Blue is Me

Tag: travel

  • Which are the most boring capital cities?

    Hmmm…. interesting question here is how I would rank capital cities I visited from MOST exciting to MOST boring

    1. Tokyo, Japan – lots of energy, nightlife and just uniqueness I think
    2. Seoul, South Korea – 24 hour city, never sleeps, tons of nightlife but slightly less than Tokyo on the ‘cool things I can only do here and nowhere else’ scale
    3. Beijing, China – massive city but aside from the historical things, not as exciting as Shanghai. There is still plenty to do though
    4. Bangkok, Thailand – lots of nightlife and things to do but a tier below the East Asian capitals
    5. Manila, Phillipines – This is big city population wise, doesn’t quite match up to Bangkok though
    6. Singapore, Singapore – again big city but smaller and more confined than the ones above
    7. Taipei, Taiwan – Smaller than Singapore, its basically similar to Osaka in size but the nightlife isn’t quite on the same level
    8. Budapest, Hungary – This is the most party heavy out of the Eastern European cities I visited
    9. Vienna, Austria – Its a big city, nightlife is just average
    10. Prague, Czech Republic – Average in terms of nightlife but for the historical beauty of the city itself I’m gonna put it here
    11. Havana, Cuba – the sights are pretty nice. and the weather is great too 🙂
    12. Belgrade, Serbia – The sights are not as great as the other European cities, but it does seem to have slightly better nightlife
    13. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – The most boring capital city in Asia out of the ones I’ve been to. Hot and humid, not much else going on. You see the Petronas Towers, thats about it.
    14. Washington, DC – The historical sights are nice, but that’s pretty much about it.
    15. Ottawa, Canada – Its a big city in Canada. It’s cold.. That’s about all it has going for it I guess?

  • updates on my life…

    Checking back in again on my monthly status report here.. not much has changed, SF is boring as usual. But there is no shortage of things I have to do.

    1) I can’t get a home equity loan due to not being a US permanent resident (strangely I was able to get a mortgage tho?) so I have to rely on making a deposit for my Canadian home using cash instead. I have about $30k CAD in my bank there already so I need roughly $100k CAD ($75k USD) more saved up to get enough deposit for a $600k home in Vancouver. That means I need to save up quite a bit well into next year.

    2) My company said I’m performing quite well enough to transition into full time, but while I think being a contractor means I lose out on PTO and stocks, I find the hassle of getting a visa very annoying. It took me 3(!) tries to get my visa last time when I crossed the border. such a hassle… not sure if its worth it.

    3) I have to get the insurance company to reimburse me for my rental car accident which I got while driving to the DMV to get my license renewed.. its another big hassle

    4) I have to get Walmart to reimburse me for the corporate credit card charges that I filed an expense report for back in January… Citibank keeps calling me, and yes its another hassle.

    5) Everytime I take time off work as a contractor it hurts me. But I’ve been having breathing problems recently and had to go see the doctor and again.. its a hassle

    6) I cancelled my chase rewards trip which I booked using points because I wanted to transfer the points somewhere else so that I could get a better deal on the trip – it cost me $100 to cancel and the rewards wont be refunded for 2 months. in the meantime I need to book a trip to Korea still so I had to pay that in cash since I’m not going to get the points back in time. So yes.. another hassle

    7) I realized that Comcast has been charging me $10 a month to use their modem(!) for 3 years I’ve had to pay that insane fee thats $120 a year. So I have to get a new modem and send theirs back and make sure they dont bill me anymore for that! another hassle

    8) I have to get my Google Pixel fixed because I dropped it and cracked the glass on the screen and it interferes with my camera – now you see refractions on the camera so thats another thing to do.

    9) I tried transferring some Bitcoin into Bovada to be able to bet on the NBA games that I wanted but it seems that my transfer made it through but they still haven’t deposited that money into my account yet. So thats something else I have to talk to them about to make sure they get my money on time so that I can bet. Another hassle.

