Kaulapi World

Decided to take a mental break from studying, clean up around the house, run some errands, I have a few days more for my 3rd final than I had for the first two. Plan to get back in the grind later this afternoon, maybe try a different coffee shop for a change of scenery.

Went up to Maryland to pick up another earth box, potting soil and some starter plants. Starting earlier this year to take advantage o the good weather and maybe get some more veggies and herbs this summer than last. So far its looking like grape tomatoes, thai basil, italian basil, japanese eggplant, chinese squash, beans two types of goya. Last year I think I started it up too late in the season by the time the plants started producing it was getting too cold and they died off.

In driving up there I noticed that the only zipcar available was a civic hybrid, something that I had been meaning to test-drive, but never got around to. It pretty much drives like a regular automatic car, with the exception that there’s this battery gauge that swings from “assist” to “charge” depending on if you’re climbing up hill, or breaking. Also the engine cuts out when you’re sitting at a stop light. I suppose it takes some getting used to, I remember talking to someone a few years back when these cars first came out and she was concerned about not having the power or control over the car. I figure as long as the thing doesn’t die on you who cares about power.

Driving up to Maryland I passed a couple of signs at $4.01 a a gallon. Thats a big chunk of change for transportation. When prices of a good or service doubles and triples in a short time frame of months or years, you either adjust your consumption behaviors or continue to throw money down a hole. It seems to be the big story in the news lately, although a lot of media time is being spent on people bitching about oil company profits when they really should be talking about the inflation caused by monetary money supply games. The scary thing about the energy costs going up is that you really can’t hide from it entirely. Even if you cut down on your driving, take the train or carpool, you end up paying for it at the grocery store since most of everything Americans consume is trucked in. While gas was $4.00 a gallon, diesel fuel was $4.22 at that same gas station.

I’m a big fan of zipcar after being a member for close to 2 years now. Being that I don’t have a parking space, and pretty much take the train to work and school, it makes a lot more sense to just rent a car when I need it rather than have to car payments, and insurance and worry about street parking permits. But the biggest benefit especially late is that the gas is free with the rental fees. I remember talking to someone at a party once who scoffed at the idea of even using car sharing programs, something to the effect of how she would never date someone that showed up in a zipcar. This was right before she started complaining about finding parking that night and how the price of gas which was then about $2.00. Lucky for me I was already happily attached at the time, but it kind of got me thinking about how ironic the statement is.

I suppose this is a girl who would appreciate a guy with the big bucks who could afford to blow money on her on top of having money to spend on a nice set of wheels. Then again when you really think about it, if the girl was really smart, she would realize that a guy who was economically aware to discern from good and bod choices would have even more money to spend on her. Then again, this type of guy probably would want nothing to do with such a money grubbing date.

At a certain price, paying for a certain good or service becomes impractical, and consumers seek more affordable alternatives.

Feel like I’ve been running on empty getting back from my work trip. Landed at Dulles at about noon Sunday, to save some money I rode the shuttle and train back home, dropped my stuff off and headed out to catch up on some studying that I couldn’t finish while on travel. Sitting at potbelly’s I noticed that it was pouring outside and the street was turning into a river pretty quickly. After about an hour of this I thought better to go home and check on the apartment - too late, half of the main room had flooded.

Spent the rest of the afternoon and evening clearing out the water, hanging up the rugs, and throwing out stuff. Luckily way back I had the foresight to try and keep everything raised on shelfs especially all electrical outlets raised off the floor to avoid an electric shock.  The only real loses were a bunch of rugs from linens and things and IKEA, no big deal. In retrospect it made for an impromptu spring cleaning.

The downside is that I lost an afternoon and evening which could’ve been invested in studying, and of course its back to work the next day. Back to the grindstone.

Close to the end of March and things are picking up as usual, both on the school and work ends. Looking like I’ll be attending a few conferences for work in the upcoming months, should be good to get out of the office for a change. On the school front I’m coming up on my last push month before finals, looking like it’ll be pretty busy from here on out. Doing some independent research on my own, have to say that I enjoy it a lot more than classes, although it is a lot more challenging since a lot of its well, independently driven. I think maybe after so many semesters of being force fed law its a different change of pace trying to find different angles and theoretical solutions to legal problems. In doing the literature review I’ve been pretty impressed with the level of legal analysis and arguments that have already been made and been published, a lot of them show the amount of time and effort that was probably put into coming up with them.

