How much can you want?

21 12 2013

I am currently in Singapore on a job, which means lots of sitting around.  While sitting on a boat for 4 days one has plenty of time to get bored and think, so while on this trip I decided to make a list of everything that I want that can be bought with money.  I’m sure most people can come up with a hefty amount of things.  Before reading my list, try making your own, it’s fun!   I separated my list into sections, enjoy.

Things I plan to buy as soon as I return home:

  1. Work out t shirts (20) – I’ve been climbing more often and going through the 5 I have way too fast.
  2. Exercise pants for climbing when cold (20) – I’ve been freezing at the climbing gym lately.
  3. More benzoyl peroxide and facial cleanser for acne (100) – I am running low and like not having acne.
  4. Hair sun in (10) – haha, blast from the past, thought it might be fun.
  5. Throwing knives (30) – A fun random hobby that is also deadly.  I will probably buy these when I’m under budget some month (definitely not this month).

Things that I want but don’t plan to buy anytime soon:

  1. More cooking books/resources (estimate 200) – Four hour chef has a section on resources for immersing oneself in cooking, when I get a little further along I may want some of these resources.
  2. Books on investing (About 200 for ones I have saved) – Needed as one way to decrease time working for the man.  I already have a few to read, I will buy more as I finish the ones I have.
  3. Surfboard (200) – I live in San Diego, I need to have one of these!
  4. Cool clothes (???) – Probably the most expensive thing on this list.  It’s here because who doesn’t like to dress up and feel like the belle of the ball?
  5. A quality omega knockoff (250) – Just for fun, technically a part of cool clothes. Cool accessories I guess, haha.
  6. Blackberry 10 (300) – Because my work blackberry is just pathetic.
  7. Amazon wishlist (about 340, mostly books) – A santoku knife, high DEET bug repellent, and the rest are books.  I had a nice pair of gaming headphones on the list, but  I’ve been trying to give up gaming lately, so I think I’ll remove gaming headphones 🙂

Things which would be cool to have, but I have no intention of actually buying

  1. A motorcycle (3000) – By my projections, due to travel for work, I will put less than 7000 miles on my car per year.  Also my commute is only 15 minutes and a motorcycle wouldn’t help much.
  2. Cool stuff for my car (5000) – Would be cool to supercharge, have a nice ICE system, etc.  But heck, my car already gets me from A to B fast enough  and has a cool bluetooth system.  All I need is a better phone with voice navigation to come through my bluetooth.

Things that I want or might want in the future:

  1. A PUA coach or bootcamp (5000) – Duh
  2. Lumineyes (5000-10000) –  I look like the devil in photos, so blue eyes? Heck yeah!
  3. An FRS (no intention of buying) – A cool, fast, RWD car would be fun!  But I plan to drive my car for the next 10 years, from 10 to 20 years old, just like my last car
  4. A house/rental property/condo/duplex (500k) – If I ever decide to settle, it would be cool to have.  I want to buy a house on a corner with a large backyard that I can split into a separate property and build a tiny house on, would be awesome!

That’s everything on God’s green Earth that I can think of would be cool to buy and it’s only 12 items long, 16 if you count the four things I want in the future.  Everything on the first two lists can be had for $1800 (except for cool clothes), which is way less than I had anticipated when I started writing out the list.  It seems laughable that everything I can think to buy I could go out and purchase tomorrow without using any credit.  Of course, even if I went out and bought all these things tomorrow, I wouldn’t be truly happy.  Time to make a list of things I want in life that can’t be bought with money, look forward to it!


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Categories : Money, Thoughts, Travel

Talent is not a number

8 12 2013

Movies have it right, games have it wrong.  In a movie there’s always that one genius scientist/engineer/madman that does all the coolest stuff and knows everything, you know who I’m talking about.  They save the day with science, somehow program a virus in an alien language, and just in general act as deus ex machina with a few pieces of sciency sounding jargon thrown in.

But games (and most companies) treat scientists/engineers as a number.  I was just playing XCOM and the way the games works is that you need X scientists to research something or Y engineers to build something.  I’ll take 1 Albert Einstein over a hundred run of the mill scientists any day.  I could rant for awhile about this, but I think you get my drift.


