We Found Love

I've always like Rihanna... Think I was one of the first ones to really like her starting with Pon de Replay. I love her energy, her cute outfits (I started rocking these colorful cropped hoodies which she wore in the beginning of her career), and the fact that she is a Pisces like me (4 days older than me). Just watched her new video, We Found Love, and got chills and almost cried. I can tell she is just such a passionate person from this video (which I'm sure she gave directional oversight on), Love the Way You Life video, and her relationship with Chris Brown. When she loves, she loves really hard. Everything she does seems so extreme.

People who know me understand me to be like that as well. I am super passionate about my interest, my ambitions, my friendships, life, and love. Everything needs to be an extreme. Car windows all the way up or all the way down. Chai Tea Latte twice a day or totally cold turkey for weeks. However, I feel like throughout the course of life and as I get older, I get more jaded. Jaded in the sense that I can't be so passionate about one thing.


For example:
No longer am I so passionate about my job. I realized my "dream job" isn't what I thought it was and actually makes me want to cut myself. In my first (and only) relationship, I used to love like Rihanna; I was willing to give up everything I had just to make the love work. Now, I'm so closed off to relationships to the point I think I'm asexual. In terms of making friends, no longer am I super excited about making deep friendships because I realize people get scared off by the intensity and are actually mostly flaky and selfish.

Throughout my experiences, I learned that it's definitely not healthy to be so passionate and invested because the crash is that much worse. I've developed as a coping and defense mechanism to be lukewarm about things. This is probably what is killing me inside everyday. I feel like I'm losing my passion for life, because it's the only way to deal with life.

I admire Rihanna for being who she is because I can't be that person anymore. For her fiery red hair. For her apparent obsession with S&M and being in Disturbia. For being in such a passionate / abusive relationship i.e. with Chris Brown. For her statement in her music videos. Anyway, here are the two music videos which I can watch to live vicariously and to feel something that strong about. The lyrics to We Found Love, although a bit lacking, is actually quite beautiful. "We found love in a hopeless place." To tie it in with this blog entry, Rihanna and her boyfriend in the video, were able to love each other that passionately in a world where it's actually safer and better to not feel anything. It's quite beautiful and admirable. In the words of Blair Waldorf, "People don’t write sonnets about being compatible, or novels about shared life goals and stimulating conversation. The great loves are the crazy ones. L’amour fou." The two video below shows this crazy love and I'm so drawn in by it, yet vow that will never be in one of those relationships ever again.

Blair Waldorf vs. Serena Van Der Woodsen

I know it's a bit ridiculous to blog about Gossip Girl literally right after writing a thesis on the structural problems with the US economy, but I'll try to make this as less vapid as possible. After watching the new episode of Gossip Girl and thinking on my treacherous bike ride dodging cars and construction trucks on Wilshire, I gained some insight into the behaviors and attitudes of Gossip Girls' two main protagonist, Blair and Serena.

These two girls are completely different, yet they are best friends. The most obvious difference is their fashion choice. Serena wear a lot of Haute Hippie and Vince, while Blair wears more Dior and Moschino (props to you if you understood the connotations of that loaded sentence). Anyway, there are tons of material in which i can use in the shows 5 seasons to compare and contrast them, but let's take for an example their relationships.

Serena in Season 4 was dating Nate. Then, she revived her relationship with Dan. Then she goes back to Nate because she thinks that she likes him more. oooh I think I love Dan. ooooh I think I love Nate. No I actually love Dan. blah blah. At the end, she "chooses herself," whatever that means. To me, she is just the most shallow, unassuming, and for a lack of better word, stupid... character on the show. She has no depth, and she never had to work a day of her life (for her social status or whatever it is, let alone money) and everything falls in place for her.

On the other hand, there is Blair Waldorf. The most powerful woman I know. (I know she is fictional, but there is no other women else I can look up to in the real world. Sad, but true. Let me save that discussion for another day.) In Season 5, Episode 3, she gets a paternity test on who the father of her baby is. The audience never knows who the father is, but she goes ahead and tells Chuck that the baby is Louis' (Prince of Monaco, and also her fiance) and remains her composure with Louis telling that he is the father. She is such a control freak in that her curiosity wouldn't even allow her to open the envelope to reveal who the father is. Her thinking is that.... it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if she deep down inside loves Chuck. She always wanted to marry a royal and she is so fitting for a princess. She knows exactly what she wants and will "even bend DNA" to get it.

What I admire about her is that she knows what she wants. After knowing that, she goes for it and doesn't stray from anything, not even true love. That is really her method to everything she does. Her college choice, her career, her social status, and even Chuck.

A good friend (also very wise) told me, "the hardest thing is knowing what you want. Once you know what you want, you can just go for it." Amen to that sister. Even if what you want is the moon, at least if you know that, you will strive in the right direction. I think I am quite capable of whatever I want to achieve. My problem is that I really don't know what I want.

Maybe I'll figure it out but before then, it makes me really uncomfortable that I'm not working towards it and not even knowing how to work towards it.

Next New Thing...

