I’m 25, single, and contemplating the notion of marriage.  Is it something I really want or just another thing I should be doing at my age?  Do I really want want it or is it just because so many of my immediate friends are coupled?  If I meet that super-lucky someone, do I mean forever forever?  Or we’ll try our best but really we live like 50% longer than back in the olden days (what era am I referring to?  no idea), and we may end up growing into two completely different individuals who have nothing in common and at that point, we may mutually agree that we’ve loved and it was awesome, but now I really want to do something else?

And that got me to thinking about 2 things: 1) I’m Chinese, so it’s highly likely that even 50 years ago, I might be suited for an arranged marriage, and 2) even pre-airline/pre-personal car/heck, even pre-online dating era, it would be hard to get around, so even with choice, I’d be limited in who I date.

But is that necessarily a bad thing?  The lack of choice that is.

Sure, steamy 3 hours, your boyfriend’s bored to tears Victorian era movies wax of forbidden romance and the unhappy arranged marriage birthed from business deals.  Those aren’t reliable, are they?  It hasn’t been until recently that art really started to capture the lives of normal, non-elite/rich folk.  When I say ‘recently,’ I mean late 1800s?

I bet most people were happy in their marriages.  Different criteria; I’m sure women back then didn’t always assume that their husbands would be the end-all, be-all of friendship, love, companionship, & passion.  The divorce rate, due to religion & social stigma, was much lower.  This is completely a wild guess, but arranged marriages don’t sound that awful to me.  If you’re stuck in a situation, you’re going to make it work.

Isn’t the prospect of too much choice in marriage bad?  You’ll almost never find someone who’s exactly perfect for you.  And with 400 million people on Facebook, that’s at least 400 million people with internet connections and at most a 20 hour flight from you.

But if you’re forced to settled (that has an awful connotation but is it really that bad?), you’d probably be ok with Dick, James, or Bob.

In our way of thinking, perfection and good are nowhere close.  The big differentiating factor is not the relationship of perfect to good but expectation to reality.  We want perfect, and we’re likely to get pretty awesome but not quite there (I mean even Mary Poppins was ‘only’ “almost perfect in every way”).  Back in the day, the expectations were more likely pretty decent guy, who’s responsible, non-abusive, and gave you some damned space, and that’s probably what you got.

So maybe I should just lower my expectations?  Is Dan Gilbert really just trying to get laid?  Lol I’m not sure and no respectively.

Interesting exercise in paradigm shifts though.

This is a 20 min (21:20) by Dan Gilbert called “Why are we happy?” based on his book Stumbling on Happiness.  [Given how we waste so much of our time, this is a precious 20 minutes indeed.]

Dan talks about choice and the concept of synthetic happiness.  Synthetic happiness is when we didn’t get what we want.  Here’s an example I just made up:

You’re at a ice cream parlor and ask the server which ice cream to get (let’s pretend you can’t try them).  The guy recommends peach or pecan.  You pick the pecan but are wondering what the peach tasted like.  You’re happiness level is influx because you’re doubting your choice.  On the other hand, you ask the guy the same question, and he says peach or pecan but we’re out of peach.  Well, you say, get me the pecan then, you eat the ice cream, and you think, hmmmm… that was pretty darn good.

We learn in marketing that there is a balance between giving people choices & giving people too many choices, and there is an optimal number of choices but we can’t always control the market… or platforms.  What immediately came to mind, especially because I work in the social gaming industry is this:

Compared to the number of games on the iPhone, there are far less choices on Facebook, both in terms of genres & choices in each genre.  Giving people a select number of choices, it’s easier for them to choose.  Facebook has the top 20 games (you can go down by genre if you like, but I’m guessing most people don’t).  However, iPhone gives users top 25 and 50 in each genre.  That’s 19 subcategories under gaming and 20 if you count the “all games” category.  Holy smokes.

Is there a correlation between the limitation of choice and how much game developers are making/users are spending?  Zynga was valued at over $3 billion this year.  Playfish was bought for ~$400 million.  Playdom’s last valuation (in November, aka eons ago in interweb time) $260 million.  Top iPhone developers?  Confession: I don’t know.  I’m taking an educated guess in that none of the iPhone devs are getting such an astonishing valuation.