    10) I have to transfer my webdomain over to a google domain so that I can host my website (this one) on my synology DS instead of using SiteGround so that I can save $100 a year on that.

    11) Of course I still have to find a Korean girlfriend to marry, and right now I have only 2 weeks of vacation to go back to Korea. If I can’t find a girl to bring back during that 2 weeks, I’ll have to see who I can find when I move to Vancouver. This is easily the hardest thing to achieve on this list.

    In other news.. Bitcoin / Ethereum are at all time highs and I have a little bit of each as hedges. I made back all the money I lost last year from gambling ($8k) with BTC/ETH so that seems great so far! Although I missed opportunities to make more. Stock market is also at all time high so I’m a little wary. I am bullish on TSLA, AMZN, NFLX, NVDA, BABA and FB though. But waiting for good time to get in. Trump’s ongoing antics have been crazy and I think its just a matter of time before he gets impeached. Its been 5 months in and he’s already had a ton of scandals. And finally.. I went on a little bit of a spending / selling spree, sold my Gretsch White Penguin and my old drone and bought my friends Macbook Pro (2016) and the new Phantom 4 Advanced. The camera lens is amazing! see below:

    Got the DJI Goggles and DJI Spark working too…

    and the Nintendo Switch as well… (was finally able to get my hands on it)

    Oh and watch me assemble my guitar in fast time its pretty cool

    and a lesson in guitar…

  • New Job and uncertain future…

    Well, as a lot of my friends know now, I was laid off a month ago at my previous company Walmart Labs, and I’ve spent the last 2 weeks doing a lot of hectic interviewing. I enjoyed doing interviewing and coding exercises when I was young but now I am kind of annoyed of having to do them over and over. And companies judge you a lot based on how well you do on those, based on arbitrary parameters. I did get to learn a lot more ReactJS and Angular 2 / TypeScript and did get to compare the two a little. Its interesting that JS, once a language that was thought to be a ‘kiddie’ programming language, now can be considered more closer to Java than ever now, as we have ES6 and TypeScript and classes / static functions / constructors / type checking all coming into play now.

    So after interviewing with a bunch of companies, I’ve settled on a small-medium sized company based in downtown SF called Spigit, which is an innovation management company. Part of the reason I chose them is because 1) they are in downtown SF and I hate commuting 2) the people and work environment reminds me of Switchfly the first company I worked at which is a good thing 3) they will work with Angular 2 which I did enjoy learning and feel its not a steep a learning curve as ReactJS.

    Other than that, life is boring. I got homesick a lot when I was living in Korea, and now that I’ve been back for 2 months, I’ve missed Korea a lot too. I only have one good friend Ethan here, and we usually hang out at least once a week. My other good friend Tony moved down to Redwood City so its hard to see him, and my other good friend Patrick is pretty hard to get a hold of these days as well. So yeah its been hard making friends, and I find myself more and more missing my life back in 2011-2014. Those were the days when I could go to meetups, meet a lot of cool people, there were a lot of Korean international students back then, and I liked working at my company. That’s part of the reason why I chose this company is because it reminds me of my old one – but I know that times have changed, and the Meetups are definitely not the same as before and there’s definitely not as many Koreans in the city as before.

    I used to meet Koreans a lot on the conversation exchange websites – now I am lucky to see even one new Korean on that website I haven’t seen before. I think its a combination of Trump’s anti-immigration policies + cost of living in SF going up that has driven away alot of international students.