This has been a tough reminder about the costs and benefits of working on a degree during the evening while holding a full time job. I’ve gotten the full dose of the argument that getting real-world experience simultaneously is irreplaceable, but I think its every once in a while I get more than 4 hours of sleep I wonder whether it puts you in a position of being too stretched out. The main factor that has made me convinced that this has been all worth it is the financial situation and forecast, I’ll be coming out of school well below the average debt load, both the reported average and some of the estimates I’ve heard anecdotally. I don’t envision that I’ll be bound by any golden handcuffs so to speak, no 6 figure debt estimates like I’ve heard from some old classmates that decided to go into other fields like academia or medicine.

Knowing that these plans worked out more or less is worth some peace of mind, or relatively speaking at least. I’ve been keeping a cautious eye on the state of the financial markets and housing bubble/crash ever since moving out here back in 2004 when the market was really taking off and everyone I knew was saying buy, buy, buy before you get priced out. partly out of the reality of my situation, being right out of school, with little savings to boot, other part of my sense of the situation that it isn’t smart to take on interest-only, adjustable rate loans on a $600,000 condo or $900,000 3 bedroom townhouse, no matter what the expected appreciation rate was, and no matter the assurances from an industry expert that I could qualify with current credit and modest government salary. After crunching some numbers, I decided it was better to rent, save, and wait to see what happened. My gut said that the prices would eventually have to come down, at least to a historical average, although I had no idea when it would happen. I also reasoned that the low interest rates were temporary, as with any monetary cycle, and then when they did increase, the shocks to the holder of the mortgage would be pretty steep. an increase from 2% to 4% would represent a doubling of a monthly interest only payment, and unless my income was likely to double on a monthly basis, this was a very stupid financial deal to accept. In the meantime I reasoned that if prices didn’t come down, then the new reality is that nobody can afford to own without continue to rent and save until a combination of our salary and savings would increase to a point that we could buy something outright, or with at least a hefty down payment.

Somewhere around 2006 I starting coming across various blogs and websites that are out there that were offering an alternate opinion to what I was hearing in the main stream media about all the middle class, self-made tycoons of real estate investments, more along the lines of what I was thinking, that all of the appreciation and speculation was imaginary, and doomed to fall eventually, and maybe fall hard. They were all really good about poking holes in what were mostly absolute statements, and raising good questions about the economics of these business transactions, many of which were never raised by the mainstream media.

Now the latest trend in news stories revolve the ongoing proposals to bail out people who are stuck in depreciating real estate assets and resetting mortgages despite all of the paper-success of recent memory. I often feel like I’m in Econ 101 again reading about the pitfalls of moral hazards and individuals ignorant of their own risk curves, many of the recent news reports have talked about “average” Americans who are finding themselves suddenly in hard times financially in the recent downturn. There are a few things that are similar in each of these stories, first is that the individuals are living paycheck to paycheck, even making a salary that is well above the national average when some event comes along (sickness, layoff, mortgage reset) and they are unable to cope because of their lack of any savings whatsoever. Secondly there is this inability or unwillingness to face the shitty reality of the situation and make some tough financial decisions (sell the house, get another job, go on a budget), and finally there is always this call to the government to bail them out, as if they had no control over the situation.

Unfortunately it seems like too many of us have gotten so used to the assurance that a lifetime of debt is normal and sustainable both on the personal and macro levels that when it comes around and bites us in the ass it really hurts and we are unwilling to deal with it without some reflection and self sacrifice. Don’t know for sure what is around the corner, but I’m not too optimistic overall. The volume of the message that all of this is unsustainable in the long run is getting louder with each multi-bullion dollar bailout of a bank, each FED rate cut, each report of housing prices crashing and industry layoffs.

