Random Thoughts about Life

★Lessons from Thailand

1. Cab drivers don’t want to use the meter. They want to jack with you and negotiate a flat fee that is 2X-3X what you should actually pay.
2. Cab drivers don’t know English AT ALL. When going somewhere, take the time you need to depart and then subtract 15 mins to account for the cab drivers that don’t know the places you want to visit. 
3. Assume everyone is a dude. Everyone. It’s probably better that way.
4. Sex tourists are everywhere. How else do you explain the old white guys that are with the young Thai girls (possibly dudes — see #3)
5. You can walk in any direction and reach a 7-Eleven in 2 minutes. They are everywhere. 
6. Divide any offer for a good or service by at least 2 and then negotiate from there. Thank me later. 
7. Thai people can’t make pizza, Mexican food or any other food that didn’t originate from the area. Resist any urge to try these foods in this new place.
8. Doing the “beginner” mountain biking course is really advanced. If you’re not in good shape, you will be destroyed.
9. Muay Thai matches are intense. You will see what appear to be 12 year olds kick each other in the head until they go down. Don’t blink during a match. You will miss the knockout.
10. The Thai shower experience will make you cherish your Western shower. 

★Lessons from Southern Vietnam

1. Everything is cheap. A whole meal for $4 or less.
2. There is no rum here. Better get used to the 15,000 VND  ($0.75) Heineken.
3. You will sweat. All the time. Did you bring enough drawers?
4. There are no white people or black people here. Did you think you could catch a brother on the other side of the Earth?
5. There are no such things as ice cubes. People put huge blocks of ice into your drink.
6. Your hotel bathroom may have a Thai shower. This means both you and the whole bathroom get wet.
7. Everyone runs a business out of their living room (literally). Your living room is a garage is a rice market.
8. Nobody speaks a word of English. You can say “Fuck shit, fuck fuck” all day with a smile on your face and no one will know.
9. The horn is used all the time. Two honks = hey buddy move over. Two honks + blaring = you’re going to get run the hell over. 
10. You will repeatedly be asked if you want to eat dog. Repeatedly.
11. People on the streets will try to sell you lottery tickets. No one buys them.
12. There’s no sense in haggling with people when you can buy a hat for $2 and a t-shirt for $3.
13. Everyone wakes up at 6am. Sleeping past 7am means you are a lazy bum.
14. You must carry a poncho in anticipation of the daily rain shower.
15. Being non-Asian and having competence with chopsticks means mad props from the locals. 

★Why I Went Vegan (for a month & more)

Over the past 2-3 years I’ve given a lot of thought about what I eat. The way I eat today is much, much different than how I ate 2 years ago, 5 years ago, and 10 years ago. I’ve read some various books (Becoming Vegetarian, Eat to Live), watched some various documentaries (Fat Head, Super Size Me, Food Inc.), and had conversations with a number of people with differing views on the subject. 

Around two years ago I decided to go vegetarian for a month. Over a period of time I had gradually changed my diet to include less and less meat and I finally decided to take the 30-day plunge. It was a lot easier than expected. Some months later I decided to go for 2 months, which I again succeeded with. In my non-vegetarian times, I would eat a diet of mostly vegetables, some meat, and grains, eggs, etc. 

Last year in November I made a 2-week trip to Ireland for work. While I was there I felt that I ate a large quantity of meat (have you ever had an Irish breakfast?) and when I came back I decided I wanted to go for 3-months without eating any meat. This meant I had to survive being at home with my family during Christmas and avoid any overtures of meat consumption. After making it to the 2-month mark in the end of January, I decided to change it up a bit. Instead of eating vegetarian for the month of February, I would take it a step further and go vegan.

As a side note here, this was a very radical step especially considering where I had originally come from. If you would have told me 4 years ago that I would be considering eating a vegan diet, I would have called you a crazy person. But as time as passed, it seemed like something reasonable to try for a month and see how I liked it.

After completing 28 days of veganism in February, I can honestly say that I think eating near vegan is the best thing for me (maybe not for you). I have a few reasons why I feel this way. During the preceding two months (December/January) of eating vegetarian, my weight had crept up. I was eating more cheese and eggs to make up for the lack of meat in my diet. I felt very heavy and bloated all the time and I didn’t like it. By the end of January I weighed ~192 lbs and had between 16-18% body fat. 

