I watched an episode of House the past day through which the writers explored the idea that every parent, no matter how hard they try not to, screw up their children.

We’ve all read about the typical cases: neglect, alcoholism, divorce, and so forth. These events or patterns, at an early age stick with people throughout their entire life. The boy with an alcoholic father will oftentimes vow not to become an alcoholic. Each main character on the show have views or behavioral patterns influenced by how their parents raised them. Dr. Park, a newcomer to the most recent—and last—season has an OCD about never accepting free gifts. In the case that she does receive a gift, she cannot help but return a gift of equal value.

Chase’s mother, an alcoholic, would lock Chase in his father’s study when she was too drunk to control him. According to Chase, this caused him to read books in the study, which eventually led to his becoming a doctor.

Throughout the episode, however, there stood one holdout. Dr. Adams, another newcomer to the show, refused to admit she had a screwed up childhood. She claimed that her parents raised her lovingly. House, because of his infinite curiosity and need to always be right, decides to find out how what part of her childhood got screwed up.

*SEMI-SPOILER ALERT* As it turns out Adams did in fact have a seemingly perfect childhood. However, that made her jealous of all the other kids at school who went home to feuding parents, alcoholics, and more. She was “screwed up” by her deprivation of hardship, causing her to run away from home during a semester in high school and live in an unknown city with another man for half a year. House concludes that her not having a screwed up childhood in the traditional sense, screwed her up. She developed a desire to be around people who have or undergo hardship. That is why she worked as a prison doctor and works with House—who obviously is screwed up.*SEMI-SPOILER ALERT*

I reference this because by the episode’s end, we learn that, perhaps, we are all better off having some sort of screwed up childhood. Most people are not lucky enough to grow up in a “perfect” family. Most parents have their flaws, and children learn from these flaws—whether they avoid developing these flaws in themselves or adopt them.

I don’t think the “perfect” childhood is actually perfect—it is far from it. You can’t grow up given all the resources you could want or need and surround yourselves with the perfect role models and expect to come out successful. You might, and some do, but I think what’s better is if your grow up in the face of hardship. Whether that hardship is so severe that your parents have essentially abandoned you or if you simply lack certain resources, you learn to overcome adversity organically. By having a “screwed up childhood” you fight for your future, and when you fight for your future, you sweat more, sacrifice more, and shed more tears—forgive the clichés. If you have nothing to overcome, complacency sets in and it’s harder to push yourself to achieve higher.

It is just as important to have bad role model as it is to have good role models. Just know that the bad role models serve as people you do not want to bel like. I’m not implying parents should be bad role models but that parents should have a certain qualities that their children should recognize and develop an aversion to.

I think the strongest and most successful people in the world are those who come from humble backgrounds. To list just a couple household names, Barack Obama and Steve Jobs had somewhat screwed up childhoods. They both grew up in non-traditional families. Obama grew up with a single mother, and Jobs grew up with a foster family.

Perhaps the term “screwed up childhood” is a bit indelicate for this matter. The term should be reserved for the most extreme cases, but the essence remains the same.

Never feel bad for yourself if life puts you in a shitty position. Be glad that you’ll be able to overcome so many challenges.

I realize that it can get quite boring reading about what happens in my daily life, and that’s one of the reasons I’m actively blogging about everything now, so I can make my life more interesting and, consequently, this blog more interesting. So each day, I’ll try to post some interesting tidbit of information in what I do or at least accompany the post with a photo.

12:30 pm: Woke up. This is what happens when you go to sleep at 4 am. I actually woke up as my aunt came over to our house with Burger King. She works nearby, so she drops by occasionally. Knowing how much of a health nut I am, she bought a grilled chicken breast sandwich, which was kind of her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t eat it at the time because I always workout before I eat nowadays—it’s better for recovery and getting lean if you eat most of your day’s worth of food immediately after a weight training session. That way, most of the calories go towards rebuilding damaged muscle instead of storing energy as fat.

1 pm: I was browsing Facebook when my aunt peered over and asked me to go on my little cousin Eric’s Facebook account. He’s in the 8th grade and acts like your typical rebellious teenager, so he blocked my aunt on Facebook. This is where Facebook’s privacy settings come in handy. If he had accepted my aunt’s friend request and put her on a Restricted friends list, my aunt would not be able to see most of what he posts on Facebook. She would, however, be under the impression that he doesn’t do anything on Facebook, killing her interest in looking at his Facebook when she saw that I was on Facebook.

1:30 pm: Lift. Today I did shoulders. I completed 4 circuits of the following exercises for 8-12 reps each, DB shoulder press, DB upright row, lat raise, seated rear felt raise, front raise, machine rear felt row, and DB shrugs. After those 4 circuits, I immediately followed up with a shortened circuit of drop sets for DB shoulder press, DB upright row, and front raise. I told my dad to come to the gym towards the tail-end of my session, so I could show him some shoulder exercises. I’m surprised at how hard he tried actually—he broke a sweat. Usually, the people I see at my community gym never break a sweat when lifting weights, which I find ridiculous unless you’re going for extremely low reps with an incredibly heavy weight. Seeing as how the dumbbells at my community gym only go up to 50 lbs, and there are no barbells and plates, that type of lifting is not practical. After lifting, I cycled for 35 minutes while watching House.

