China Tourist Visa

About fifteen years ago, I travelled to China often to help my friend with his company. I got many tourist visas since I was only there a week each time, and China did not offer tourist visas that were over twelve months. On my first trip, I only applied for a single-entry visa so I had to get another one on my next quarterly trip.

A lot has changed since that time. Due to the rise of Xi Jinping and the recent zero-COVID theater, it is a lot harder to visit China. Also due to the trade war, it has become inconvenient for work to visit China because of politics and the threat of electronic data theft. However, my friend in Beijing keeps asking me to visit, and now a coworker mentioned he may travel to Beijing for a wedding, so I am looking into getting a tourist visa again.

In the past, I would fill out a paper form, then take it to a travel agency. They would charge $35 to drop off the application at the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, then pick it up for you. This was totally worth it as long as you had time. Nowadays, you have to fill out a webform, plus provide additional documentation.

Round-trip air tickets and hotel orders (name and personal information of the applicant must be included);

Or invitation letters issued by a relevant entity (e.g. Travel agency) or individual inside China (Photocopies of Chinese ID (front and back) of the inviting individual must be included)

This requirement is new (for me anyway). It feels like you have to commit to your trip before knowing if you will receive a visa. Why not vet the applicant first, then let them plan. It is as if China does not really want visitors. Since I will not reserve flights and hotels without a visa, my friend will need to write a letter of invitation, and use her address as my “where you stay” form info.

Buying Unnecessary Stuff

I have been looking at a pair of bookshelf speakers for a long time. These are the KEF LS50 Meta, and they are very highly rated. For Black Friday, they are on sale for $1,000 per pair. For the longest time, the price was $1,600 per pair. I believe my very old McIntosh amplifier can drive the speakers. However, I already have many (mediocre) amplifiers and speakers. Right now, I do not even have the same speaker connected to the McIntosh. The left channel has a JBL speaker, and the right channel has an Infinity. These are both large eight inch two-ways and sound satisfactory.

In the past, I have been careful with buying stuff, especially non-essential things like electronics. This was mainly because I created financial budgets and plans for work, but also I was poor. Now that I can afford things, it is tempting to go out and just buy stuff I have always wanted. I have some leeway, but that could be very bad if I want to retire.

In the end, I need to decide what I want to do after retirement. Sitting around listening to music is attractive, but I have good wireless headphones and that feels like a berter choice. I also have another audio system in the family room with decent psb/Polk audio apeakers. I guess I am afraid to get hooked since high-end audio equipment can be very expensive.

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Ugh, the struggle is real. I just checked Amazon again and instead of Monday, the delivery date is now December 8th. The “seller” also changed from Crutchfield to The KEF Store. I went directly to the KEF site and had a pair of black LS50’s in the cart, but I opted out again. They are great speakers, and the price is low. I have another month to think about it.

Trader Joe’s Pork Shu Mai

This is my dinner tonight. Ignore the fact that I was just looking at an Instagram post of two coworkers eating gourmet food in Seoul, and thinking how sad my life is. I do not have a steamer, so I was using my fancy rice cooker, which has a steam mode.

I believe the instructions on the box were not geared towards a rice cooker because it said to steam for twelve minutes. I loaded up the rice cooker with water and put the frozen shu mai into the food plate. Just to be safe, I set the timer for fifteen minutes. Well, after fifteen minutes, the rice cooker shut off, and the shu mai were still slightly frozen. Not cold, but frozen. I restarted the rice cooker for another twenty minutes and I am patiently waiting.

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I was asked by my coworkers if I wanted to join them on their trip to Korea. One coworker went for a wedding, and the other visited Japan first. I originally thought I was going to Taiwan during Christmas for a wedding, but that fell through. Now my highlight for the holidays will be nine days of dog sitting as my sister’s family visits the in-laws.

Retirement Timeline

I found you yesterday that a coworker just gave notice. He has only been at our company for two and a half years, but he is one of the few that I really respect at work. We have a lot of immature and disliked managers, and like me, he actively tries to mentor the younger analysts, so they have a different perspective on management. He is also a white guy that lived and worked in China, so we often speak to each other in Mandarin.