Badgers make a sweet 16 run, and are matched up with the tourney’s cinderella 10-seeded Davidson, who knocked out area favorite 2-seeded Georgetown for a shot at the elite 8, and final 4. Seems like de ja vu from the last time Wisconsin made it this far, there was talk about them lucking out playing lower seeded teams all due to a lot of upsets in the bracket.

Strange dreams, a recurring one no doubt, it comes in pieces, all of them have a sense of urgency and loss. There are two that stick out, one is I’m riding a subway train and I discover that one of the passengers has left a whole stack of partially used fare cards behind in a seat. I don’t know who this person is, but I am left on the train counting a whole stack of paper train currency, wondering what the right thing to do is. I dont’ know whose these belong to, so there isn’t much a point in reporting them as missing, worse yet, If I give it to a station employee there is a chance that they’ll just pocket it. While I’m sitting there counting the cards, 3 secret police officers get on board and two of them recognize me, and all three take a seat next to me.

The agent that sits next to me is very friendly as I am introduced by my other friends. I notice that the other passengers visibly tense about these three, and are looking away from our small group, and are avoiding eye contact with us. We kid around, talk about the weather, and the local sports teams. I have to notice that the agent next to me is carrying a very lethal looking submachine gun, semi-concealed. He offers it to me to take a closer look - the gun is an impressive work of mechanized technology. Weird things are that the sights are below the muzzle, and the clip is very small and compact. It feels very light but sturdy in my hand. At that time I kind of have an “aha” moment that I’m not in DC anymore, I’m not even in the present time either. I don’t recall how this dream ends.

First snowfall of the year in the district, and I’m in full study mode for this next round of finals. Got a paper out of the way a couple of weeks ago, then its two big staple exams, and then I have a 4 day break before the last elective course is up. After that its another smaller paper, and some administrative matters which would wrap up the semester. Its crazy enough that I planned ahead to take some annual leave this week, ironically it ended up that my job had a crunch this week as well.

Crazy to think how busy life gets right around the holidays, when most people are thinking about winter vacations and shopping for Xmas presents. I’m usually camped out in coffee shops and libraries. I suppose its been like that for almost a collective decade now. Its become second nature really, the one year when I didn’t have to go anywhere or study anything I felt kind of lazy.

Pleasant distractions/breaks from studying has been the ongoing successes of my college and pro football teams. Hawaii went undefeated in the regular season and is set up to go to the Sugar Bowl to face Georgia, who had case to be playing for a national title. Wisconsin is on its way to the Outback Bowl to face Tennessee. On the pro side Green Bay lost a battle with Dallas, but is still in the hunt for the NFC playoffs at 10-2. Finally New England has had a couple of close games but is still undefeated at 12-0. I suspect that the rest of the games will be tough, even the winless Miami and almost Winless New York. Everyone is saying how Pittsburgh will be the hardest game, and it should be a cakewalk after that I’m not so sure, after seeing how the Baltimore and Philly brought their A game on to face the Pats. Its a strange feeling really, being in a bar and hearing just about everyone cheer against your team, even though they aren’t Baltimore fans.

One thing for certain, its looking like both pro teams will be in the playoffs, and both college teams are in New Year’s day bowls - which makes for good football distractions for the winter, and the first month or so of the next semester.

Finished up my Corporations exam tonight, and I’m officially done for the summer now. As usual, I’m not sure how to gauge how I did. If its anything like how I did this past year, then I’ll be pretty happy with the results whenever they come in. I have to say that this is one of those classes that I think I got a lot out of regardless of how it turns out on paper. In all honesty I never thought I would find a class on corporate law as interesting as I did, I think part of it was the professor, but also the content of the course kept me pretty engaged in the material all these hot summer nights.

On the flip side it was pretty hanging tough through the last couple months or so, it was really like my spring semester didn’t end and carried on through the summer. looking back I realize that I have gone through the equivalent of 1 and 3/4 of law school, which would make me unofficially a 2.75 L going into the fall semester. not too bad considering this is my third year of night school, at this rate I may have the option of getting out a semester early, finishing 3.5 years total while working full time. It was really non stop, going for about 2 and a half years, I’m surprised I haven’t lost my mind just yet.

