Year End Review

I have been super busy lately and unable to update this blog. My workload is a lot lighter than that in summer, but since I've been in a steady relationship with Angel I use most my free time hanging out with him, my family, commuting between us, sleeping, and planning for my upcoming trip to Australia.

Angel is really my dream come true; I feel bad about my crazy PMS behaviors and language at times towards him. Last Sunday, I was feeling so grumpy when we were hanging out in the local park because there was simply so much noise and were lots of people; my whole body didn't feel right and said bad things to him. I apologized right away and was startled by how little control I had over my hormonal impulses. He said to me, "I won't get mad at you, period." It was a facial expression and moment that I will never forget. I had never expected someone to treat me this nicely my whole life; that firm look in his eyes made me understand what love is and should be. I said I love you to him about a month ago one night when I went to his place to sleep over after work. Everything has been sweet and clingy between us; we barely argue over anything. It's just that every month during the week before my period I somehow just have very little patience and get irritated by any trivial thing. Well, there's really not much I can do about it. I told him that it's the evolution's test on men: women choose men who can tolerate their moodiness and irrationality so they love these men enough to bear children for these men.

I just wrote three Xmas cards to Angel; there are just a lot of things I have to let him know. Besides, we also enjoy exchange random love notes and kangaroo drawings with each other. BTW, our nicknames for each other are the Big Roo and Baby Roo (I'm the baby one) because I once told him that I wish he could shrink me and put me in his pocket so he could carry me with him all day and I'd be safe and warm and stress-free, like kangaroos.

OK here's my Xmas cards for him:

1. My dearest Angel baby!
I love you so very much! This is the first winter in my life that I'm not cold and lonely. I feel so lucky every day because of you. I also feel very bad about being mad at you every year during PMS. I'm aware of it but I simply cannot control it; it feels as if all the bad thoughts

2. are justified and I simply can't reason with myself. This has been going on my whole life and no hormonal supplements can change it. I'm so sorry and I'm so grateful that you can understand it and be there for me. You are my dream come true! Every time when I think of your dorkiness I just can't resist laughing. People say that the person we end up with is a mirror of our inner self. You always say that I'm wonderful and smart and cute and that's how I see you too.I love your dorkiness and naivete and your idealism

3. because I myself am dorky, naive and idealistic. You're my best friend (well we already know that too!). I hope time will prove our love strong.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year ma big ROO!!!

Baby Roo 12/17/2015

And then I drew lots of hearts and a baby kangaroo in a big kangaroo's pouch.

I think life is such a magical thing. We really do get what we wish for.

So overall, I think I've had a pretty good year. It can be reviewed in terms of the following aspects:

Romance: A+. This year started off rocky. I was dumped by a 50-year-old in December 2014. I came back from Bali and spent the New Years all by myself. Later, I kept hanging onto Ken. Then I met Mars in summer, who said such incredibly sweet things to me and disappeared. I went on several dates through my matchmaker and eventually ended up getting refunded because of the poor quality of the men there. Then, all the sudden, Angel showed up. He's everything that I've asked for in a man; one morning I woke up in his bed and I realized the image right in front of me was exactly the same as the perfect I had pictured and depicted in my journal. Life is full of magic. And I can't imagine being without him.

Career: A+. Some time in summer and fall I was feeling less patient than I should be with my students. Yes, my business has exploded and this year I've made my targeted salary. I did my best to accommodate the needs of more than 500 students. I will keep trying to be more patient and kind whenever I come across a dumb question; in the meantime, I give myself the benefit of doubt for being impatient with those less grateful.

Family: A+. Everything's fine between me and my family. They know I'm dating Angel and things are serious. I just think they need more time, or we all need more time to get to know each other.

Health: A. Menstrual cramps, caught a cold at the beginning of this year. I survived the hectic summer without getting sick at all. Bravo to myself. Occasionally I get terrible allergies or minor sore throat. Oh I do wish I got to exercise more and lose some weight. I have potential signs of varicose veins in my calves and my legs feel so tight and stuffy if I keep standing up for more than an hour (which I have to do at work). I also want to work out more especially training my arms and shoulders because the stiffness got really bad whenever I have to use the computer for my lecture or if I haven't been to the masseuse for more than a week.

