Sarah Chang and Her Violin

Sarah Chang (Korean: 장영주) (born December 10, 1980) is an American classical violinist. Her debut came in 1989 with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Shortly thereafter, Chang was recognized as a child prodigy. She enrolled at Juilliard School to study music, graduating in 1999 and continuing university studies. During the 1990s and 2000s, Chang had major roles including being a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. She has also performed in countries such as England, France, Germany, Netherlands, China, South Korea, and Japan.

She has collaborated with most major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. For the 2004 Olympics, she was chosen to participate in the Olympic Torch relay in New York. Yale University dedicated a chair in Sprague Hall for Chang's name in 2005.

The Love of Siam-An Award Winning Thai Film

The Love of Siam (Thai: รักแห่งสยาม, RTGS: Rak Haeng Sayam, pronounced [rák hɛ̀ŋ sà.jǎːm]) is a 2007 Thai gay-themed romantic-drama film written and directed by Chookiat Sakveerakul. A multi-layered family drama, a groundbreaking element of the story is a gay romance between two teenage boys. The film was released in Thailand on November 22, 2007. The fact that the gay storyline was not apparent from the film's promotional material initially caused controversy, but the film was received with critical acclaim and proved financially successful. It dominated Thailand's 2007 film awards season, winning the Best Picture category in all major events, The Love of Siam was received with critical acclaim upon its release. Bangkok Post film critic Kong Rithdee called the film "groundbreaking", in terms of being the first Thai film "to discuss teenagers' sexuality with frankness". He praised the mature, realistic family drama aspects of the film, as well as the solid performances, particularly by Sinjai Plengpanich as the mother Sunee. Another Bangkok Post commentator, Nattakorn Devakula, said the film contained important lessons for Thai society. "The point that the film attempts to teach viewers – and a largely conservative Thai society – is that love is an evolved form of emotional attachment that transcends sexual attraction of the physical form." A reviewer for The Nation called the film "brilliantly conceived". A few critics found fault with the film, among them Gregoire Glachant of BK magazine, who commented that "The Love of Siam isn't a very well shot movie. Chookiat's camera only records his dull play with equally dull angles and light as it wanders from homes to schools, to recording studio, and to Siam Square without sense of purpose or directions." The movie also reached a rating of 7.6 (out of 10) on the Internet Movie Database.

My Good Looking Relatives All Over the World

Here are some photos of my good-looking relatives! I have brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces all over the world. Besides the US and the Philippines, I have relatives in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Iran and in Kuwait. My Three Sisters

Three Ways to Control Your Retirement-Save, Invest and Live Smarter

In 2002, I retired from the US Food and Drug Administration. At that time besides my Social Security (SS ) and Civil Service(CS) pensions( Federal service), I was also withdrawing from my private savings. My SS and CS pensions could cover only about 50% of our monthly expenses.

To maintain our style of living to the standards before my retirement, I had to withdraw a regular monthly amount from my private savings, and from my mutual and stock investments.(IRA and mutual funds).

My private savings lasted only for 5 years. Luckily, my mutual funds was not seriously affected by the stock market downfall in the mid 1990's, because my investment councilor converted most of my stocks into a cash account. My cash account was earning a conservative but stable interest.

Today, based on the current business environment, my financial counselor and I calculated that my private investment could still last me another 10 years assuming that it will be earning at least 5% annual interest. As a safety factor, if I am still alive in the next 10 years, I have a private life insurance I could also cash in. If that is not enough, I could always apply for a reverse mortgage of my house which is almost paid( mortgage-free). I hope I do not have to do it, but if I live another 20 years, I may have to do it.

The following article from Fortune Magazine attracted my attention. It is titled three ways to control your retirement.

Save smarter: In today's low-yield environment, most of us must salt away more. Easy to say, hard to do. If your employer hasn't adopted the program, urge it to do so; and if it won't, then follow the program on your own. In choosing your saving rate, face the new reality of inflation. Experts debate whether years of monetary loosening in the U.S. and other major economies will push up prices significantly, but ignoring the risk would be foolish. Suppose you'd like your portfolio to pay you $100,000 a year (in constant dollars) for 30 years. With an after-tax return of 6% and inflation at 2%, a nest egg of $1.82 million will do the job. But if inflation turns out to be just one point higher than you assumed, at 3%, you'll need another quarter million dollars.