Yes, lots of factors play into this analogy, and I’m completely over-simplifying things.  But that doesn’t mean that I’m wrong.  The influx of choice is a major determining factor in how popular a game stays, how well it monetizes, and how many downloads.  [It's one of the reasons, the majority of iPhone games have such a short shelf life; they're constantly being replaced.]

Okay, we’ve looked at ice cream.  We’ve looked at gaming.  Let’s zoom out.  To life.

This thought leads to my bold statement: if a poll was taken of the self-described happiness level of people in China and people in the US, I bet more China would have a higher happiness rating (and as it continues to expand, that rating will slowly drop down to meet that the United States).

Why?  There are fewer choices in China (well, not in current Chinese cities but on average).  In types of food.  Politics.  Parking spots, if you’re one of the rising middle class with a car (horrible idea).

Because, in sum, there are less choices to be made, there’s also less buyer’s remorse.  The absence of this increases the overall happiness quotient.

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So. Without physical limitations to our choices, is there a way to artificially create boundaries in our lives that will help increase our ability to control our own happiness?  Do you believe choice is the evil villain in the pursuit of happiness?

and here’s what I got:

YAY!!!

Oh, and I LOVE the loseit.com iPhone app.  It allows me to add all the food that I’ve eaten, keep track of my weight on a cool chart, and add exercise.  I’m hoping more people use it, so that they can put out an update with more programmed in foods.

[So basically, you select the food you eat by adding food, but some stuff, i.e. Odwalla, isn't included.  You can add it by putting in custom foods and putting in recipes, which calculates your nutrition information.  But it's a lot easier to just search for it.  So I'm hoping they will put out an update soon.   It does remember the custom foods you add, which makes it super easy to add things, i.e. Honest Tea, if you've put it in once.]

I’ve been on WordPress.com for a few years now and think it’s high time that I move on to WordPress.org.

Here’s what I want: a super-awesome designer who can program a landing page for janyxu.com that will have buttons to my contact info and profiles, link/tab to about page, etc.  I also need my blog divided into two sections: professional (marketing, social media, case studies) and personal entries.  I can help with a lot of the art and html/CSS coding, but I don’t know enough PHP to make it do what I want.

So… if you or someone you know would be willing to help me, please let me know.  I’m kinda super-broke at the moment, but I will totally pay what I can and we can barter the rest.

Thanks!

What’s bad?  Let’s just say I didn’t take any pictures of the evidence, a.k.a. I was too busy being mesmerized by the food to have remembered to take photos.

All-you-can-eat sushi, burritos, buckets of food truck food, and of course there was that brunch at Marathon Grill on 40th and Walnut in Philly.  Let’s just say side car + blueberry & honey smoothie + coffee with cream and sugar + eggs Saint Bernard = a very happy, over-eating Jany.

I didn't eat this @ JFK. I just thought it was amusing (and one of the only pictures of food that I took).

So… the damage? +3lbs or 10,500 calories.  Yeah. TEN THOUSAND calories.  (God damn it.)

I’m so glad that I exercised almost 5x a week for an hour before going on this trip b/c I’m sure if I hadn’t, I would have gained even more weight.

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Sure, I got a little bit off track.  But I know I can get it all back.  No more crappy foods (including the caramel covered popcorn I couldn’t keep my hands off at work).

My goal for tomorrow and the next week is to eat breakfast. It really does help jump start my metabolism in the morning, and it may mean that I’m less hungry and less likely to eat crappy food later on during the day.  Now, I’m not going to eat a huge bagel with cream cheese like I usually do.  Instead, I’m going to grab some string cheese.  There isn’t too much lean meat at work in the morning, nor am I really going to wake up 30 min. early to make some eggs with lean ham and veggies.  So I’m going to have some string cheese in the morning.

Lunch: Meat the size of my palm.  Carbs of the same size- pasta, rice, potatoes, etc.  They’re not the healthiest carbs, but again, small steps.  Then half a plate of veggies, either steamed or in the form of a salad.