Friends: A+. My students (Monica, Carrie, and Luke) took me out for a day trip to the beach one Sunday (Nov 8). Evan told me that it was me who made him find and be himself again. My students/now friends trust me with their relationship secrets and we got to get together several times this year and always ended up having never ending conversations in the middle of the street or in the middle of the night. I believe friends come and go in different stages of my life. But remember, this October my BFF who I've known since I was 20 came to visit me from the City of Power. Serendipity is also so magical.

My review of the world:
The world continues to be haunted by terrorism and economic pessimism. My personal take on this is that both things are highly correlated. As lots of research has indicated, people who go extreme for whatever reasons usually have grown up in deprived environments. I've noticed that a lot of the terrorists today are in their 20s or very close to my age. I think one main reason is that these young people entered a terrible job market during the prime time of their life with so much hope at first, like myself. And yet they got frustrated repeatedly with no better prospects in their future, so they resorted to radicalization.

As I've written before somewhere in this blog, I believe love and embrace for every baby and child is the cure to all the problem we have today, but unfortunately, that's when fate steps in. Only very few lucky people get to grow up in a loving environment like this. I personally don't think the outlook for European countries and the US is positive in 2016. There's too much uncertain in the year ahead of us. Who knows how pervasive the war will become in the Middle East? Hillary Clinton will definitely win the election and I think she's much stronger in foreign policy than any other candidate I've read about so far. Also, although the Fed has raised the interest rate (finally), it doesn't really mean the economy is really improving. To me, this sends a mixed message of many things: 1) Monetary policy hasn't really worked well since the financial crisis 2) The Fed uses monetary policies to jack up market expectations but not many people can really know about the fundamental health of the economy 3) I think the Fed has raised the interest rate because they want to end the vicious spiral where all the countries continue to depreciate their currencies against each other for their protectionist interests, as we previously experienced during the Great Depression. All these moves by the Fed so far have been derived from experiences during the Great Depression or the Asian Financial Crisis. But really, as a libertarian, I am very suspicious of Keynesian economics; that's why I'm always finding my niche in the market and moving away from aggregated economic trends.

I honestly think our world today is really not that different from everything that was happening in the 20s prior to the WWII. People today are even more liberated and enjoy worldly pleasures to a greater extent; unemployment rate during the Great Depression was about 25 to 30%, which is still the number in the EU and probably the US (trust me, uber/AirBnb/freelancing stuff like that is what's pushing the number down but it doesn't really count as full-time employment). The same unemployment rate is also applicable in big cities in Australia too, which is why AUD has been so volatile this year, plummeting as much as 20% in just freaking one year. QE in Japan worked moderately for about a year and now it's back in the dark pit of endless deflation again. And yes, deflation, that's what I'm betting on in the coming year. I do believe prices will continue to drop in the coming year. Commodity prices, housing prices in the City of Rain, and my daily expenses have been decreasing, i.e. uber, more and more big sales on clothing or travel. The only thing that I think has been increasing is dining at restaurants. But that's ok too because I prefer to cook myself. My behavior is deflationary and many other people are acting like me now. The expectation that things will be cheaper tomorrow so we should hold our purchases today is what drives deflation and pushes it into eternity. My current investment strategy is betting on this and my strategy is to do nothing with me money. As long as things get cheaper by more than 5% next year, I'm getting a much better deal than saving my money in a bank or investing it in a mutual fund.

Here's an update about my trip to Australia. I am so excited because I have never been there my whole life. I will be there fore about 2.5 weeks, including both Christmas and the New Years. I will first land in Brisbane and spend four nights in the Gold Coast; then my brother and I will fly to Cairns and explore the Great Barrier Reef for 5 days; then we'll fly to Sydney and stay there for another four days. We'll be counting down and watching the fireworks on a cruise in the Sydney Harbour. Our trip will end in Melbourne and I will fly home from there.

2015 is such a great year. I am so lucky and grateful for everything.