Invest smarter Back when we all thought we'd get 11% long-term annual returns, we could maybe afford to ignore fees and expenses. No more. It's time to get tough on the "helpers," Buffett's sarcastic term for the intermediaries who take bits and pieces of our investment returns. As he and Vanguard founder John Bogle constantly preach: Over decades, tenths of a point matter. Some helpers, such as the best fee-only advisers, are emphatically worth their cost. But in today's environment, investors must know exactly how much they're paying and for what. Investing smarter may also mean cleverly using your natural biases in your favor. Behavioral economists have found that we think of our spending in buckets -- one for dining out, say, another for travel, another for car expenses. The tendency isn't always rational, but Carnegie Mellon economist George Loewenstein has proposed that retirees harness it by setting up separate "pay the rent" and "spoil the grand kids" accounts. The rent account could be invested conservatively; the grand kids account could be invested aggressively for growth.

Live smarter It's a hard reality that many people will be living a bit less large than they had hoped in retirement, and maybe before. Don't fight that thought. Embrace it. We're living through the first era in history when significant numbers of people are being made unhappy by having too much rather than too little. The term is "affluenza," now the subject of books and academic research. Why are you planning to retire at all? It isn't to maximize income. It's to be happy. Millions of people are finding that having less makes them happier. Spending less and saving more is kind of like sushi: You have to be made to try it, but then you may find you love it. As conditions change, reaching our goals demands a new course. With the right strategy you can still find your way to a great retirement. It could even be a happier one than you'd expected.

Real Estate Prices Affected by FaceBook IPO Fiasco

I have never written an article about the real estate business in Northern California, in spite of residing here since 2002 after my retirement from the Food and Drug Administration. However, the following article attracted my attention and confirmed my belief that real estate prices are influence by the supply and demand principle. This is all related to the recent FaceBook IPO fiasco.THIS IS THE current situation now in Palo Alto, California where Mark Zuckerberg(FB guru)call his home.

Twenty years ago, my sister-in-law purchased a small house in Palo Alto, California near Stanford University. At that time, I told her she overbought since she paid almost a million dollars for the house which was old and not properly maintained. At that time, a similar house in my neighborhood was worth only about half the price for what she paid.

My sister-in-law is indeed very wise. She kept the house even after her two children graduated from college. Now she owns a property worth over 3 million dollars. I could hardly believe it, since her house is not even closed to Mark's Zuckerberg neighborhood.

Here's today's news on how FaceBook IPO affects real estate prices in Palo Alto, California.

It is titled " As Facebook goes, so goes Palo Alto Real Estate". By David A. Kaplan FORTUNE -- You can take the pulse of the prospects of Silicon Valley by checking stock prices, revenues, profits, hiring, even press clippings of various companies or instead maybe you should just look at the real estate market in Palo Alto, California.

After all, this is where Mark Zuckerberg lives, where Steve Jobs used to, and where countless entrepreneurs and their financiers want to move. When the price of that megalo-mansion just keeps going up -- hey, do you think it has a gift shop? -- we all say it's boomtown in the Valley. But when the value of that modest two-bedroom bungalow actually comes down near a meager $1 million, we say the end of the bubble may be nigh.

Not quite so, as many companies in the Valley, new and old, continue to soar. But the shortcomings of one iconic company, Facebook (FB), now seem to be taking their toll in Palo Alto. Before Facebook's May 18 IPO, when we last paid a visit to the town's oak-lined streets -- where even the trees have fabulous price values associated with them -- the housing market was going especially bonkers.

That's because so many sellers, expecting a bountiful IPO along the lines of the Google (GOOG) bonanza in 2004, kept their homes off the market. For the first quarter of this year, for example, the median price of a single-family Palo Alto home went up 11%, while inventory declined 57%.

All that changed when the Facebook IPO flopped. Since the stock peaked at $45 on the day it opened, it has gone as low as $25.52, a decline of 43% and 33% below its IPO price of $38. (It closed Tuesday at $27.40.) The result in Palo Alto has been a flood of houses going on the market. It's a small set of data, but it tells a story of vastly changed seller psychology. Right now, there are 104 houses on the market -- more than double the number over the winter, according to numbers culled from the Multiple Listing Service. Even compared to last June, inventory is up 44%.