    I have pretty much given up hope of meeting the right girl now. I failed to bring a girl back from Korea – and now there’s 0% chance of meeting a Korean girl here that would be interested in me. Its hard to meet ANY Korean here, let a lone a cute girl who’s interested in me. And SF might be the worst place ever to meet a girl – not only is SF getting more and more gentrified – which means more engineers come here which are mostly men – but any decent looking girl who comes here automatically gets bombed / spammed by guys as soon as she comes here! There’s absolutely NO chance of meeting anyone on a dating site because almost guy here is on there and any cute girls get their inbox spammed after a few days – its not uncommon to see some Korean or Chinese girls with their inbox too full to even message on OKC! My friend’s current gf (who is Chinese so she doesn’t usually wear makeup or dress up that much) gets hit on constantly at her work and guys constantly compliment her and want to take her out and buy her stuff. And that’s without her putting that much time into her appearance! Imagine if the typical makeup / short-skirt wearing Korean girl comes here what would happen? I fear they might get stalked and/or raped.. I’ve had stories of some of my Korean friends going back to Korea and still being contacted by guys that they met in America a year before. Combine this with the fact that most girls in SF don’t pay attention to their appearance + are super feminist = you get tons of desperate horny guys here salivating for traditional Asian girls.

    Adding onto those woes, my plan of going to Vancouver has been thwarted by my company suddenly letting me go – and remote jobs are really hard to find so my new plan is to stay with my new company for a year – I am a contractor now after all – and save up money to buy a place in Vancouver so I can move there in the future.

    I also have some travel plans this year. First of all I should go to Vancouver next week so that I can renew my TN Visa with my new company (fingers crossed Trump won’t make any changes with the TN visa), then I will definitely go back to Korea sometime in the summer.
    I have three girls who *might* be interested in me back in Korea – one of them is emotionally unstable, one of them is married and has an abusive controlling husband so I’m trying to convince her to divorce her husband, and the other one doesn’t speak english well and has never been to US or Canada before and doesn’t want to quit her job in Korea. So yeah -pretty grim choices I think, but I’m definitely more desperate now than before and really regret being as picky as I was back in 2015.
    Finally – I want to go back to Canada and visit Toronto and Winnipeg again to meet my Korean/Chinese friends as well as my brother. Hoping to go sometime in the fall.

    Right now, pretty depressing relationship-wise and trying to save up money..

    Well, I started working again just 1 week ago, and as ever it feels so tiring commuting to the office everyday and working at a smaller company –
    the demands are higher, that’s for sure, and I can’t coast like I did at Walmart anymore.

    I had hoped that working at Spigit would bring me back to my glory days working at Switchfly, 2011-2013 where I had the best time of my life both
    with cool coworkers and with meeting cool friends at language exchange meetup after work everyday.
    But times change, and those days are gone now. Meetups aren’t the same anymore. SF became way more gentrified now, there’s way more guys here than girls, and very few Korean students are here compared to before. Yeah, I’m working at a small tech company downtown again, but everything else has changed.

    All my friends went back to Korea or Taiwan or Japan. One of my best friends in SF moved down to Redwood City and he works in Mountain View so I can’t see him that often anymore. I only have one good friend left in SF now and I hang out with him so much that I feel like I really need
    to get away and have another friend to hang out with cause hanging out too much with just one guy isn’t good for me. I need some variety.

    In Korea I was homesick about SF, but mostly homesick about going back to working a normal schedule again and not having to sleep in the daytime and live like a vampire anymore. In Korea, it was terrible for my health. Everyday I woke up at 5pm or 6pm, then went to some meetup, met some people
    I probably never talk to more than once or twice, go home, I would eat fast food or instant ramen or pasta or rice at 12am and then start work at 2am, then eat again at 5am then sleep at 10am. I maintained this schedule for TWO freaking years. And never went to the doctor or hospital because I was afraid of my Korean ability and also did not have health insurance. As you can imagine, it took a toll on my health. I am definitely not as healthy as I was back in 2014.

    But I knew that as lonely as I was living in Korea like a vampire, living in SF was just as lonely. It’s soul-less here. I feel like since I started working my life has become totally robotic. Every day, wake up, go to work, eat, finish work, then meet my friend for gaming or eating. On weekends its the same, gaming or eating with my one friend. And he has a gf so its not THAT bad for him, but for me its far worse since I know I have NO chance to meet a girl here this year.