Additionally, I am somewhat sure that two other coworkers that I am close to will quit soon. I know I just posted about a conversation with a church friend that I should stay longer at work, maybe as a part-time employee. But after hearing about several coworkers quitting, I am seeing the management issues at work more clearly, and also less inclined to drag out my exit. Depending on the year-end accounting close schedule, I am looking at either February 2nd or 9th as my last day of work.

Crappy iPhone

I am currently using an iPhone 12. It is the base model without any suffixes, and only has 128 GB of memory. Since Apple releases a new phone each year, my phone is only three years old. Ever since I bought it, the battery performance has been total shit. I remember looking at the battery status early on and seeing “service” already. I have run out of battery many times during the day, especially when I need to take lots of photos and cannot recharge.

Right now, I am trying to update the system to iOS 17.1.1. I have about 8 GB of memory free, but that is not enough for the update, and the installer is temporarily removing apps. I just bought an Apple Watch 9 so I can upgrade my Watch 6 and give it to my mom. I am self-imposing a limit of one Apple device per year, so an iPhone upgrade will have to wait another year.

2020: iPhone 12 and Apple Watch 6
2021: MacBook Pro 14″ with M1Pro
2022: iPad Pro
2023: Apple Watch 9

During the past few years, I also bought the larger iPad Pro for my dad, and the smaller iPad Pro and iPhone 14 Max for my mom. Starting with a used Apple II+ in the early 1980’s, I have been a very loyal Apple customer. They have good products, but Apple corporate is crap, much like my experience with Tesla.

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The update failed. I got an error message saying that I need 4.86 GB of free memory. That is fine, but I have more than 8 GB free:

Maybe the update process already deleted some apps since there was only about 6 GB free when I started the update process. The phone is updating right now after I started the process again. I hope it will remember what happened before the update failure and restore the deleted apps afterwards.

Also, please please do not brick my iPhone on the update.

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Whew! The update is complete. However, now I show 114.26 GB out of 128 GB used. Was that the system deleting the temporary update files, or my iPhone forgetting to restore deleted apps?

다시 만난 세계

I saw this music video pop up on my YouTube homepage just now. This song is likely the most famous K-Pop girl group song. The video says 2002, but it was originally released in 2007. I remember seeing their debut performance and thinking there were too many members in the group. It took me many months before I could recognize each member individually.

It is hard to imagine that sixteen years have passed since this song came out. I just got divorced in 2006 and really got into K-Pop because I wanted to listen to music but did not want to hear the lyrics. Soon it became the only genre of music I listened to. After getting Spotify, my music selection has been more diversified.

Salad Sugar Spike

This is ridiculous. I measured my blood sugar at 196 mg/dL before dinner, and the inpen app suggested I shoot eleven units of Humalog. I ended up injecting twelve units, then ate my salad. This the reading just now:

What was in the salad?

one head of heart of romaine lettuce
1/3 cucumber
1 Roma tomato
1/3 can of garbanzo beans
cooked chicken breast
7-8 crutons
handful of unsalted roasted peanuts
Kewpie sesame dressing

Not sure how that can spike my blood sugar by 125 mg/dL and it is still rising. I guess I was right for not getting some chicken fingers at Raising Canes on my way back with salad ingredients from Trader Joe’s.

The reading is now 323 mg/dL. I am going to shoot more Humalog.

Google Timeline +3 Years

Almost three years ago, I posted about my entire Google Timeline (GT) history. I read that Google Timeline went live during the summer of 2015 (although my first record was on May 24, 2014), you would expect a lot more dots going from five years of data to eight years of data. I also received my kidney transplant in January of 2021, so I was more able to travel. However, COVID-19 was still raging, and travel worldwide would not rebound for another eighteen months.

Here is the total timeline as of today (November 20, 2023) versus the data from November 29, 2020.

The primary difference is the summer 2022 trip to Europe. There are dots in England, Italy, and France. I also made the map wider since I saw a random dot out in the middle of the Pacific. Zooming in…

From the above, GT says on February 8, 2018, I came home from four hours, then drove 3,600 miles to the International Date Line, and drove home. Both the recorded time and GPS location are completely messed up. If. you look up Hot Tub Under the Stars, the search results show a rental cabin in Big Bear. Strange.