Dinner: Either more salad with 1/2 the portion of the above OR skip it.  It’s a lot easier to just not tempt myself, then go into the all you can eat catered food line at work and try to keep myself from going a little crazy.

Then, definitely gym.

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Because I have a pretty aggressive schedule: 1lb every 3 days, I’ll need to cut over 1,000 calories from my diet per day.  I’m hoping this means 500 calories less of food in-take and then 600 calories of exercising.  (I totally thought 600 calories would be a cinch, but it’s actually 1 hour of pretty vigorous exercise.  I mean pretty pissed off and working off some aggression exercise.)

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I’m 100% glad that I chose to eat during my vacation.  I could have made much better decisions, and I’ll remember that for the future.  Now… back on track baby.  The soon-to-be-sessy Jany train is going back on track.

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UPDATE: My co-worker just posted a link to Lose It.  It’s an iPhone app that helps you keep track of your caloric in-take.  Using you age, height, current weight, goal weight, and speed of weight loss, it calculates how many calories you can eat per day.

You can add calories burned by exercising (even say which type of exercise); food including nutrition and calorie information; and a log of how you’re doing each day.  It’s pretty cool.

I just downloaded it.  We’ll see how it goes for a week, and I’ll find some time to write a formal review.

Well I found her during this trip, and I’ve forgotten how fabulous she is.  She’s generous and funny and has good timing.  She wakes up at noon, not necessarily because she’s been out all night but because she was having a 4 hour discussion with friends over beer and tea (great combination!).  She prances through the snow wearing dresses without leggings because she’s impervious to the cold.  She meets lovely French grad students with blonde hair and adorable hound’s-tooth coats.  She sings along to Magnetic Fields’ songs that she’s never heard of and calls them Magnetic Fish.  She creates bad 80’s British commercials with La petit chaton sexy (a.k.a. Chars) called “Simply PBR.”

She woos cab drivers with her rendition of Chunari Chunari sung entirely in Hindi.  She pretends to be the server at Marathon on 40^th with the stuck-up waiters and pisses of the bartender (sorry bartender guy; we were more mocking the empty-brained hostess than you).  She randomly decides to cut her hair @ Saturn Club and dye it pink.  She has conversations with friends in the morning between snores.  She has spontaneous photo sessions with her best friend on the couch (Rules: take a point & shoot camera; shout out a word; make corresponding faces; and shoot!  Meerkat!).

She bitches about Wharton MBAs and their superficial, vapid speech (not all, mostly the M&A fnce guys), yet she wants a Wharton license plate holder.  She treks an hour from 47^th and 2^nd to 53^rd and 6^th and back just to get her favorite food truck food.  (It’s half a block from MoMA.  This delicious treat is only $6 and you can split it into 2 meals.  Where can you get something that delicious in NYC and be full for $3?)

She laughs and laughs and laughs without wondering when was the last time she’s laughed so much in a weekend?  She drinks side cars during brunch and giggles at Kevin and Seth’s jokes.  Interrupting cow?  She said it, a.k.a. ze French ‘that’s what she said.’   She treks out to Northeast Philly to watch Winnie the Pooh for the first time with a 3 year old.  She loves to eat burritos from Qdoba even though she’s visiting from Cali.  She eats gigantic plates of all you can eat sushi and almost passes out from the sheer quantity. She remembers that she forgot to take pictures of said sushi on said gigantic plates.  She eats Jim’s Cheesesteaks for the first time, even though she lived in Philly for 4 years.  (She thinks it’s silly that Microsoft Word thinks Cheesesteaks is not a word.)  She explores Roosevelt Island with Jaime looking for the “Korean BBQ” place called New Lok Kee before realizing that Google Maps has placed the pin in the East River.  She liked Goodburger.