When I started eating vegan, I instantly noticed the difference in how I felt. I will note at first I felt more tired, but that was only for a few days because I simply wasn’t eating enough calories. I also noted that it’s easy to be a fat-ass eating vegetarian but much harder as a vegan. Say it out loud: you can’t be fat eating fruits and vegetables. As I ate throughout the month I definitely saw a change in my body. I will also say that at the same time I started doing yoga 2x a week, so that’s a potential confounding variable. However, by the end of February, I had lost 5-6 lbs and 1-2% of my body fat (as read by my scale). I was really astonished at how fast things had changed. 

As it stands today, I am evaluating how I want to change the way I eat. People always make it into a meat vs. no meat argument but that is just a waste of time. There’s a TED video about Weekday Vegetarianism that I found interesting and I recommend. Basically this guy chooses to eat vegetarian on the weekdays and whatever he wants on the weekends. I think that’s a reasonable change for most people. For me, my goal is to eat vegan on the weekdays, vegetarian on the weekends (so I can still eat the hell out of regular pizza), and reserve the right to eat meat during awkward social situations/times when the meatless alternative is awful. 

In the end, I think the biggest thing I’ve learned in the whole process is that we should avoid the holy war of meat vs. non-meat and really strive for eating non-processed foods. No chips, cookies, fruit snacks, candy bars, NONE OF IT. If you eat things that are closer to their original state, you will be much better off. Also, pizza is still NOT a vegetable.

★On People vs. Resources

This article here at http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/people_are_not_cogs.html got me all riled up about a topic that I often talk about: people vs. resources.

Let me clarify for all those in the room. 

I am a person. I have a family. I have friends. I have feelings. I have emotions. I am a person.

If you talk to enough business people, you’ll find them magically talking about resources to staff projects, run projects, and complete projects. “Yeah, I think we’re looking at 3 resources for 6 months to get this running.” Kid me much?

A resource is a piece of paper. It is a computer. A pen. A paper clip. 

See the difference? 

People are not plug and play. Everyone is different. We should treat everyone that way. In fact, I hate the term “human resources.” It’s an oxymoron that’s demeaning, useless, and just needs to go away. 

</rant>

★On Being 1/2 “Black”

I’ve been thinking about this post for a long time.

I am half white and half Jamaican. My mom grew up in Illinois and met my father from Jamaica who went to college there. 

Since most forms that you fill out only have a box for “Black/African American”, this is the option that I frequently choose when trying to describe myself, when I actually feel that it doesn’t really describe me.

While I don’t feel a connection to the word “black”, I am in tremendous debt to those who came before me who were actually “black” and paid the price for the current state of “equality” among groups in the United States. Because while I don’t identify with black people, back in the day I certainly would have been perceived as one. I certainly would have not be allowed to vote, own property, go to school, and live out my own version of the American dream. So it is with the struggle of Rosa Parks, the words of Martin Luther King, and the sacrifice of Malcolm X (among countless others) that I am able today to have a college degree and have a job. 

For example, when applying for scholarships, I obviously put down that I was “black” because who was going to tell me I couldn’t. I won the National Achievement Scholarship which is given to “outstanding Black american high school students” who score well on the PSAT. Without this scholarship, I would have faced many hardships in trying to pay for my college education. Did I really deserve the scholarship? I don’t feel “black” but that’s how others perceive me. 

So while I’ve gotten some advantages in being perceived as black — I haven’t faced the struggles. I haven’t ever thought to bleach my skin so people would perceive me in a different way. I haven’t been accused of shoplifting or stalked by mall security like countless other black people (maybe I have, but I haven’t noticed the stalking part). I didn’t grow up with parents that abused alcohol and/or drugs.

I will tell you one area in which I have felt my blackness — with women. On more than one occasion, I have been undesirable to a woman’s family solely on the basis of my heritage. It sucks. It’s also interesting, because in general I don’t really like “black” girls, not because they’re black, but because I just don’t find a lot of them attractive. I would totally date a black girl, it just hasn’t happened yet. While I don’t reject black girls solely on the basis of being black, I definitely have a bias against them (in terms of attraction).

The other interesting thing is how people like me perceive themselves. Growing up I never really thought of myself as “White” or “Black/Jamaican”. I was just a kid from a mixed background. When I read Barack Obama’s (shoutout to Barry!) book Dreams From My Father I couldn’t help but see that as a kid he identified more with being “black”. Growing up in Alief in Houston, there were people from all different backgrounds, so people didn’t focus as much on the issue of race. For Barack, it was much more a part of his upbringing.

A few months ago I read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist. He is one of 10 or so black astrophysicists in the world. No one ever guesses that he’s actually smart. In the book there is a classic passage about the plight of black men — many are accused of crimes they didn’t commit — others commit the crimes of JBB (Just Being Black) or WWB (Walking While Black). In the end, while I don’t feel black, I have figured out what my crime is — BBA (Black By Association). For the people who’ve come before me, I can accept that with honor.