If you just compare 2023 versus 2020, there is a significant difference too. This is all of 2020:

Compared to 2023:

Plus, our family trip to Canada in September/October 2023:

I was also invited to two other trips this year. One was a Thanksgiving trip (now) to Korea with several coworkers, and my cousin’s wedding in Taipei over Christmas. Unfortunately, those trips did not pan out. If I do retire next year, I hope to see more dots in other US cities and other countries.

Santa Ana Winds

Not really sure if it is officially the Santa Ana winds but it is crazy windy outside right now.

This is from the Ventusky app, and it is showing 65 mph gusts near my house. The wind has been very loud since about 3:00 am. I thought about going into the office today, but it may be unsafe on the freeways.

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It feels like the winds are getting worse, but app still shows 67 mph gusts. The wind pattern is strange. There is high winds all around the LA basin, but no wind in Los Angeles.

More Retirement Discussion

I had a very long lunch with a church cell group brother. He is a few years younger than me, but we have similar backgrounds: Chinese immigrant and finance/MBA education. However, he is married with one young child, and he started his own business several years ago. I told him a week ago that I was feeling anxious about my upcoming retirement now that the time has arrived.

In summary, he suggested I try to stay on part-time for another year to soften the transition from working full-time to not working at all. I likely overshared a lot, yet he was patient and listened to everything I had to say. I am not convinced that I want to stay any longer than I have to but maintaining a few work relationships longer does sound attractive. I think my boss will have some sort of decision or suggestion on transitioning my current role so maybe I can discuss the part-time idea.

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Lunch was close to four hours. We ate curry first but felt pressured to leave after eating since the restaurant was a bit busy. We then went to a dim sum place that has a bar counter, got tea and a few dim sum dishes, and talked further.

Not good at all for my blood sugar.

Rice = bad

Another Failed Libre 3 Sensor (updated)

After posting about a Libre 3 sensor falling off five days ago, another one partially fell off today. So out of three sensors, two failed to stay on my arm. I put them in the same places as the old Libre 2 sensors and those have stayed on well after three quick failures. I just replaced the sensor and will have to ask Abbott to send another replacement. Since the sensor is smaller, there is less adhesive to keep the sensor on my arm. The crazy things is that I have not even received the first replacement sensor and the second one already failed.

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When you activate a new sensor, you must scan it with your phone, much like the old Libre 2 sensor. It takes an hour to activate, and it has been a hour since I put in a new sensor after the previous one unstuck itself. Well, the new sensor is giving an error right away.

As I was typing, the sensor returned a value of 326, which is a crazy number. I have not had much food today, so I do not know why the number is so high. Then the screen quickly flashed and now it is showing an error again, and the reading I briefly saw disappeared.

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I just sent in another replacement request. I do not know if the response system is automated, or if a human is reviewing and approving each request. They must get a lot of these requests seeing how I have two failures in only three sensors.

I think I should use the third-party sensor sticker I bought for the Libre 2. They are very large and stick very well, but hard to remove without leaving lots of stick residue.

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Updated: November 20, 2023 @7:25 am

I got a call from Abbott this morning. It came with a strange caller ID, so I let it go to voicemail. When I called back, I connected pretty quickly, which is not typical of these automated call systems. The CSR basically asked me questions that I already answered on the service request form, and they are sending out another replacement sensor. I am not sure why they called since no added information was provided. There was also a survey at the end with very poor response times, so I was not always sure what question I was responding to. It asked for additional comments, but the system cut me off while I was still speaking so maybe that was just customer service theater. Regardless, I am getting a replacement sensor, and I am using adhesive patches again to hold down the sensors.

Find My People

I only have eight contacts on Find My People: six family members, one friend from high school, and a coworker friend. Right now, there are dots in four countries: USA, China, Korea, and Peru. The last person on the list above is in Korea, but their location is either not working or turned off.

Unfortunately, everyone outside the US now is on a trip; everyone actually lives in the LA area.

Prospera Results

After almost three years of getting home blood draws and sending in test tubes of blood to Natera, I finally received a link to my Prospera results. From their website:

Covered by Medicare, Prospera is a transplant rejection assessment test that uses a simple blood draw to evaluate the risk of rejection of a transplanted kidney.