In light of unemployment remaining at 9.1% as of last week, a CNBC headline caught my eye: US Has 3.2 Million Jobs Openings. The article says that as long as we fill these jobs, we can bring down the unemployment rate by 1% without spending a dime of the tax payers money on the creation of new jobs. This is when sensationalist journalism takes over and the claim not being rooted in facts. This alarming statistic has to do with fundamentally structural problems with the U.S. economy, and the unemployment rate cannot simply be lowered by filling those jobs. The problem has do with the discrepancy between the skills needed for the job and the skill set of the population. The jobs simply cannot be filled.

It's about a concept of specialization, which has gone through all societies tracing back to the hunter / gatherers. Some of the primitive people became hunters.... and other became gathers. They then focused on their own jobs and society progressed. The problem with the U.S. (or global) economy is that the work force was never properly trained for the specialization. The specialization is required with new technologies, new systems, and business models.

How did this problem seem to occur so quickly if it is and has been structural problem? It's actually been a problem for quite some time. However, due to the Fed / Wall St. feeding one bubble after the next (dot com, real estate, credit market, etc),  the issue with our workforce not being properly trained did not seem to be a problem. These bubbles were able to hide structural problems by masking growth and keeping it artificially high. When times are good, businesses expand and hire anyone they can get. They don't necessarily need the right person for the job, but hired anyone willing to do the job. As much as I talk shit about my industry, Investment Banking does fuel businesses. M&A activity (counter-intuitively) creates jobs. Availability of capital (cheap credit markets coupled with open equity markets) funds growth. Everything was going so fast, workers were exactly properly trained or even competent for the job at maximum efficiency.

We indeed are in a special time different from all other decades, and centuries. Because of technology, progress happens at an exponential rate (as per Moore's law). The problem is that the workforce didn't adapt to this technology. The people who did are the few guys in Silicon Valley that made a shit ton of money and are not even really all that talented (or even all that smart). They had an edge over the general population because they were the only ones who could take advantage of the progress and the new opportunities. Their skillset is rare, and are being overly compensated for it (eg internet start up company valuations).

Anyway, I predict the next big thing to be training the work force to understand the technology, new business models, and processes. Most likely, there will be a boom in human resources companies that train employees.

But then again, what do I know? I only predicted the rise of Netflix in 2005 (along with the downfall of Qwikster), the growth of Chipotle as a franchise brand, and the ubiquitousness (?) of the iPod since 2003. #notconceitedjustconfident

What else do I think will be #trending the next few years?
+ The rise of Los Angeles as a major cultural hub and the next cool place to be
+ General acceptance of organic / healthy foods
+ Asia as the next big financial hub (give props to Daddy Chang for this one for thoroughly convincing me) 
+ Internet security (refer to a previous blog entry about this)
+ Integration of location based services (for social media, mobile application, advertising)
+ Product placement embedded into entertainment (i.e. whole season of Entourage to promote a tequila brand)

Late at Night

I always google this, but to no avail. Why is it that I am uber introspective / emotional (not necessarily emo) / reflective / reminiscent at night?! Does this happen to other people as well? I'm so happy I found Pier 212 Cafe in Santa Monica which is open 24 hours where I can come and just chill Saturday night.

David Guetta

I never really liked David Guetta much (too mainstream and I didn't really like his first hits) but am on Spotify now but really digging his new album: Nothing But The Beat. My current favorite is Sunshine feat Avicii. Literally everyone song off that album has potential of being a huge hit. The album it's just so loaded with good beats, big name artists (Will I Am, Nicki Minaj, Usher, Avicii, Akon, Chris Brown, Afrojack, Lil Wayne, etc etc) and good music!

Renewed Domain

Procrastinated on renewing my domain for a day and it was down. Don't worry, I'm back at least for another year. :)

Kaskade

Anyway, I finally learned a way to distinguish my favorite genre of music. I think they call it "Progressive House." Examples are songs by Kaskade, Morgan Page, Avicii (more mellow songs and not so much the dubstep ones), Armin van Buuren.

Kaskade's music makes makes me so happy I really can't describe it. Pure ecstasy. It's the only thing that keeps me going when I have to work late until 4 AM. So I think I'm a freak for being so obsessed with Kaskade, but then I go on youtube and below are some of the comments by people who share the same views as me and have their own little experience with this music.

"Train Ride into New York City as the sun is rising... listening to this song.... it makes you fall in love with NYC even more... or Kaskade."

"I have a Business project to finish, I have to study for pre-lims, I need to submit an important application.. But I cant seem to leave this page. I cant seem to stop pressing the replay button. I cant seem to stop listening to this song. Kaskade has won this battle"

"I found this on a CD today in my car, having almost forgot this track. I put it on when I merged onto the highway, shifted down (2008 turbo Audi), and blasted it up to 130. The roads were empty and as the lights were passing me by, I was free for just a moment from the responsibilities of adulthood and corporate America."

 "So addicting. I've listened to this like 200 times in a row in the past 5 hours."

I'm tired as fuck and should probably really go to bed when I get home, but I really just want to go for a ride and listen to Kaskade.. Something about listening to 4 AM by Kaskade at 4 AM that is almost like a religious experience for me....