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The Empire in Decline

In a declining empire, the rich and powerful will only become richer and more powerful as law and order give way to primitive hierarchy. The rich will control the government, the media, the educational institutions, and the national narrative. They will point to phantom enemies for the poor to hate, while they reap the benefits of spiraling inequality. In a system without proper taxation, the rich prey on the poor not through malicious intent but merely by being rich. You can work 3 jobs, but you cannot compete for the limited resources that money can buy against a person that rents out 12 apartments. If the price of everything is getting more expensive, it means you are getting poorer. The Europeans understand this. Americans generally do not. And when they do, they are called the most horrible thing you can call an American - a socialist! Brrrr! Socialist! Just the word itself conjures up images of men with dead expressions and grey wool coats burying bodies in the Siberian snow. Ame...
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I lost the battle but I think I'm winning the war

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We've been fighting for a few days. Or rather, she's been trying to make peace with me and I have been resisting. But we have made peace.  I agreed to pay for the 27,800K debt she owed 2 art galleries for 3 pieces she bought. (I previously mentioned it was 17K because I thought it was 17K but it's actually 27,800. Either I remembered wrongly or she was downplaying it). I agreed to pay the remainder of her credit card debt, which hopefully is not a lot since it is only the 4th of December today and the last payment I made was on November 30th. In any case, it is less than 28,000 because that is her credit limit. I'm hoping it is less than 10,000 but we shall see. I agreed to pay 8000 she owes a florist for some orchids she bought over the months (which have all died because she didn't water them because she was busy running around town shucking oysters and buying kebaya dresses). I agreed to give her some spending money each day but a reasonable amount. In return, sh...
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Credit Card Debt

I always hold that the best policy when it comes to credit card bills is to pay them as soon as possible to avoid the high interest rates. What are they now? Still 18% per annum? Lately, I've been thinking maybe in the case of my wife's credit card bills, I should stop doing that. Just let them build up and accumulate interest. I know it sounds crazy, but that's still cheaper than the alternative which is to pay the 28000 bucks (That's her credit limit) and then let her run up another 28000 the following month. Because the 18% per annum or 1.5% per month will just grow to 28,420 in one month. That is still less than the 56,000 I would have paid if I just let her spend willy nilly. Of course, this is compounding interest at at some point in time, that 28,000 would have grown to 56,000, and from there it would keep growing, but think of all the money I would have saved instead of letting her buy useless junk that doesn't even make her happy in the first place. I could...
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This is the biggest one so far

Had a big fight with the wife. About a month or two ago, she had taken out her EPF to go to Kyrgystan and buy a car for this young man I think she has a crush on. After that, she had no more money of her own, but he kept asking her for money, and she would ask me for money and I would say no. The last time he asked her for money to go on a ski trip for his birthday, she asked me, and as usual, I said no. She just keep asking, I just keep saying no. Just now, our son came into the room and she showed him a video of the guy on his birthday ski trip. So our son asked where he got the money from. She said she gave him the money. This is not her EPF money anymore. This is not money I agreed to give him. This is money I gave to her for our monthly expenses, but she gave to him. When me and our son confronted her, she insisted she had told me she gave him money for the ski trip which is some gaslighting bullshit because she did not tell me. She asked me, I said no, she did it anyway by embezz...
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I never thought I'd be into Chinese Opera

My wife took me to a Chinese opera last night (Jingju Magic, part of the George Town Festival). I thought it was gonna be a drag but one of the stories had more drama than a daytime soap opera. This one guy called Zhuangzi married a woman and 3 months in, decided to go into the mountains to practise Taoism for 10 years. Then  he came back, faked his own death, pretended to be a rich young Jackson Wang-looking fella to seduce his wife and test her faithfulness. When, she fell for him, he's like, "Ugh! I have a terrible headache and I will die unless I eat the brains of your dead husband." So she goes, "WHUT! You're kidding, right? You don't wanna like, try a Panadol or something first?" He was like, "No, trust me bro. I need brains, if not, I'm dead by breakfast." She's like, "Geez! Um, okay. I must say, this is highly irregular, but I suppose since he's dead, he doesn't have any use for his brains anymore..." And he go...
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Work, Pseudowork and fun

Todays entry will be boring but I figured out something that helped me out a bit, so maybe it'll help you too. I'm a little happier today because I decided to make some clearer distinctions between fun and work. When I was young, everything was either work or play. Studying and homework were work. Watching television and playing dodgeball were play. It was very clear and we were very happy. Or at least we knew when we were happy. Nowadays, with us trying to make work and learning fun for the next generation, everything is a little muddled and I have a theory that this makes kids miserable. They're just going through life with a vague feeling like they might have done an honest days work or they might have been goofing off the whole time. My daily routine falls into three categories right now -  fun, work and peudowork. Pseudowork is kind of an in between grey area - stuff that I do to fool myself into thinking I'm making progress in life but I'm really just doing it...
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The One About Dumplings and Cockroaches

One night, I came home hungry and I saw that my wife had left me a half-eaten rice dumpling (zhongzi) for supper. They are usually wrapped in banana leaf but this was unwrapped, half-eaten and just sitting there out in the open. As I stared at it, wondering if I should eat it, I saw a tiny cockroach scuttling away from it. Not the big fat ones you're probably thinking of, but the little ones that are less than a centimetre long fully grown - the ones you don't mind smacking on the kitchen counter with your bare hands. This was a small one, even for its kind. I hate cockroaches, but man, I love rice dumplings! So I chose to believe that the cockroach only helped itself to the outer part of the dumpling. I carved out the insides of the dumpling with my spoon and it just melted in my mouth! It was so good! I really wanted to eat more, so I decided maybe the cockroach only touched the part of the dumpling on the side it was near. I didn't see it near the other side, so it proba...
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