I’d like to think that I may finally be getting a real hang of things, at least the surprises and volume of material doesn’t seem as crazy, I’m able to read things quickly and get to the bottom line pretty quickly. All skills that might come in handy one day for sure. One thing for sure, It’ll be nice not having to rush out to catch a train at everyday during rush hour to head up to class, or lugging my laptop and textbooks everywhere I go. I’ll enjoy it for about a month before the next semester starts up again.

Earthbox update, I set up a flickr account to post some of the pictures. The humidity and heat are doing the plants well, the goya is now climbing up the net mesh and tomato plant stalk. I ended up saving some seeds from the chinese bitter mellon in place of the cilantro. we’ll see if that one sprouts as easily as the okinawan goya.

Linkes 7/5/07 - 7/16/07 (Law school notes edition)
Greatest boom ever, or just another bubble?
7 Sacred Pools of Oheo on Maui.
Web Back Machine - blogs and websites engraved in e-stone.
$12B a month. nuff said.
Talk about lowering the security clearance standards.

Update on the earth box project, some hits and misses. The tomato plant has shot up and appears to be doing very well, there are some flowers forming and maybe even the start of tomato or two starting to form. Both Thai basil plants are doing ok, one of the Italian basil is doing very well, shooting up like the tomato, but the other one is droopy and appears to be being attacked by some small bugs. Meanwhile the cilantro croaked pretty quickly. Of course the one that I’m paying the most attention to lately is the bittermellon which has sprouted above the soil and is climbing up. The past couple of days have been pretty mild, but I’m sure the heat and humidity coming next week should do it good.

So far its been a fun little project, little or no effort on the part of the amateur grower, the concept of the earth box as being idiot-proof has been pretty true so far. I realize that this started a bit late in the summer, but we’ll just see how far it goes. With this crazy weather I figure we’ll try to keep the box going outside until October or so since it stays pretty hot in DC for a while. That is unless there’s some freak snowstorm in September, but this isn’t Wisconsin so I don’t think that’ll happen.

A couple of days ago for the 4th I came across this citizenship test online and took it really quickly just for the hell of it. Although only got one wrong, and even that one was because I got tripped up on substantive and procedural due process rights (7th, 15th) some of them I think would be pretty hard. Hana got 4 wrong, but even she knew the significance of the various phrases, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. I wonder how many Americans, both naturalized and natural born would fare on this test. I also wonder how many hard core, anti-immigration advocates would do on this test, and what would that say about their cherished citizenship that they exclusively hold for themselves. Part of what I’ve been picking up on all the immigration bill debate is that the opponents of immigration reform aren’t being sincere when they say that they want “legal” immigration” and are only opposed to “legal immigration.” Behind all of the rhetoric is this darker motive of striving to keep a certain ethnic, religious, and political makeup.

Racism is alive and well in America, and the immigration bill debate is just another example of how the similar . In some ways its tricker nowadays when racism is buried under political arguments hidden under a legal argument. I suppose you can advocate that racism and prejudice has a legal precedence. It definitely has long track record in our history as a nation.

Linkes 7/2007
Smart Money tips when to buy stuff by day of the week
Creepy letters to investment company
Contractors outnumber troops mercs
Ajono communal brew
Housing post on suburbs
Ramen Blog all kinds of noodles
Advice to Realtors on how to sell stuff in the new market
False sense of security in a home?
Myth of Home Ownership and what it means for us
Costs of mortgaged suburbia 3 trillion?
Daily Show Dick’s move
All we need are frickin laser beams
Whole Foods or Whole Paycheck?

Mid June in the district and the heat is on, literally. One thing I haven’t quite gotten used to is the extreme heat that comes around this time of year. Today coming back from class was brutal since for some reason some genius decided to turn off the air conditioning in the building with heat indexes of 100. At 9pm it was still about 90, or 96 or so with the heat index. Another part of summer in DC is the torrential rainshowers that come hand and hand with all that humidity in the air. Last Thursday it was pouring so bad there were rivers in the streets. Fortunately the drain outside my door is working well, no flooded basement apartment yet, knock on wood.