Through the use of advanced cell-free DNA technology, Prospera increases a provider’s ability to identify otherwise undetected rejection that might lead to kidney loss. Catching transplant rejection as soon as possible can help providers develop a treatment plan to best protect the donated kidney.
https://www.natera.com/organ-health/prospera-organ-transplantation-assessment/

Hmm. I guess I never saw the Medicare part. I have not paid for any of these tests for the past three years. I orginally thought it was part of a research program, but it appears that the test costs were covered by Medicare. Not sure what happens when my Medicare coverage ends in two months.

As for the results, there are two measurements in the reference range: dd-cfDNA% and dd-cfDNA score. For the result to be classified as decreased risk of rejection, the criteria are dd-cfDNA% < 1% and dd-cfDNA score < 78 cp/ml.

Blood Draw Date	dd-cfDNA% (< 1%)	dd-cfDNA score (< 78)
2/25/2021	0.26%	—
3/29/2021	0.43%	—
4/26/2021	0.41%	—
5/27/2021	0.32%	—
7/23/2021	0.23%	—
10/25/2021	0.16%	10 cp/ml
1/24/2022	0.25%	10 cp/ml
4/25/2022	0.16%	8 cp/ml
7/25/2022	0.22%	12 cp/ml
10/26/2022	0.18%	12 cp/ml

7/26/2023

The results appear to say that I am at a decreased risk of rejection. However, I do not know if any of the fluctuations in the results are significant. I also do not have the results yet from the latest blood draw yesterday.

Pre-Retirement

I went into the office today as I typically do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We had one person quit this afternoon and everyone clapped as he walked out. It is a strange tradition, especially since this employee only worked about a year and was in a clerical position. I said to my boss that I do not want any happy hours, parties, or cake. I just want to walk out and be done. Since I have been at the same company for twelve and a half years, I do not think I can escape that easily.

My cell group at church knows that I have been talking about retiring for years, but the reality hit me today. A few coworkers joked that I could quit now since we received our latest vested stock yesterday. I made the same comment several times too, but it still felt like a normal workday. I will be there for at least another two months so it will become more soon.

I am feeling a lot of anxiety though. Most nights I am home alone trying to pass the time until the next day. This will be much worse if I do not have a job, and regular interaction with coworkers. When my parents retired and spent most of their time at home, my thought was “they are just waiting to die.” I am trying hard to come up with things to do post-retirement, but it is hard not to picture myself in the “waiting to die” mode.

Ukraine Call

I just finished a forty-five-minute call with my Ukrainian friend. We are still part of the ENGin program where I am volunteering to help Ukrainians with learning English. It has been several months, so we usually just chat about nothing and everything. I was asking him if he had any travel plans for the rest of the year. He mumbled something then started telling me about the recent air raid warnings. Many people in Ukraine thinks that Russia will start attacking infrastructure again now that winter is coming, and the weather is colder. He also told me that his son likes football/soccer but playtime is often interrupted by missile attack sirens, which means hiding inside for three hours until everything is clear. Sad.

Photo by Kostiantyn Stupak on Pexels.com

I do not understnad why Russia is dragging this out. I do not believe Russia will be able to steal any more land, and will eventually get pushed back. What Putin is doing now will just kill more people on both sides without any gains whatsoever. What a piece of shit.

Regrets

Today is vesting day at work. Every six months the company grants us shares that were earned over the period. Since I have been at the company for so long, I have built up several tranches of grants, and it is not an insignificant amount. However, since the next vesting date is in May, there is no incentive to stay in the very short term. Since I decided to retire, there is no equity difference between walking out tomorrow and three months from now. I did promise my boss that I would stay on for a few months to help close the year, but I am feeling more impatient about moving on.

I gave a tour last night for my niece and her boyfriend. They are sophomores at a local college, and they are very bright kids. We have also hired a lot of young people at work, and all of them are smarter than me. Sometimes I look back at the past forty years, and I wish I were more aware. It feels like I did not really have any plans in life, and stumbled to where I am now. I should have studied harder for the SAT, I should have worked harder in college and got better grades, I should have skipped my first master’s degree, I should have worked longer before getting my MBA degree, I should have been a better husband, I should have been more aggressive at my prior and current job, I should have spoken up more about the terrible management culture at work, and the list seems endless.