    When me and my friend went to Vancouver we saw a place where there was an even ratio between guys and girls, a place where Koreans actually stayed long term to work, etc. SF is different. There’s way more males here than females due to a concentration of engineers. It’s like in China, where guys outnumber girls and as you expect that kind of ratio favors women way more, making SF a much better place for girls than for guys. Whether for pricing reasons or visa difficulties or Trump or everything, there’s almost no Koreans that stay in San Francisco long term. Almost every Korean here is a student or a traveler. I hosted several Koreans and other Asians at my house as a Couchsurfing host much as I did in 2014 since I enjoyed meeting new people, but sooner or later they eventually leave since they are temporary, and once again I become lonely. There’s very few options for me anymore other than to just tough it out this year and save money to go to Vancouver next year or year after. There’s no way I can move back to Canada right now since the American dollar is so strong and I can earn literally double what I can make in Canada.

    I also don’t think I’ll ever move back to Korea again. And unfortunately for Korean girls, most Korean girls that I like either have a bf already, or live/work in Korea, and don’t want to move abroad or are not interested in me or all three. Since they are so conservative especially compared to Chinese, Koreans usually stay within their own country and date their own race. This makes it very difficult for a foreigner like me. Working in Korea is so hard and most Koreans are incredibly busy due to how much they have to work, and they make very little money on top of that. So there’s pretty much no point to try to work in Korea if I can get an American job.

    I can try to find a remote job again, but then I would have to risk the time difference problem and thus my health again, which I don’t want to do. What if I was a freelancer and could work my own hours in Korea? Well, that would be better, but there’s still a fundamental problem… in Korea most girls meet guys through blind dating. In Korea I never had many friends that would introduce me to girls. The main reason I believe (since I can speak Korean fairly ok for conversation) is because I couldn’t stay in Korea long term, and eventually I would go back to Canada or US. And that will always hold true. I don’t think I would ever live in Korea long term… its very difficult for me to do so since I don’t have a house or family there. And since Koreans are so conversative about moving or living abroad, basically this narrows my chances to women who: 1) I can meet either at meetup or online 2) keeps in contact with me (very difficult since in my experience 90% of girls I meet online and meetup eventually stop contacting me or become too busy or get a bf) 3) speaks decent enough English to live abroad 4) has a desire to take a risk and live abroad particularly in Vancouver/SF 5) is open minded enough and has parents that are open minded enough to date foreigners 6) has good compatibility with my interests 7) is cute/slim/feminine enough for me (most Korean girls satisfy this but just putting it out there) 8) Is interested in me enough to start a long term relationship with me
    As you can imagine it is VERY difficult to find a girl that meets all those requirements, even in Korea during the 2 years I was there it was very difficult to find a girl who can satisfy all that. That’s why even if I could find a remote job, I don’t think I would live in Korea again… there’s too many challenges still meeting the right girl there. That’s why Vancouver or even Toronto are far better places for me since I wouldn’t have to change my schedule around, I eventually will have to move back there anyway since I only have a US work visa and not a green card, the Koreans there are not as busy as they are in their home country, and the Korean girls there are already “pre-filtered” in a sense (they already have a desire to live abroad since they are already there, and probably have a desire to meet foreigners as well). Of course, the downside is I would still have to find the “right” girl but I think my chances are as good as it can get if I move back to Canada. It’s not like I had good chances getting girls to like me in Korea, their home country anyways.

    On a positive side note.. I did a brief overview of all my UMPC collection / gadgets! here they are:

  • 2016: Year in Review

    Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. Gosh, is it the end of the year already, I’m already almost 30 in Korean age! 2016 came and went pretty fast.. I think the major story here is that I found much more success with women this year than I did last year, which is great, but the night schedule of working in Korea and having ill health finally wore me out. This year I got both incredibly homesick for Canada/California when I was in Korea, and also got incredibly homesick for Korea once I got back. I always have some form of depression or loneliness wherever I go – whether it be in Korea or USA. Both countries have advantages and disadvantages. In USA, I have access to everything I want, people speak my language, the weather is good in California and I can go see a doctor whenever I want. In Korea, I have easy access to beautiful girls and nightlife wherever I go.
    So, the ups and downs always haunt me – I could never be fully comfortable living in Korea and at the same time living in California was also boring and lonely.