Linkes for June 11-19
Love Thy Neighbor bombs, with apologies to Stanislaw Lem
Colleges revolt against U.S. News Rankings - Law schools to follow?
Secrecy in today’s world
National Bitter Melon Council AKA Goya
Cosumerist blog updated frequently
Top ten Copyright myths

Today marks another 3 years transition for me, this one marking my official transition to a productive member of the full-time work force from a life as a full time student, not so gainfully employed, if you include tutoring and graduate assistantships. Pretty amazing how much things have changed from 3 years ago I was a freshly minted graduate, ready to work, ready to learn, ready to try and make a difference no matter how small or insignificant in the greater scheme of things.

Time flies when you’re busy, thats for sure.

June is here and another summer in the district - number 4 to be precise. In annual fashion I should mention that this entry marks another year of this web-journal, not much for reflection in terms of entries, other than the mirror site over at Webomatica that I have been updating and tinkering with when I have spare time. I’ve been keeping up with this log-journal of sorts since 2000, although the current version only links back to June 2004 since it was getting pretty cluttered.

I’m enjoying my summer corporations class, its an area that I never really thought I’d find an interest in, being that my interests have been outside the corporate and financial world. On the other hand I seem to have an interest in crunching numbers and quantitative analysis, something that might prove to be worth looking into after I finish this degree program. I think my revisiting of this area it goes with the idea that there is a distinction between profitable businesses that provide quality goods and services and compete fairly in the market and corrupt businesses that lobby for corporate welfare and political influence. Somewhere in the mix lawyers can play an influential (good or bad) role in all of this.

Riding the train home last night after class, thinking about a million things as usual at the end of the day, I noticed from my reflection that I was of scowling out the window. Looking away quickly I thought I saw a familiar face across the train car, but I couldn’t place a name to the face to go up and say hello. After I got off at my stop and was walking home I realized that it might’ve been one of the random linkes that I came across a while back and happened to bookmark because of the interesting entry about Korean-Brazilian cultural identity. To a certain extent reading these online journals and blogs even in passing gives you a sort of sense that you might actually know someone, even a complete stranger that you have never spoken to before. I think in some part what appeals to me about certain blogs as a reader is the bluntness in observations on life experiences. This is in contrast to the more polished, over-edited sites, especially those that are hell bent on promoting the author or trying to sell some kind of a product. After all, since when did anyone make money by just reflecting on life?

Another twist in my daily grind of a schedule is that I’m on call for the next two weeks to report for Jury duty - basically it means that every day at 5:00pm I have to call an automated line to see if I have to report, with the chance of being selected for a trial to last an indefinite period of time. I was given a pass for Monday, but had to report today at noon downtown, being the dutiful government employee I decided to report for work in the morning and then rushed out in time to make the reporting period. After a few hours of milling around in the waiting period (Also reading a few cases) we were told that the civil trial we were summoned for was canceled, BUT still are to follow the on-call status.

While I was waiting I saw the huge mess of media camped outside the courthouse, and eventually the long procession of Ford Explorers and police escorts for the Scooter Libby sentencing hearing. It kind of reminded me what city I live in and what kind of things go down in the center of politics and power deals. I seem to forget this from time to time. Also this morning reported in the post was that the military commissions in Gitmo have hit a snag because of conflicts in the charges with the recent military commissions act of 2006. Maybe the DC court of appeals will have to begin hearing cases again after all. Speaking of trials that might be fun to sit in on, either as a juror or as a member of the general public: the notorious DC pants trial of 2007.

Chicago was fun, good seeing my brother who is settled on the south side, working on the side and playing underground and classical music. It was good to get out of DC for a weekend and see another city for a change. It brought back some memories of visiting the windy city back in college, inadvertently retracing my steps here and there. We stayed at the Hard Rock hotel on Michigan avenue, it was a quirky hotel with a big picture of prince next to the elevators and art deco style furniture. I was able to find a zipcar parked within walking distance of the hotel, and we drove up to Patty’s wedding up in N. Ill. It was a very nice ceremony, a good balance overall. Lots of observations and reflections on this point in life I’m at, mostly how old we’re all becoming and growing up.

Linkes 6/2007
Pre-columbusPolynesian voyagers to Chile proof by chicken DNA.
Leeches and Leeches that file lawsuits