★On Poverty

I’ve been here in Quito, Ecuador for 3 days now and it’s really made me think a lot about poverty. Growing up I had a much different perspective on this topic. I thought everyone could get straight A’s in school because I did and helping people through charity didn’t make sense because they should be helping themselves. My, have I changed over time.

When I think about the United States, I think about all the people I know who deride poor people as dumb and/or lazy. It’s their own problem — they should take the “personal responsibility” to solve their problems. But it’s not just their problem, it’s a problem that involves everyone. Increasingly I think there is a problem with the gap between the haves and have-nots in the US. Have you seen the resurgence in the Dow, but unemployment doesn’t budge?? Part of that is companies have learned to deal with less through the recession and with new “technology” it reduces the number of people you need to hire. But also, companies are stockpiling cash and returning it to the shareholders as opposed to some of the people who work on the front-line in the company. As a result, all the CXOs get paid more and more, while the blue-collar workers continue to struggle. Hence, more wealth gets concentrated in the top 5% of society.

For some of my more conservative friends this is no issue — the CXOs worked for their money. But I think the problem happens when society is too skewed and there are not realistic opportunities for those in poverty to move out of it. It reminds me of a Malcolm Gladwell book ( I think Outliers) that talks about the differences between kids from affluent families and those from low-income families. As it turns out, the differences in kids between these groups lies with the summer enrichment that they receive. Whereas kids from affluent families go to summer camps, have books to read at their disposal, etc — kids in low-income families don’t have such opportunities. Basically, poor kids forget more stuff than rich kids over the summer break. For me, that’s where the problem lies — if our rich are too rich and our poor are too poor, then I think society breaks down because people don’t have a realistic chance of making it up the economic ladder. Our country was built on the concept of the “self-made man” — anyone who works hard enough can move up in society. I’m afraid we’re headed the opposite direction.

Coming back full circle, what should we do about poverty? As I sit here in Ecuador, it’s obvious that the poverty here is much different  than in the US. Kids in poverty in the Us have a better chance of moving up than kids here. Even so, poverty is prevalent everywhere because it is inevitable in a roughly capitalistic society. Poverty is simply defined as those who live in the bottom 5/10/15% of society. Therefore anyone with the specific goal of eliminating poverty will always fail. You can raise the standards and prospects of people, but there will always be people at the bottom. However, it’s not to say that even though people will always be in poverty that we shouldn’t help them. In fact, I think a lot of people in the US have the mentality that we shouldn’t give a lot of aid to foreign countries — why should we spend money on those who live outside our borders and don’t pay taxes? It’s not realistic to say that we should be helping everyone, but I think we should help more people because while everyone is not a US citizen, everyone is a human. In addition, I understand we need to make sure incentives are aligned so we aren’t the welfare state for the rest of the world. We must help people who want to be helped and make sure they don’t take advantage of our charity. 

★On Cutting The Government

Over the past 6-9 months I’ve been thinking a lot about the changes that are happening in politics as some people get more agitated about the size and scope of federal and state governments. The biggest development is the rise in influence of all the “Tea Party” conservatives who are hell bent on reducing the size of government by cutting spending, eliminating “non-essential” services, and trying to “right-size” the government. 

As I’ve listened to all the rhetoric, I don’t think it’s all such a bad idea at it’s core. The government should be run like a business. Like any business, you have revenue (taxes) and you have costs (services). If these two components get out of line for too long, it becomes an unsustainable situation. Somebody has to pay somewhere (or you just print more money — but that’s a different story). 

However, while I’m all for getting rid of “waste” in government, I don’t think that some people really understand what happens when you cut “waste”. Because when you cut parts of the government, you are cutting jobs. When you cut jobs, people get pissed. And when people get pissed, they change their votes. So while some might contend that the 2010 election was a indictment against President Obama for all of his “budget busting” bills — I think the more realistic answer was that everyone was pissed because they didn’t have a job. In his campaign he talked about changing healthcare — it’s not like weren’t expecting changes in this area.

Back to people being pissed — when you cut the government, you are cutting jobs. Right now the unemployment rate stands at 9.1%, while the “real” unemployment rate stands to be much higher — at some something like 15%-20% after you factor in all the people who have quit searching for work and those who are underemployed.  Let’s say you get the chopping block out and start cutting programs (jobs) — where do you think that unemployment number is heading?? It’s certainly not going to be a good number. 

