New Year - New Start - Bye Bye Japan

I have left Japan.

Is it temporary.. I don't know.  But I have moved to Charlotte, NC as of Oct 12th.

A few things about Japan.

- One of the best places to live in the world.   Great weather (4 seasons), super safe (for now), great culture, great food, beautiful girls, overall love it.

Things I hate about it
- No job market.. the job you have, is what you have.  I guess its like any small town (except it is Tokyo for gods sake.. 3rd largest economy-- filled with low paid, overworked slaves ?)

I think thats the only thing I hate.. I couldn't fill more bullets.

I chose to leave for a few reasons
- Overall stagnation -- mostly work related but even personally I was getting lazy.
- I love the GF, but she drives me crazy with her laziness.  A break was well needed.

So I am now here.. in the armpit of the south.. or maybe its one of the top cities in the south I don't know.

I am going to make a new blog to discuss Charlotte and my next plans in life, but before I do that let me recap what has happened in the 1-2yr since my last post.

1.  I got a dog.  Roxy the Shiba.  The best friend anyone could ever ask for.. I feel so sad leaving her in Tokyo with the GF but I think the GF needs her more than I do.
2.  I bought a house in Niseko and a house in Tokyo.  I also bought a dubious real estate investment building south of Yokohama.... not bleeding yet, but its a dubious property for sure!!
3.  I had bought 2 units in Utah, a duplex and a townhouse.  Why I have no idea, but I sunk $200k in down payments into that so now I'm broke.
4.  I didn't quit my job, I transferred with Bank of Mystery to Charlotte into a questionable but overall good role (I think)

Tokyo was great.  Did I do everything I wanted to while I was there?  Hmm... I dont know but I think I did enough.  I had a blast in Asia.. I plan to return.  But for now I needed to try a few more things life before the end.

New Blog:  https://dougfoocharlotte.blogspot.com/
I changed it https://charlottefoo.blogspot.com

My new real estate plan

I'm so late in the game on this.. so many mistakes in the past but alas just move forward.

I am looking at buying a house in SLC Utah.  Why Utah... ?  Is it because I rediscovered the lord ?  No its more because I like the idea of being 30 min away from 3 major ski resorts, and 1hr from even more top ones.

Its not cheap but not over priced relative to the rest of the world...

Lets see.  I am thinking to try AirBnB resort properties.  The problem is you need a few properties to get enough critical mass to have enough influence to cut the property manager rates, and experience economies of scale.

Anyone interested in investing?

Back in LA for 2 nights

I did a variant of my quick LA trip which is usually 3 or 4 nights, and this time just did 2 nights!   Flew in Fri eve (landed Fri 6pm) and flew out Sun eve (Sunday 24:50 / Monday AM) and land Tues 5am.  

The ugly:
- pretty tired and jetlagged in LA the whole 2 days
- feels bit short, I think 3 days is better
- cost per day is very high

The good:
- only have to use 1 vacation day!
- get some quick shopping in and see mom for 48hrs which is a good healthy dose (not overdose!)
- not enough time to adjust to jetlag, so in theory I'll be ok when I land in TK in 9hrs

One takeaway from my LA visits...
- people are way too fat here.. no offense to fat readers.  I was at cheesecake factory and this old lady next to me must have literally been 350lbs.. i couldn't distinguish her torso from her thighs it was a big blob.  to top it off, while perusing desserts and asking the waitress for advice, she balked at some dessert due to the high calories.  omg lady... its too late, just forget it..
- for tech, even with the diminishing # of bookstores (barnes & nobles my favorite), its still great to have them to go and browse.  my generation is a borders/barnes generation (I think or its just me) and being able to go to the bookstore and browse is hard to replace online.   Also i skimmed like 5 books on:
    - react.js (i hear is the hot stuff for web)
    - node.js (old stuff but refresh)
    - swift (seems nobody would design a language in this era w/o closures)
    - big data (no clue)
    - apache spark (hadoop stuff)
   and picked up a book on Go programming.   I think its way easier to keep up w/ whats going on in the industry when you have a bookstore to go to when bored and just pick up stuff in the isle and flip thru each book for 15min.  somehow the attention span is there at the bookstore knowing you have limited time and dont want to buy stuff -- as opposed to mobile phone/pc where i may open an article but rarely finish it.  maybe its just me?

anyways i need to get back on top of a few things...  i have this new 5yr plan..

Back to my post-winter depression cycle

So back to April and I ponder what to do career-wise and etc again.

This is a vicious cycle..  enjoy ski season, enjoy pre-ski, then post-ski depression (PSD - technically snowboarding but I consider it same thing, snow sports).

So.. lets see how this summer goes.
Will try to learn some of this new random stuff
 - JS frameworks like React
 - Other IaaS or BaaS stuff for hosting
 - Not sure if I should bother w/ Iphone or Android
 - Python hmmm dunno maybe

Seems my bread and butter Java is dead?  Or is it...  maybe I should just get legacy Java jobs as people forget how to program in it ?

Management Theory

I had this thought about work satisfaction while sipping a beer at Pronto in Hibiya while cutting a few hours out of work to enjoy the unsual Feb warm day and sunshine..

Then I was thinking about a silly movie I just saw, "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" -- an old chick flick with Matt McConahaugh (sic) and Goldie Hawn's daughter whats her face.

The scene I was thinking about is how Matt is some kind of advertising hotshot and he has these 2 lackies who he works with who treat him like a god...   the question really is, do people feel that way about many managers (i doubt people feel that way about me!).

Then I thought.. the key is to be truly hands on indispensable and the wizard, problem solver, innovator, creative genius, etc in a small team -- then you can truly the man like Matt McC ?   Well some truth to it.. the most fulfilling is probably when you are that 3-5 person team manager/lead, where you are really the man, and everyone looks to you for answers.  I imagine that is how it was for John Carmack, or any small dev team or creative group.  The lackies are relatively happy until they grow/improve/learn to the point of being able to take over the boss's job.

The problem in my job and why at times I feel like I have a lame job is that some of my teams are self-running and I dont really contribute much to them, and some of my leads probably don't need me that much day to day!   (Not really self-conscious or low confidence so much as knowing I'm highly replaceable).

But I suppose when you are at a Sr Management level, the ability to directly influence, coach, direct, lead is very different.  One could say Steve Jobs was the only guy who could have turned Apple around -- but lets say he's the 0.001% exception to typical leadership.

I have to think about this more!

Pivotal point in my life was....

Perhaps pivotal point in my life was deciding to go from hi-tech to non-hi-tech which was back in 2004 or so.

I was at HP doing a loser job.. but slacking so much it was awesome.  I was working at home most of the time from my MtView condo and pretty much did a little work but had a great lifestyle.  If we had the technology of 2015 then it would have been even better with wifi everywhere-- i coulda been playing tennis daily or been at the snow resort!

Anyways...  i wonder if it was a good choice or not.  Hmmm... never know.

The crossroads was in deciding to join Barclays in 2004 instead of say Netflix or staying at HP.  Hmmm....  alas.  Never know.

Bro

My bro tells me to have a baby so his kid can have a cousin.  How selfish.

His wife tells me the same.

Both parties say kids are great but marriage is so-so.  I hear the marriage part alot...  that marriage is tough.  People say kids are tough but fewer say it sucks.

But i gues if u say having kids sucks, then its like saying u dont like your kids which people will think is evil.  Saying u dont like wife is not evil I guess.