets), I check prices online for shopping <sheepish>. I use online alerts and website functions – for e.g. on Shopbop.com. there is a “hearts” function. You “heart” the stuff you like and then in my case I stalk the summary page for absolutely ages, monitoring whether they’re about to sell out or possibly get marked down further or make it to one of those “Extra 20% off for 24 hours”-type days. All that just to avoid paying full price without even thinking. Why yes, I’ve checked against prices at Hong Kong departmental stores. Why yes, I’ve got girlfriends hooked on to the same habit. Like, whether you’re broke or not, why spend more than you absolutely have to? Exactly. If not broke, donate the money you save this Christmas 🙂

–

–

8) The Miss doesn’t have so much the skit this week as a fun quiz: WHAT is she doing with the broccoli? (O-or, Alas, Poor Yorick, I Knew Him Well :D)

Good Weekend, Dears…

Dedicated to all the very different things about people…….

1) There’s a 30-something guy in one of the tiny Starbucks outlets I visit on occasion – he’s been there I think easily for more than a year, any time of day I happen to pop by (perpetually trying to bag the veggie muffin, at one point). He always seemed to be watching Chinese game shows in the middle of the day. I couldn’t figure how he could do only that, day in, day out. Finally, finally, this week I saw it – remote access Bloomberg screen he scanned briefly before returning to…. was that a mid-afternoon Chinese soap? He’s trading his own portfolio out of Starbucks.

A Day In The Life of 18 Year Old Julian Marchese, The Full-Time Student Building A Hedge Fund Out Of His Dorm Room.

“…Marchese began cold-emailing analysts for advice on how to jumpstart his career in finance. “When you’re 12, the ‘pro’ is, you’re really cute and people want to talk to you,” Marchese says. “But when I was actually serious, they brushed me off because I was 12.”….”

Aged 14, he convinced Canadian Venture Capitalists re a strategy he created an algorithm for, which allows him to trade while he’s in school (but he had to wait til he was 18 due to legal issues involving his age)

Dis is he today, on his way to class at NYU

“…At a Quantitative Finance Society meeting, club president Thomas Li warns: “All of us have massive egos, in case you haven’t realized……. ..Recognize your biases and avoid them. It’s easier than trying to remove them.”…”

Love that he said that – ego and pride can really cloud your judgment and cost you a world of pain. Countries have gone to war over “face” and hurt pride.

–

2) The Relationship Between Genius And Mental Illness. Especially re the geniuses in creative writing.

Did mental illness facilitate [these creators’] unique abilities, whether it be to play a concerto or to perceive a novel mathematical relationship? Or did mental illness impair their creativity after its initial meteoric burst in their twenties? Or is the relationship more complex than a simple one of cause and effect, in either direction?

“…..Many personality characteristics of creative people … make them more vulnerable……..”

“…..permits them to perceive things in a fresh and novel way, which is an important basis for creativity. But it also means that their inner world…… filled with many questions and few easy answers….” 

–

–

3) The rather misleadingly titled Texas Man Drops Note With Gay Couple That Leaves Them Trembling. This tv show staged a gay couple going into a restaurant in Texas and a waitress who gets more and more personal and rude – to see how restaurant patrons react. (That’s really why it’s here – a story of human behavior, as can only be illustrated via a hot-button issue.)

There’s close to 13,000 comments following the Youtube; a quick scan didn’t come up with any overtly hateful ones (unlike certain popular sites closer to home which have some really disturbing race-related hate comments and which I therefore deliberately never link to) but if you find one say the word, this thing is gones.

–

–

4) China’s Annual Shame List Of Illegal Renovations. Love that they published this, it’s brilliant! 😀 (Also very useful for Rockstar’s learning unit about buildings and structures)

This is funny (and green!)

Unsafe, according to the article, but would’ve been so convenient especially when it rains 🙂

This one is a balcony (and much more) extended above a street

–

–

5) Another Power Of Social Media story. But also one about an animal lover and her beneficiary. Canadian woman finds paralyzed dog in Thailand, sets up Facebook and Gofundme pages, 3 months later he’s chillin’ in a permanent home in Ontario, Canada.

Dis is Leo

–

–

6) 9 Facts That Have Changed Since You Went To School. Rockstar’s first response was “I bet Pluto’s on it.” He’s right, it is, but what really tickled us was the one about how it used to be mathematically impossible to fold a paper more than 7 times.

They had these formulas for doing it, depending on direction:

Who cares?

Say what?

Then this junior High School student (who was after the extra credit) went out and got a piece of toilet paper and disproved that one by folding it more than 7 times. Like, d-uh.

She got her extra credit by folding the right kind of paper… which turned out to be toilet paper. There’s an analogy.

We liked how she approached the problem: What kind of paper can you fold the most times? Big piece. Thin construction. I typed a whole bunch about how I arrived at my own epiphany fresh out of university of application and erm, fairly basic common sense trumping a lot of complicated math for most jobs even involving derivatives unless your job scope is as an actual quant. And then my wifi died as did my unsaved yarny story. Must be a sign. And now I’m just super-late posting. So basically, something trite about not seeing the forest for the math in….. stuff. Dones.