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Categories : Thoughts

Four Hour Chef

2 12 2013

Work has been crazy the past few months and I haven’t been in San Diego for more than 13 days since July.  Since it takes me about 7 days to get any energy after returning from abroad, this means I have had almost no productive time for the past 4 months.  Happily,  I am scheduled to be in San Diego for the foreseeable future!  I have made myself a daily schedule and a new list of goals (I’ll post about that within the week), one of which is to start going through and learning to cook from The 4 Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss.  I bought a lot of supplies a couple weeks ago, but finally started cooking yesterday and today.  I thought it would be fun to blog about my experiences as I learn, so let’s start with the first two recipes!

The first recipe was braised lamb, it turned out well, but was nothing spectacular.  It was definitely quick and easy, the hardest part was finding lamb in a grocery store instead of making  a trip to a butcher.

The second recipe was scrambled eggs.  I have previously made my scrambled eggs based on a youtube video by Gordon Ramsey and was very happy, but what the heck, why not try it a new way?  The eggs turned out great, I learned that refrigerated foods should be “tempered”, how to separate egg yolks from egg whites, and learned that if you cook eggs in grapeseed oil then you can add various flavor combinations to “taste the world”.  I’m still debating how to handle the extra egg whites, I am thinking either alternate scrambled eggs and omelettes, or just add cream instead of removing egg whites.

Sidenote: WholeFoods is AMAZING.  Built in bar, huge selection of premade food, awesome ingredients.  If I lived closer to one I would probably say forget cooking and just buy food there premade!


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Categories : Kitchen

What if everyone stopped drinking coffee?

2 11 2013

The economy doesn’t make sense in my eyes.  It’s something I enjoy thinking about and I wanted to share this thought with you.

What if everyone, tomorrow, stopped drinking coffee?  What would be the impact to the economy?

Aside from a very small group of people (military, boat captains, anyone required to remain focused for 12 hours or more per day), I posit that coffee is wholly unnecessary.  Some may call BS, say that they need their coffee, but I bet if they gave it up for a week and found some more time to sleep by cutting something out of their lives, they would feel a lot better and laugh at the thought that they needed coffee.

So back to the question at hand, what would happen if the world dropped coffee?  A quick google search says in 2011 Starbucks employed ~150,000 people, and that’s just one chain.  Just as a quick estimate let’s say 300,000 people worldwide have a job directly tied to the selling of coffee.  So, 300,000 people, roughly the population of Anaheim, CA, are now out of a job.  Everyone that grows coffee beans is now out of a job (but they can re-purpose their land).  Everyone that ships coffee, builds coffee makers, and sells anything coffee related (filters, creamer, etc) has lost some if not all their business, and likely sitting on a lot of now useless inventory (although they can slowly unload that on the small number of people that actually require coffee).  In essence, the economy would be negatively affected.  Update: if you believe Business Insider over 25 million people have jobs directly tied to coffee.

So the global economy is going to take a small but noticeable hit and hundreds of thousands of lives will be affected.  But in reality, what’s changed in the world?  The same amount of farm land would exist, the same semi trucks and shipping aircraft would still exist, and in essence if you think about the resources of the planet, they would all actually increase.  More farm land freed up by not growing coffee.  300,000 plus people now free to work other jobs.  A few dollars a day extra in every coffee drinker’s pocket.

And yet, the way our economy is set up, despite all the positives, this would be a negative event.  Weird right?


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Categories : Thoughts

Why I donate blood

11 08 2013

Yes, donating blood is a “good thing to do”, help your fellow man, blah blah blah. But that isn’t what motivates me to actually take time and go donate blood. What does is this story 20 years into my future:

I am driving along and a car smashes into me. Nothing serious but enoguh that I need a blood transfusion. Or maybe something happens and I need major surgery, definitely requiring a blood transfusuion.

At this point, I am praying that some mid 20’s asshole whose biggest problem is budgeting for alcohol and student loan payments will take time out of his day to donate blood to save my life. It costs him nothing but 2 hours once every 2 months, except maybe 2 lost days in the gym and no drinking for a few nights. My life hangs in his hands.

But right now, he is me. So I am paying it forward. I alternate my days rock climbing and doing heavy work outs, and donating prevents maybe 2 days of exercise. I can’t get a tattoo. I lose 2 hours every other month. All worth it because I know some day in the future I’ll be screaming in an ER and hoping the next guy down the line is donating. What’s your excuse?


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Categories : Health, Thoughts

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