She misses the tiny mice in Septa and wonders why she hasn’t seen any this time.  She’s sad that Zanzibar Blue and Stripped Bass have closed.  She doesn’t understand why the Black Cat is gone and some furniture store has replaced EMS. She forgot to visit the mural she helped paint or to call Cris when she was in New York.  She misses the old Philly, loves the new Philly, and is always finding something new in New York.  She wants to move back someday.  She got mistaken for a grad student, maybe even a French grad student, twice.

I really enjoy this Jany.  It’s 2 am on Tuesday, the day I must return to the Bay Area, my cat in Oakland, and work on Wednesday.  But can I keep this Jany?  Just for a bit longer?

In any case I went to a lovely show this evening called 69 love songs something or other. >It was featured in the Philadelphia Weekly and my friend Char’s BF was playing and it was lovely.  >I can’t stop thinking about the follozing  two songs. It’s exactly what I’m feeling about Ty.

Here’s the song and the lyrics: Magnetic Fields

A single rose in your garden dwells
Like any rose it’s not itself
It is my love in your garden grows
but let’s pretend it’s just a rose
Well I’m sorry that I love you
It’s a phase that I’m going through
There is nothing that I can do
and I’m sorry that I love you
Do not listen to my song
Don’t remember it, don’t sing along
Let’s pretned it’s a work of art
Let’s pretend it’s not my heart…
The rose will fade when summer’s gone
The song will fade and I’ll be gone
because my heart is dying too
and it’s all the same to you

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I don’t actually know a lot about the band but I really related to this song… until this one came on and I realized that I’m really not in the same place anymore.  It’s been a tough 10 months but I’m finally moving on… I think.

Magnetic Fields (again)

you wanna know if we fell in love too fast
you wanna know if this is well too good to last
you’re asking the wrong questions
you’re opening the wrong doors
i love you, i can’t touch you anymore

i can’t touch you anymore, there’s so much to hate you for
i love you, i can’t touch you anymore

you wanna tell me 50 ways you’ve left your lovers
you wanna tell me how you’ve loved 200 others
you’re asking the wrong questions
you’re opening the wrong doors
i love you, i can’t touch you anymore

i can’t touch you anymore, there’s so much to hate you for
i love you, i can’t touch you anymore

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It’s just how I’m feeling right now. More detailed (sober) analysis post-trip.

But seriously, the answer to my question is 42, 42 more pounds, and I will be at my happy, healthy (super hot) brand new body.  Whoo!

So far I’ve lost 7-8lbs in the last 3 weeks.  I weighed myself last night after dinner.  According to this morning, it’s probably more like 10lbs.  In any case, it’s slower than my initial estimate of 1lb every 2 days.  However, I found out that 1 pound of fat is actually 3500 calories and not somewhere close to 2000.  So 1 lb every 3 days is about right.

It’s really freakin’ slow, but I feel like eating more veggies and exercising is really paying off.  For instance, I totally ate baby back ribs on Tuesday.  It was at TGIFridays as part of their “right portion” meal or whatever.  I’m pretty sure 1200 calories + over a day’s worth of sodium is not the right portion.  But I ate it; it was delicious; I don’t think it did too much damage.

I’m pretty proud of my progress, even if I did want to give up at some points. But THIS is not attractive:

At least not to me.

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I’m a little nervous about traveling to New York & Philly tonight though.  I’ll be with friends, and I SO miss all the food.  SF/the Bay Area has some pretty amazing grub, especially South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Mexican.  BUT there’s nothing like Philly cheesesteaks, anything Stephen Starr, Jamaican Jerk huts, the plethora of food trucks, hot dogs, shawarmas, Abyssinia, soul food @Zanzibar Blue, Cuban at Cuba Libre (Alma de Cuba is a TOTAL pass; Cuba Libre has better prices, better atmosphere, & bigger portions), and I could just go on and on.  Oh, and I MUST go to Monks and grab a burger, some shoestring fries, & a few bottles of imported Belgium beer.

See?  I’m in trouble already.

I’ll try to keep a food diary over the next few days, so at least I’m not too bad.  And when I get back, it’s back to the grind and back to the gym.

Next milestone: another 7-8lbs, another 2-3 weeks.