–

–

7) Rockstar skit this week is Giddyap Horsie.

Rockstar attempting push-ups for his taekwondo, he says. Which is why he is smiling when his sis is too close for his normal comfort (and save yourselves opening your mouth – you know who you are – she is sitting on him while he’s lying on the sofa, not risking hurting his back in any way)

(See? Usually NOT smiling)

The Miss is often torn between climbing on people or flinging herself on things. Hard choice for her to make…!

Good weekend dears…

1) The oft-not heralded enough beauty captured in Breathtaking Photos Of Adoption.

11 years in derivatives, 3 banking mergers (survived all 3 technically, but still you kinda think the universe is trying to tell you something, and it’s not what your market counterparts are saying, to let them know beforehand next time you’re about to move so they can do a stock trade because you appear to be an unscientific merger-predictor :D), 2 were particularly bloody and during one such, was the incongruous tale of this much-feared senior boss and his wife and (at least) 2 children who adopted an HIV positive child.

As it was told to me, there were cocktails of medications that had to be administered, precautions taken about open wounds… and the senior boss’ apparent response, when asked: “It was to teach my (clearly privileged) children about life.”

The second unrelated story has to do with a close and godly girlfriend of mine who has now moved to Singapore. For years she and her husband struggled with infertility. I remember when visiting her in the hospital, her flat remark that her pain threshold was probably just super-high. Like me, she had been prescribed the Pill for a decade (well when I was unexpectedly pregnant with Rockstar I had been taking the Pill consistently for 5 years straight; her case is more severe) for elevated risk of endometriosis, among others. She had wanted to conceive so badly she insisted on going off the Pill – whereupon within just 7 months she had grown at least one 2-inch lump that had to be surgically removed.

Within a month of completion of adoption papers (apparently quite unheard of if you are trying to adopt a Hong Kong child, not a child from the Mainland – and I’ve actually told this story before, ages ago) she and her husband had been matched with a perfect little baby girl.

The girl’s biological parents were both 12 years old. My girlfriend would go on to tell me that her understanding from the social worker was the biological parents appeared to not have really known what they were doing could still result in pregnancy. (How my friend described it to me was the mother had noticed changes in her daughter and had been monitoring her, but simply couldn’t imagine the symptoms were due to pregnancy until the girl was already 5 months along).

I’m going to avoid saying anything else beyond the absolute joy with which this baby girl  (two months older than Rockstar and very articulate, last I remember before they left Hong Kong) was received into my friend’s home. One day my friend mused how she and her husband both had family histories with elevated risk of cancer and other serious illnesses which their daughter didn’t inherit, praise the Lord.

–

–

2) Second Smartest Person In The World (by IQ tests) Interviewed. What does he do for a living btw? Writer for tv shows. (Sorry, NASA)

Unrelated, and yet mildly so – couple days ago Rockstar was doing some IXL math on the computer and by way of conversation we asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said “I want to build a better video game than Minecraft”. (Sorry again, NASA :D)

–

–

2) Because that’s what a Harvard education is for… Anyone realize there are Harvard grads who choose Hollywood (and basically the entertainment business)? Offhand that I know of – Matt Damon, Conan O’Brien, Tommy Lee Jones, Natalie Portman and Will Smith’s movie trailer which didn’t officially spend the requisite 3 years but should be receiving an honorary degree very soon.

“Where’s my PhD?”

You need that PhD to think of putting a tv screen behind the makeup mirror!

This whole second screening floor with 14 TVs, Will Smith uses to “conduct business”. The people showing the trailer remarked how serious he is about his work (his work IS watching movies and stuff) that he didn’t have some “fun” thing like massage parlor or jacuzzi

–

–

3) Intel invests in 13 Year Old CEO’s Startup.

Shubham Banerjee, the 13 year old CEO of Braigo

Braigo = Braille + Lego, after the Braille printer he built out of your regular Lego Mindstorm kit

–

–

4) Have you heard of the Entrepreneurship Preschool? Yes seriously. Because “…many of the soft, interpersonal skills that make a good startup founder just don’t get taught in traditional schools….”

Self-esteem, independence and problem solving skills feature prominently.

–

–

5) 10 Lesser-Known Youtube Stars. Picked this because it was more varied than your average top-20 Youtube-r of the astronomical hits and subscribers who…… yes posts gaming videos. (Yes Minecrafters feature prominently, not always with the cleanest language.)

–

–

6) The Girls have the skit this week, titled Who’s Adopted Whom (Or, A Dog And Her Little Girl):

“I’ve Got You Babe”

Hard to tell who’s prouder… (Note matching expressions)

But wait, that’s not what we’re REALLY about… Let us SHOW you… Here’s the wind up to the throw…….

And… “BOOYA!” This what the girls’ be about! (Yeah both are pretty sporty)

Good weekend, dears…