3:30 pm: Sitting poolside on the computer eating my post-workout snack and writing.

4:30 pm: Ate chicken breast, kimchi, spinach, strawberries, and bananas.

5 pm: Read Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. This book is simultaneously hilarious and atrocious. This guy’s an asshole, but he’s funny, and it doesn’t seem too out of the realm of normalcy. Most people in their 20’s probably have stories similar to his, just not as many.

6:30 pm: Browse web. Watch House. Research trading.

4 am: Sleep.

I think logging what I do at all times keeps me more productive because it makes me accountable by my Tumblr audience. Thanks for making me more productive loyal followers!

10:30 am: Play around with a virtual brokerage account.
12 pm: Lift. Did chest and calves today. Had to severely drop my weights after 3rd circuit, so stopped after 4th circuit. Was going to try for 5 circuits initially. One reason I might’ve not been able to crank out the 4th circuit properly is because I didn’t drink my amino acid recovery drink in the morning like I usually do. The drink contains citrulline which as been shown to reduce fatigue during workouts. Cycled for 40 minutes after weight training. Read a bit more about trading while cycling.
2:30 pm: Make Irish steel-cut oats and eat chicken breast for post-workout snack. I put bananas, cocoa powder, honey, and cinnamon in the oatmeal. Haven’t had an oatmeal like that since my high school days. Was awesome.
3 pm: Browse random stuff on web.
3:30 pm: More looking at charts and predicting what will happen with stocks.
4:30 pm: Shower and relax.
5 pm: Eat. Look at more stocks… Maybe I should stop.
3 am: Sleeping.

Turns out, not much. I’ve bolded all the productive things.

10 am: Wake up. Drink 1L of water. Go on the computer and check news, browse at nothing in particular.
11:30 am: Prep for workout. Make coffee. Make sports drink. Break coffee maker decanter on accident. Look on Amazon for new coffee maker and order it.
12:30 pm: Begin workout (today, I cycled for an hour, did 8-minute abs, and a few other supplementary core exercises).
2:30 pm: Get home. Eat a quick snack of chicken, green beans, creamed spinach (unhealthy), macaroni (for quick post-workout carbs), and corn bread.
3 pm: Meet up with my friend from high school, Phyu-sin, who used to live near me for a quick hello.
3:30 pm: Finish watching the Bones episode I started while cycling at the gym.
4 pm: Review my new brokerage account. Finalize lease for the month I’m staying in New Haven during June. Edit my Tumblr design, another endeavor I started while cycling at the gym.
5:30 pm: Realize I don’t accomplish much in a day and begin a log of what I did today. Shop online for a new monitor (looking for an IPS monitor with 1920x1080 Full HD resolution).
6:30 pm: Shower and eat dinner.
7 pm: Look at stocks to decide what to buy. Learn about investing and trading.
12 am: I’m still researching trading… Seems like I’ve hit a stride and am being highly productive now.

baddeal:

Digital cookbooks turn coffee table tomes into actual, usable cookbooks. Not having these essential reference works in a format that is easily searchable, transportable and usable is a BAD DEAL. What’s a WORSE DEAL is all the gasoline required to ship these books across the world. Digital cookbooks don’t require jet fuel to be delivered. They simply require a wi-fi connection. 

Allow us to point out this irony: Modernist Cuisine, authored by former Microsoft Chief Technology Office Nathan Myhrvold, champions avant-garde, scientific approaches to preparing food, but is not available on the iPad or Kindle. It weights 51.3 pounds. It was first published in 2011. 

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, authored by Julia Child, teaches French cooking. It is available on the iPad and the table of contents is fully hyperlinked. In fact, it’s possible to search the entire text of the digital edition for specific words. It was first published in 1961.  

If the Julia Child people can figure out how to make an ebook version work, we reckon the Modernist Cuisine people can figure it out too. 

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As much as I, too, would like a digital version of the book as soon as possible, you have to consider the fact that the Myhrvold and his crew would probably prefer spending their time innovating and experimenting rather than porting their book onto iPads and Kindles. There’s no doubt that Modernist Cuisine will eventually find itself in digital format, but due to the nature of the book—tons of text, images, and modular sections—a rough job for the sake of getting it out as soon as possible would do the book injustice. Rather, Modernist Cuisine deserves an app of its own that would streamline the ability to access specific content and even interact with its knowledge. Financially, it’s advantageous to milk as much money off of a “premium” print version before making the book’s content widely available—most people who can afford and have bought the $450 cookbook will probably shell out a second time for the digital version, and there’s little to no chance that a competitor will swoop in and offer a cheaper alternative between now and when Myhrvold releases a digital version. Just my two cents.