I just watched the movie [The Invention of Lying] tonight as a part of K’s birthday celebration.  The celebration included bowling, dinner, and movie at her place + much random discussion about life, work, and stupid start ups.  I suggested bowling b/c I hate it slightly less than ice skating.  Tonight, I actually bowled an 87 (horrible by other people’s standards, the Olympics of my own).

Back to the movie at hand.  It was mildly entertaining but on the whole, horrible.  The story seems to drag on after Ricky Gervais (who cares that his name in the movie is Mark or Doug?) reveals the grand lie about religion and the [spoiler alert] ten commandments presented on two well-placed Pizza Hut signs.   The proverbial lesson of the romantic comedy?  That Jennifer Garner finally learns the importance of seeing a person above their looks, genes, and resume.  No one mentions that Ricky was attracted and stuck on Jennifer for the entire movie b/c she was hot.  You don’t see any of her “amazing” or “wonderful” characteristics.  Yet, Jennifer (Anna in the movie) learns the lesson in the end.  Well la-di-da.

Why is there an assumption that the hot people are purely shallow and the fat characters guys are so deep and see people for who they really are.  Oh, I’m sorry.  There is one fat lady (maybe two) at the very beginning when Ricky discovers he can lie and proceeds to try and grab a woman’s boobs.  He skims over the pair of chubby, older ladies for a millisecond before deciding a firm no, and I think that was the last fat lady you see for the rest of the film.  Of course, you’ll see Ricky in various levels of tubbiness and undress for the rest of the film.

Beyond the obvious signs of Hollywood stereotypes, there’s also the fact that the movie ends when Ricky gets the girl.  Nevermind that he’s introduced the entire world to the concept of religion and left them to believe and interpret the crap that he’s spewed.  Forget the fact that his best friends in the movie are living inept lives based on drinking and watching TV, so that they can get to heaven and get a mansion.  Sure, this could be interpreted as the fucked upness of religion today.  But that sub-plot was never explored or even alluded towards the end of the movie, so as an audience, we’ll just assume it’s a plot hole and not some ingenious commentary about religion in society today.

I’m ranting at this point.  So I’ll conclude with yes, I enjoyed the movie for the hour and some change that I spent watching with friends, but too much thought afterward would make my brain explode.  It’s an adorable Valentine’s Day movie, if you’re in a couple and want to snuggle up but the guy doesn’t want to watch the three hour Atonement (I don’t know anything about this movie except that it looks awfully freakin’ long, overdramatic, and bo-fucking-ring).

Favorite line of the movie: when Jennifer Garner runs out of the church (or “a quiet place to think about the man in the sky”) and tells Ricky, “I want to have little fat kids with stub noses.”

Random jewels (against all evaluation standards where you start and end with positives, I’m leaving these jewels at the end):

• Jason Bateman and Ed Norton make hilarious cameos.
• The product placement in the movie is pretty freakin’ awesome, a.k.a. I admired the marketing skills although Google tells me that some critics have called the movie “The Invention of Product Placement.”  I think marketers have really learned the importance of product placement that’s related/tied-into the plot.  Most directors would refuse, but it works just perfectly in this comedy/satire.  Some examples:
  • Coke: Because people can’t lie or misinterpret things in the movie, the tag line is “Coke: It’s very famous.”  Not only did they get that tag all over the movie and in some very strategic places (fat guy eating sandwich in the park… there’s a coke in brilliant red on the edge of the screen that’s perfectly positioned with polar bear and all), but it also got “Pepsi: For when they don’t have coke.”  In case all of those things don’t remind you, an example of advertisement in this alternate reality features a 10-15 second Coke commercial, and you see the progression of Coke’s taglines evolve from  the beginning of the movie to post-religion.
  • Pizza Hut: Ricky Gervais holds up his 10 or so commandments for religion taped on the back of Pizza Hut boxes, as he reveals them Moses style to the people.  ‘Nough said.
  • Budweiser:  It’s the only beer Ricky drinks.  He orders it during his first awkward date with Jennifer and continues to binge drink it when he’s rich.  In fact, Budweiser bottles are all over the movie sets.