Work Life Balance

Work Life Balance - Fall 2008 from Jimmy Tran on Vimeo.

Summer BBQ Series - 2008

Summer BBQ Series 2008 from Jimmy Tran on Vimeo. 12 Weeks, 12 BBQs. It started with Paul, Freeden and me trying to schedule biweekly dinners over the summer in an effort to resurrect our over the top dinner feasts from summer of 2005. Thursday BBQ expanded and became my reprieve from a summer of QE studying and fieldwork planning. It's memories like these that I'll probably hold dearest while researching in China this next year, perhaps singing "Yes Berkeley" when I start feeling nostalgic for warm summer nights and the comfort of familiar smiles. It's certainly what happened to my childhood best friend Mike Struwin after he and his girlfriend Jen left the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan for life anew in far away Portland, OR. "Yes Michigan" is a cut from his 6th and latest album (http://www.solserenade.com/band.html), a tribute to Jen and to the amazing life they left behind back in small town Michigan. Paul Albertus begins the video w/ a July 4th recitation of an excerpt out of Walt Whitman's "Inscription to a later edition of leaves of grass," evoking images of friends and memories accrued over one's lifetime, a fitting introduction to the memories created this summer on Thursday nights at 5645 Miles Ave. And of course I had to squeeze in Ryan Adams "Pearls on a String," acoustically resonant with Mike's piece and one of my favorite finds from this past year.

Thanks to everyone for making the Summer BBQ Series 2008 such a success...

Amazing Friends, Inspiration, and Perspective

http://www.npr.org/blogs/mycancer/2008/06/my_cancer_1.html

Check out slide #11 in the photos, my dear friend Liz D. is highlighted amongst the many others in this world dealing w/ cancer . You are AmAZing Liz.

Baseball and Expat Life

For those that know me it should come as no surprise that I've got a travel bug and plan to expatriate one day. It's like I know this secret that no one else does, or at least very few of us do, and that there are even fewer of us who actually act on it. What is it that keeps everyone stable and uni-country bound?


My Cornell buddy Ivan S. flew into town yesterday for a 2 month PhD research stint here in the Bay Area, having just finished 16months fieldwork in Vietnam on remittances and transnational capital flows. What better way to reintroduce him to the area than w/ a good ole' American baseball game, Philles vs. Oakland. Good times, even though we didn't make it there until the 6th inning! One of the great things about baseball games is that you've got a whole lot of time to just shoot the shi% and talk about anything and everything under the sun; this is especially true after boozin on 2buck chuck all evening.

I asked Ivan if he was sad to leave Viet when he did, implying that 'life is good' in a land where the Dollar stretches and food, entertainment, culture, etc. are abundant. I respect his opinion b/c he has lived abroad both in childhood and adulthood, as his father is a prof of international development and he a grad student in transnational related topics. In short, Ivan is glad as hell to be back and is sort of done w/ the international fieldwork. He likes clean air, English, and all the amenities that come w/ living in the developed world. I'm always sort of surprised to hear this kind of response, and wonder if and when it'll happen to me. I'll let you know when it does.

Summer Dinner Series

The summer dinner series is on, so good.

Mongolia Roadtrip!!

This is the story of 6 intrepid backpackers traveling together in a far, far away land. It was one of those rare, magical encounters where wandering souls stretching from all corners of the world collided at just the right moment, at just the right time, and at just the right place to make a most wondrous, smiling- and laugh-filled trip happen. I'm honored to have traveled w/ such amazing seasoned and experienced backpackers. Thanks, everyone, I'll never forget this one....

And btw, I hope to get around to actually cleaning this up one day, but I was inspired by Daphne's recent Camino trek and thought I should just publish this darn thing, b/c who knows when I'll get time to work more on it!

Vista Sucks

Crucial to a smooth and enjoyable roadtrip is proper audio. For me this includes downloads of thisamericanlife and radiolab podcasts. The only problem is that my Dell Jukebox (old school mp3 player, 15gb) doesn't have drivers for the Vista that's running on my laptop! Sooo, no new downloads for my 10hr roadtrip to Portland, grrr. Suggestions welcome.

Experimentation

http://www.vimeo.com/785435

This is a series on experimentation and modernity in every sense. Beyond giving us snippets of Dubai's obscene grandeur, we are seeing Marketplace at the juncture of online broadcasting and video technology experimentation. It's wonderful to see raw and quickly edited video from a show that's typically so well refined. I'm sure that just as we will fondly look back on Dubai's and China's phenomenal urban growth and social engineering of the early 21st century, we will also marvel at the online experimentation and presentation of 21st century media that reports on them.