    Highlights
    -Trip to Japan and Taiwan, finally completing my East Asia tour
    -Dated at least 5 Korean girls this year, overall a much more successful year in relationships than last year, and I learned alot from each one.
    -Got Lasik surgery done, which improved my self-confidence a lot.
    -Got my San Francisco apartment back! My health should also start improving since I am in the regular sleep cycle again.

    Lowlights
    -Lost a combined $8000 in bets from both the Cleveland Cavs winning and Donald Trump winning – both underdogs btw. I’ll never underestimate underdogs again.
    -Didn’t find any Korean girl who could come back to USA with me. This is obviously one of the biggest failures of my life, and makes me wonder what I ultimately accomplished during my 2 years in Korea. Of course, I don’t regret it, and I learned a lot, but still. This was a big disappointment for me. Now I am prompted to move somewhere else again just because San Francisco has so few Korean girls.

    Summary
    I think the most important thing for me this year was that I gained a lot of relationship experience, and I got a lot of feedback about how to treat Korean girls and ideas about what they like and dislike a lot better than before. Last year, I was essentially still blind to what they liked. This year, I amped up the aggression and confidence a little bit, did lasik surgery, changed my hairstyle, and it seemed to make all the difference. That said – I have to keep it up. I have to keep working on my Korean and working on my next goal of getting to Vancouver – because ultimately San Francisco isn’t the same as it was even 2-3 years ago. I have few friends left in SF – most of them went back to Korea so I know just 3 good American friends here – all guys of course. There’s virtually no ways for me to meet Koreans here anymore, and very few go to meetup or online language exchange websites anymore. My ultimate failure to keep a relationship in Korea and bring a girl back is what causes my current situation and next challenge. I have to keep trying therefore, to achieve my goal of marrying a Korean girl – but it has to be done either in USA or Canada, which makes things all the more challenging. But I don’t really have a choice – unless I want to work in ‘Hell Joseon’ (what Koreans refer to Korean work culture as), I could never stay in Korea long term.. this is the only thing I can really do, and fight for, and I’m not getting any younger just sitting around.

  • Farewell Tour of Korea, plans for the future

    One month left until I leave Korea. How time flies. Over the last 2 months I’ve been traveling around Korea for my last trip and farewell tour… going to Daegu, Busan, Gyeongju, Ulsan and Jeju island.

    It was a really good time, even though I traveled alone (and theres tons of couples in Korea like always), I’m used to doing things by myself, so it was alright. Jeju was probably the best, lots of beautiful scenery there, especially in Udo island.

    These days, I’ve been so homesick about my home in San Francisco, its driving me crazy… I keep looking at old pics of my home, even reconstructed my home in The Sims 3 just to get the feeling of being back… but its not the same. I’m tired of living in Korea now. Turns out, working at night, sleeping in the daytime, and eating instant ramen and fast food everyday for 2 years can take its toll on my body. I’ve traveled everywhere, done everything, and now I just want to say goodbye to my friends, sell all my Korea stuff, and go back.

    I’m a little bittersweet about leaving Korea though… I am leaving in one month, almost exactly one year after I arrived in Korea in Dec 2014. Can’t believe its been 2 years already. My feelings about Korea have changed obviously since I first arrived here.
    When I first came here, I was excited at the prospect of living somewhere new in Asia, experiencing the nightlife, meeting lots of pretty girls, all while making American salary. That sounds good on paper – but in truth, Korea turned out to be much better for traveling than for living. When you come to Korea for the first time, everything is amazing. Everything is open late. Everything is done very fast and efficiently. The subway is one of the best in the world. The women are super feminine and gorgeous. The service is awesome. You can drink alcohol in public. There’s no shady drugs or gangs roaming around, its a very safe country. But then once you start living there, things become different.
    The nightlife got tiring after a few months. The girls were much harder to get than I expected. Friends become busy and cannot hang out often anymore. And doing things in Korea became very difficult because they prevent foreigners from doing a lot of things. For example, getting internet, buying a phone, getting a phone contract, buying things online etc all those things require Korean citizen ID or a Foreigner resident ID (which I don’t have since I work remotely). All these things made it very hard for me to live in Korea.