The other way to “right-size” the government is to reduce the benefits that it gives to people. Everyone loves to say they want to cut government spending, but when you actually give them some options, they won’t touch any program that will have an effect on them. And that’s the problem — Medicare and Social Security are the biggest drivers of the future budget, but no one has the desire to make a real change to them, because they affect so many people. In the end, you have everyone cursing any potential tax increase, but nobody wants to pay. It’s not a good combination.

I think people need to be realistic and pragmatic about how to reduce the deficit. The bi-partisan group in Obama’s fiscal commission recommended spending cuts and tax increases that draws ire from both sides of the aisle.

Will someone finally listen to them?

★On Healthcare Reform & Civil Rights History

A lot is being made about the Democrats plan for health-care reform. One minute it looks like they have their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which means they can push through whatever they want. The next minute,they lose Kennedy’s seat, and everyone says healthcare is dead. The next minute, everyone starts talking about reconciliation as a way to only need 51 votes in the Senate to get the bill. Then, you have Republicans calling reconciliation a “back-room deal” even though they used those tactics when GWB was in office.

It’s apparent that something needs to change with healthcare. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the bill needs to have this or that. I haven’t looked at all the numbers. And most people haven’t. So, it annoys me when people cling to their Glenn Becks of the world and just repeat what they say (ex: public option is bad), when they haven’t performed the analysis themselves. I’m not saying the public option is good either. I’m saying I DON’T KNOW. Is that such a novel concept?

Now, people are looking at the polls and saying that less than 50% of people are in favor of the health plan. These are the same citizens that hated the stimulus, but loved all the individual tax breaks and incentives that it created.

However, the biggest thing I think about is, who cares about public opinion? Obviously it is an election year and the Democrats are nervous about losing their seats, but sometimes on an issue you have to go above public opinion. Do you think when the Supreme Court made its decision on Brown v. Board of Educationthat >50% of citizens agreed with it? Hell no. It took 10 YEARS for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to finally become law. Why did it take so long?

By the early 1960s, the nation s congressional history contributed to growing legislative pressures for a comprehensive civil rights law. Although political pressures prevented President John F. Kennedy’s administration from proposing legislation to Congress in 1961 and 1962, the President took steps to ensure minority rights in voting, employment, housing, transportation, and education by executive action. (link)

Political pressure = white people in Congress from the South + public opinion. That means that the public didn’t want black people to have their Civil Rights, because if politicians would have voted for it in 1954, then would have lost votes in the subsequent election. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that public opinion changed somewhat and allowed the legislation to go through.

The National Opinion Research Center discovered this change of attitude in a sample survey of northern whites in 1963. The Center determined that the number who approved neighborhood integration had risen 30% in twenty years, to 72% in 1963. The proportion favoring school integration had risen even more impressively to 75%.(link)

How does this all tie together? All I’m saying is that someone needs to grow some balls in Congress and pass something that going to rein in costs and create the incentives for lower-cost healthcare. I’m not saying that I know what the solution is, but the alternative (doing nothing) doesn’t look too promising either.

★On Music Companies, Book Publishers & the RIAA

I’ve finally figured out why all these companies are getting all upset about “piracy”. It’s not about protecting the music artists or the book writers, or the movie producers. It’s not about protecting the actors, illustrators, or the guitarists. It’s about PROTECTING THEMSELVES. With digital distribution, why do you need a book publisher or a movie distributor or the RIAA mob? The point is you don’t. If you have your own content, you don’t need them to break your balls and you can distribute it yourself over the Internet in a more efficient manner than was previously possible. You cut out the middle-man!

Case 1: Book Publishers want to introduce a new windowing system to not allow some new books to be introduced in an ebook form for up to 4 months after the release of the book. Who thought this was a good idea? I think the meeting must have gone something like this:

• Hey, let’s sell these people these new ebook readers. They’re only really affordable for those who are pretty intense readers. Let’s reward them for buying these products by not allowing them to read the books the want.

In addition, when some writers want to release DRM free audiobooks because a) DRM doesn’t work and b) DRM just makes it hard for paying customers , they just can’t because the big companies are so scared of “piracy”.

Case 2: The Movie Studios keep telling everyone that their movies are being stolen. You know, you’ve seen those ads at the beginning of your legitimately purchases DVDs that tell you how evil piracy is. So since we’re in the recession and people don’t have as much money and there’s so much “piracy”, then we would expect overall movie revenues to be down right? WRONG.

It’s called listen to your customers people. I can’t stress it enough. Piracy just means you’re not catering to your customers. These companies aren’t fighting to protect the artists…they just don’t want to go the way of the horse buggy.