Since I am “only” fifty-five, I do feel sometimes that I am running away from responsibility instead of sticking it out for another ten years. I hope I do not regret this timing when I look back even later in life.

Retirement Planning

I received a flyer in the mail today advertising a retirement planning class at the local community college. I live very close to Santiago Canyon College, and they have many continuing education classes for adults. The class is six hours long, spread over two Wednesday nights. It is taught by Pure Financial Advisors and costs $49. I believe you will get a textbook and some free consultation time. I am sure they will try to sell you advisory services but hopefully I can learn some concepts. I have worked in finance for almost thirty years, but not really focused on investments and retirement. In addition, I have a couple of investment advisors already, but they do not explain the reasoning behind their decisions very well.

The class size is twenty people, and so far, there are only two people enrolled, including me. They said you can bring your spouse/partner/guest to attend the class as well. I hope they do teach some valuable information instead of just trying to sell services.

Libre 3 Sucks Too

I am only on my second Libre 3 sensor after switching from the older Libre 2 series. I probably used no more than thirty of the Libre 2 sensors and had three failures. Abbott did replace them, but a 10% failure rate is not good.

About an hour ago, the app stopped reading the sensor. This happens quite often, and Abbott suggests that the user turns the phone’s Bluetooth off then on. After trying several times, I noticed that the sensor had fallen off. It was on the back of my right upper arm and stayed for seven days (fourteen-day life) before falling off. I took many showers after switching to Libre 3, and the first sensor lasted fourteen days without any issues. I wiped the area of my arm with alcohol wipes before applying the sensor, so I do not know why it is so dirty looking. You can see the plastic needle that goes into my arm. Abbott will likely ask me to send the sensor back to them. Gross.

I went online again to the patient support page and filled out a form. When I did this with Libre 2 sensors that fell off or stopped working, Abbott sent me a replacement. I hope I do get a replacement sensor since my pharmacy only gave me six sensors for three months of usage. That works out to 84 days but there are 91 days in a quarter. I still have some Libre 2 sensors, but I am used to not having to scan the scanner with my phone.

Monday Blues

Today was a shitty day.

I drove to work this morning even though I typically work from home on Mondays. Initially I had an English tutoring session with my Ukranian friend at 9:00 am, but he texted me last minute to say that he was cooking chops (pork? lamb?) and did not have time for the call. That is poor planning. We were going to delay the call for an hour, but he decided to cancel. With no other meetings until 11:00 am, I decided to go to work. I had an important meeting in the afternoon, but I really wanted to talk to a coworker who is going out of the country on Wednesday.

Since I left home so late, I could not find a charging spot for my car. It was not urgent since I had charged full the night before. In my rush to leave the house, I also forgot to bring an insulin pen. Long story short, without the insulin pen, I did not eat anything all day, and all my meetings were cancelled or postponed to another day. I also did not get to talk to my coworker; we just traded a few text messages.

None of the items above were that important, yet I felt the same feeling of helplessness and indifference creep up on me. I briefly considered turning in a resignation letter and quitting at the end of the month. That feeling passed but I did not feel any better. At 5:00 pm, I decided to just pack up and go home. I feel totally lost.

Super High Glucose Readings

Not counting the four units of Humalog I shot at 6:00 am, I shot a total of 42 units today. So far, I only had a protein shake for breakfast and a chicken sandwich at Islands for lunch at 1:30 pm. Since SPR, I have not had French fries that often so maybe my glucose is a reaction to that? The glucose spike from lunch did not start until an hour after the meal and got as high as 360 on the meter. I did not save a screenshot but did input the reading into the inpen app, which suggested ten units. I shot 14 units instead and finally did the readings start to fall. I just checked again at 8:30 pm and it was still really high at 270 so I shot 14 units again. I have not had anything to eat since 2:00 pm. Since I am not hungry, I think I will skip dinner to see if I can get my glucose levels back to normal.