    And Korea is really a place where being alone is kind of boring. Because of how Korean culture is, most people you see in Korea are in a relationship, and when they are in a relationship, they don’t usually hang out with their friends anymore and focus all their time on their partner. That’s just how Korean culture is.

    1) Most people in Korea meet their partner through introductions from their friends, which you can imagine is geared towards native Koreans. As a foreigner the only methods I could meet someone is through going to meetups or language exchange websites/apps. But as I learned, a lot of other guys (even Korean guys) use those methods to meet girls, and most Korean girls are very loyal to their race and prefer to date Korean guys. Furthermore, the majority of girls I am meeting are only there for language exchange, not interested in a relationship, or simply too busy or not interested to continue contacting with me.

    2) In Korea, work is like hell, and office workers, teachers, etc almost all workers work very long hours and are often very busy as a result. So most of my close friends are too busy to hang out with me. In addition, some of my friends are getting or got married, and so obviously don’t have time to meet either. So, the difficulty in getting a girlfriend / getting close to girls compounded with my friends being busy, and seeing couples all the time on the street and tons of beautiful girls outside that I will never have a chance with, led to a very depressing and lonely 2 years for me. I am disappointed, though I don’t regret coming to Korea since I learned a lot here and matured a lot, especially with regards to relationships and knowledge about Korean culture.

    3) This also combined with the fact that working the night shift is slowly ruining my health and sleeping patterns. I noticed that I don’t have as much energy as before, not as productive at work as before, getting sick easily, and not sleeping very well either. Getting a job in Korea would be worse because I would still be working until very late, but not making much money and working more hours and not having enough time.

    4) The fourth reason is not being able to do what I want (like buying things online, or having a real cellphone number), eat the food that I want (only Korean food and instantfood in supermarkets here), is what led me to become very homesick and sick of Korea these past 3 months.

    These four reasons are the main reasons why I cannot stay in Korea for the long term. Its a great place to travel, great place to party, great place for nightlife, and the girls are absolutely stunning. I do have a bias towards Korean girls, but I hands down think they are the best girls in the world. They care so much more about their appearance compared to other girls (makeup, fashion, etc everything), they are extremely feminine (never saw any tomboys here) and they also care about their boyfriends and husbands a lot (trust me I’ve seen so many Korean girls being lovey dovey with their bfs everyday). They make great girlfriends (had experience with this) and wives (they often do cooking/cleaning/housework and take care of kids well), and they are loyal, nice and polite. The girls will be the main thing I miss about living in Korea, but I realized something when I thought more deeply about moving back to USA and Canada.

    I can always find Korean girls back in USA and Canada (albeit there’s less of them and more competition, but there is still).. but I cannot enjoy my US/Canada life in Korea. Finding a Korean girl to bring back to America has also been difficult. I thought it would be easy since Koreans live such a hard life, and I had a good job and apartment in San Francisco, already, but I discovered that most Korean girls were very conservative about changing their life patterns… they didn’t want to quit their job or move abroad even if I promised them I would take care of them. They don’t like to take risks in general. That’s a difference in thinking, I believe. So I thought maybe the more open minded girls were back where I came from… the ones who were already abroad. It would be easier to convince them. I had been looking in the wrong place the whole time. And although I will have more competition from both Western men and other Asian men chasing them, I have matured somewhat during my stay in Korea. After having several Korean gfs here, I learned a lot about Korean girls, their thinking, their culture, a lot about how relationships work in Korea. I also found there was a massive difference between Korean girls and Chinese girls, both in looks and in personality. Since I grew up in a Western country, I have to be more open minded to look for girls that are the best for me, everywhere in the world. Not just my own race, not just in my own country. And having traveled to China, Europe, Taiwan, Japan, etc I still maintain a firm belief that Korean girls are 100% undoubtedly the best girls for me and in my opinion the most perfect women on earth. They are special and unique (I already explained this in previous posts), and I will keep trying to achieve that goal of finding a good Korean girlfriend and marrying her.