Napa Valley Marathon

'08 Napa: 3:59:58
'01 Philly: 3:52:26

Viet Nam

Why I have a love affair w/ Vietnam....

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=74e0011bd397f3fdad54e60c3b52612d009fa8bf

I'm still getting Hong Bao (Red Envelopes) from relatives for Chinese New Years. I'm 28. That's scary.

Final Long Run - Embarcadero to Golden Gate Bridge to Coastal Trail

One is when you know you're certainly not done.
Two, did I forget my gu?
Three ain't for me,
Four today's magic number is 24.
Five and things are startin' to jive, but it's not until
Six when I finally start to get my clip.
Seven, oh just three more of em', no problem cause I just
Eight my banana and by
Nine my legs will know they're going to do just fine. But it's at
Ten when thoughts of turning around at
Eleven creep in. Finally,
Twelve is my stop, time to do it again. And by
Thirteen I start to beam, for I'm now more than halfway through this dream...

East Bay Marina Long Run

Aesop: The Fox and the Grapes

Baba, Mama and Bro came out to Cali for a wonderful weeklong tour of the Bay Area during the Holidays. Up until their visit I thought I was in relatively good shape and had at least enough stamina to outlast the aging parents - wrong, I'm pooped! I can honestly say that I haven't done that much sightseeing my entire 2years living here in Berkeley. Pure awesomeness. Everyone shacked up at my house since my two sweet roommates went home for the holidays. *Roommate Sarah now calls her recently retired parent's sailboat "home," which this holiday season is docked in the Caribbeans - now that's how to RETIRE.... which is a topic I've been ruminating on in this new tax year...



It's hard to think 35years down the line, shoot, I can hardly plan for weekends let alone what I'll be having for dinner (sweet and sour shrimp?). And there's plenty a tender youth can't be expected, or even be allowed to know. One of the many motherly soundbites from this past week includes: "I'm so happy to see that you know how to take care of yourself now, BUT, there's still so much you don't know..." It's the latter that continues to echo and play with my psyche. She has always used that line, dangling it in front of me like the unattainable grapes in Aesop's classic "The Fox and the Grapes." I believe her though and don't see this yet-unattained-sage-wisdom as the fox's sour grapes. That knowledge to me is true and valuable, and I look forward to the day that I can not only know, but also share what only experience and time can teach.




One goal that has not turned into sour grapes for me is Retirement. For many, especially my peers, it's a seemingly distant phase of life that has no relevance to us now. But in this new year, and new *tax year, I wish more of my friends, and especially classmates, would begin thinking about this distant milestone. Luckily we 20-somethings have on our side both time and a relatively high tolerance for risk. What many of us don't have, unfortunately, is the sage-wisdom of our elders to fully comprehend the magnitude of the task before us. That is, understanding that retirement planning needs to begin NOW before dreams of a Tuscan vacation during our golden years turns to sour grapes. But what I often hear from friends (the few that have broached the topic w/ me) is that a petty grad student stipend is barely enough to cover bay area rent and food, let alone sock away nest egg monies. My response? Simply that the power of compounding means that a forgone Starbuck's or Cafe Strada's latte today could translate to a fine glass of Argiano Suolo Toscana IGT in the Tuscan hills during retirement.



I'm not going to launch into the cost/benefit analysis of early retirement saving in this blog, there are plenty of expert websites and investment groups that already do this (see below). Once you start reading it becomes really clear what needs to be done, and you soon begin to wonder why all of us didn't start, like, last year. The goal of this blog is simply to send a reminder that this new year also brings new opportunities for us to make steps towards tangibly realizing the sweet nectar of our future. Contributions to a tax-sheltered Roth IRA, 401K, or 403B plan, among others, is probably one of the healthiest and most prescient decisions one can make this new year.


*And remember that you have up until the April tax deadline to make contributions to last year's ROTH IRA (up to $4000 for qualified indiv.), and can begin contributing to the 2008 tax year ROTH IRA (up to $5000 for qualified indiv.).


Here are few good sites to begin with:

-Grad Students Discussing/Debating Merits of Roth IRA in SCIENCE: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/tools_resources/forum/view?id=35134

-IRA explained: http://www.fool.com/money/allaboutiras/allaboutiras.htm

-Retirement Calculator: http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/retirementplanner/retirementplanner.jsp

-Target Retirment Funds (the lazy, yet smart, way to invest): http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/RetirementandWills/InvestForRetirement/OneFundRetirementBuyAndForget.aspx