    Last year, I had the worst luck with Korean women, but this year was better. The past 3 months I’ve met at least 5 girls that were willing to date me – as long as I were to stay in Korea. Where were they last year?? I cannot stay longer this year, even if I have a really beautiful sweet girl by my side here… the longer I stay, the more I ruin my health, and plus I have a lot of things to take care of back home in the US. I also have to prepare for my plan to move somewhere else next year. Its just unfortunate that I met all these good girls way too late. Bad timing, as always. Anyways, I hope that experience can help me find a Korean gf eventually back home.

    So.. where is home now? The next step of my life is coming up. I will not stay in San Francisco, and the next place that I will move to will be Vancouver, Canada. Why Vancouver? It seems random, but there’s several reasons why Vancouver is the place I want to settle down:

    1) Vancouver is about half the price of San Francisco, despite Vancouver being the most expensive place in Canada. This speaks a lot about how expensive SF is. I will have to pay more tax in Canada though, but that will be ok. It is also cheaper than living in Seattle or San Diego, two other places I considered, after factoring in the exchange rate.
    2) Vancouver has West Coast climate and its the warmest city in Canada. I don’t like snow or cold weather so I ruled out New York and Toronto.
    3) Vancouver has the second highest concentration of Koreans in Canada, after Toronto. Since Toronto is a much bigger city, I should be able to find Koreans more easily in Vancouver. I’ve spent a lot of time explaining why I prefer Korean girls over other girls (Asian or Western) so it makes sense that I would choose a place with a high concentration of Koreans.
    4) Canadian food. Boy did I miss my Canadian sausages, flavored chips, Pizza pockets, Swiss Chalet, Timbits and Poutine…

    So now my plan is to get my SF apartment rented out again, get my mortgage down to a level where I can borrow enough money to buy a place in Vancouver. That’s four reasons for leaving Korea, and four reasons for moving to Vancouver. I wouldn’t say I “wasted” the last 2 years in Korea, but definitely it was disappointing. The one thing I can say is I matured a lot and learned a lot about Korean culture, and handling Korean women (I’ve had 2 official relationships while I was in Korea). And its something I can use for my advantage in the future. Am I disappointed that I couldn’t find the girl of my dreams and bring her back? of course, but that’s how life is. Nothing comes easy. Everything is step by step. You have to wait for the right person, the right opportunity, especially for a guy like me who is very serious about relationships and don’t want to waste my time with short term flings. Patience is a virtue. I will come back to Korea in the future, but only for traveling, as it still is my favorite country in Asia and one of my favorite countries in the world, and I still have lots of friends there.

  • Financial troubles and Youtube troubles

    Well, I blinked an eye and its October already. My best friend in Korea left already so now I’m even more lonely than before… what can I do. Moving back to SF isn’t an option thanks to insane housing prices there and moving back to Canada is just more depressing. Looks like staying in Korea is still the way to go.

    Some updates – I’ve been calculating my net worth since Aug 2009 – and my net worth this year is actually the same as in Nov 2013. Which means that I’ve lost net worth despite making money last year and this year. What happened? Well, the short answer is, excessive buying/selling, collecting vintage electronics, paying back owed taxes, bedbug issue, excessive rent in Korea/SF, excessive cellphone bills, alot of travelling, and a bad stock market this year.

    If we break down the spending on Mint.com, I can see that for last 12 months:

    -36% ($35,205) was spent on shopping. This doesn’t mean I bought this many items; I bought and sold alot of things, and including eBay and UPS shipping fees, I lost alot of money here as well. I also spent alot collecting my vintage PDAs/UMPCs/gadgets, video games, Magic cards, etc so thats why this category is so high.
    -19% ($19,181) was spent on mortgage and condo management fees. This is valid, since there’s no way to avoid this.
    -7% ($6,843) was spent on travelling. Since I go back to USA every few months, this can’t be helped as well. I already went back to US twice this year and Toronto once. I will travel to Europe next week, go back to US again, and then back to Korea. And then later this year I’m going back to Toronto again. That’s 2 trips to Toronto and 3 trips to San Francisco and 1 trip to Europe all in one year.
    -7% ($6,419) was spent on food. This is valid, since eating with friends is pretty important.
    -$6,450 was spent paying back owed taxes for 2013. Turbotax must have made an error 2 years ago or something. This really impacted my finances alot.
    -4% ($4,264) on entertainment. This would bars, lounges, clubs and Steam games. Probably could be avoided.
    -3% ($3,408) on Bills. Yeah, yeah I know.. I’m spending way too much on my cellphone bill. I need to figure out a way to bring this down, I think my AT&T contract for my iPad which I’m not using expires in Nov so I can at least get rid of that.
    -3% ($3,500) on getting rid of bedbugs. Yeah, not only did last years bedbug problem give me permanent scars, I also had to pay up the arse to get rid of them.

    So, I’ve figured out some ways to increase my revenue and reduce spending, which I will be serious about starting next year. Here’s my plan:
    -Sell all the excessive electronics and other things which I don’t use or need that often. This includes my unused PS3/PS4 games (sadly, Steam games and Playstation Network / Nintendo eStore games can’t be sold), unplayed Magic cards, unplayed records/LPs, gadgets (UMPCs,computers,PDAs,speakers,headphones,etc) that I feel are useless, unnecessary or not worthy to collect, extra guitar gear (Traynor amp and Gretsch white penguin), extra audio and video equipment like my microphone and extra tripods. All this is worth probably at least $7,000.
    -Increase rent. As a landlord, its my duty to increase my rent to reflect local prices and I’ve been undercharging my SF apartment for it. This should be some nice extra cash.
    -Move to a cheaper place in Korea. I’ve been living in one of the most expensive places in Korea and I can cut the rent in half by moving just a few stations away.
    -Migrate this website to my own server hosted on my Synology DS. Yes, so I won’t need to renew the $300+ hosting fee with Bluehost every year
    -File my scooter as PNO – I’m not operating my scooter anymore so no longer need to pay insurance or renewal fee, this is already done.
    -Consolidate my electronics. I just got a nice Creative T4W 2.1 system which has bluetooth and optical in, which should mean that I can sell the following with no loss of functionality: Samsung soundbar, Polk Audio hampden, Klipsch KMC 3, Audyssey Wireless Speakers, Marshall Acton. That’s 5 speakers replaced by one! I can use the same system for my PS4/PS3/Mac Mini/Asus/TV that’s great consolidation.
    -Be satisfied with what I have. I have an incessant need to upgrade equipment and I should stop doing it. I still use my iPhone5S. That’s a good thing. I should do that with my other electronics. Use it until it breaks.

    I also would like to make some money off of Youtube (I have over 1500+ subscribers) but here’s the problem: My current account is associated with an invalid or suspended Adsense account and there’s no way I can get that fixed. So I tried creating a new youtube account with a valid Adsense account and started uploading some videos – Youtube flags all of them as requiring some proof of copyright! Even if its something as recording some DOS games or my own guitar music! That’s not in violation of any copyright! Other youtubers like PewDiePie record games all the time so why can’t I do it? So I deleted that account because I thought its useless since I can’t monetize but it doesn’t delete my subchannels underneath it… and I need to be logged in to delete my subchannels so now I have some extra youtube accounts floating around that I can’t delete!
    Get your act together Youtube! Why aren’t the subchannels deleted along with your main account? And why won’t you let small time people like me monetize videos? Seems like a big middle finger from Youtube for me as far as that revenue stream is concerned. Blah.

    Anyways, In other news I’m going to Czech, Austria, Croatia, Bosnia and Turkey in a week. I’ll write back after I get back from my vacation :).