In nearby Menlo Park, where Facebook's new headquarters are located, the trend is less pronounced. There are 103 houses currently on the market, up about 80% over the winter and nearly 20% more than a year ago.

"Facebook gave me a gift in showing my sellers there's no sure thing and don't-look-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth," says Michael Dreyfus, a prominent residential real estate broker based in Palo Alto. "The "make-me-move" prices -- where a seller says, 'I know my house is worth $5 million but if somebody pays me $10 million I'll take it,' are over due to the Facebook bomb."

Today, my sister-in-law is a 3X millionaire on paper. She came to the US with only $100 in her pocket with an unlicensed degree in Nursing. She stayed with us for 6 months doing nothing but study for her nursing license. She passed the test after trying only for one time. Now, the rest is history. This episode in her life could happened only in the US, but specifically only in Palo Alto, California.

Senior Citizens-A Big Boost to the US Economy

Last Sunday, Macrine ( my spouse of 55 years) and I attended a birthday celebration of one of our oldest couple friends here in Northern California. The couple are both retired physicians and are celebrating their 85th( wife) and 90th(husband) birthdays as well as their 57th Wedding Anniversary. The last time we saw them was in the mid 1980's, although we received Christmas greetings from them annually. Thus, we were delighted to be invited and are still healthy enough to attend. This is an example that senior citizens are still a major boost in the economy of the US.

The party was held in the 14th floor of the Hilton Garden Hotel in Emeryville, California. There were about 100 guests about 90% senior citizens. The party started with a Thanksgiving Catholic Mass and followed by a lunch reception of either filet mignon or salmon steaks. At the party we also had a chance to get reacquainted with several of our former couple friends and neighbors in Pinole who were members of the Filipino-American Association and also friends from church in the mid 1980's. Of course all of them are retired.

The couple celebrant have also a similar lifestyle with us-that is they are also snow birds. Like us, they spend their winter months in the Philippines. What was outstanding was the entertainment after lunch that children and grandchildren offered to the guests. I was also surprised that both couples were still lively and strong. Not one of them needed assistance in walking and none of them had suffered a serious illness. Their goal is to reach their 100 birthdays. I have a feeling, they may be able to achieve this goal. Incidentally, the nonagenarian celebrant is our compadre. He is the godfather of our youngest son confirmation about 40 years ago. Our son is now 50 years old.

I also got to chat with another guest who was our former primary-care physician in the 1980's. He told me, he is still working part time and still a practicing surgeon part time that is two times a week. I am a little envious of his situation since we are about the same age.

It was indeed fun to reminisce our younger days. The above experience reminded me of the following article I am reading today from CNN money magazine as follows:

Retirement age must rise - OECD By Emily Jane Fox :

Gradually increasing retirement ages may be the only way governments can keep up with people living longer, a report said on Monday.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As life expectancy continues to rise, a new report suggests that governments need to raise the age of retirement in order to keep up. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said that by 2050, the average woman and man can expect to live roughly 24 and 20 years beyond retirement age respectively, up from 20 and 17 years in 2010. At the same time, retirement ages across many countries have stayed the same.

Without a change, the Paris-based economic think-tank said governments won't be able to pay for more people needing retirement funds for longer periods of time. "Extending working lives in a situation of slowly growing or declining workforces should provide an important boost to economic growth in aging economies," according to the report, which was released Monday.

The United States could use a boost. Social Security has already begun paying out more in benefits than it takes in from workers' payroll taxes. The trustees of the Social Security program reported in April that the program projects a $165 billion deficit in 2012. Social Security could pay promised benefits in full through 2033, the report said.

Raising the full retirement age gradually to 70 years-old could help plug this deficit by reducing Social Security outlays by 13 percent, the Congressional Budget Office reported in January. "With the fact that people are living longer, they should be partly responsible for meeting the cost of longer life expectancy," said Juan Yermo, head of the private pensions unit at OECD.

Today, the full retirement age in the United States is 66, up from 65 a decade ago. It is scheduled to increase by two months a year starting in 2017 until it reaches 67 in 2022. Meanwhile, 62 remains the age at which those who retire early can collect a percentage of their full benefits. The OECD suggested, however, that "67 or higher is becoming the new 65." "Extending the period over which you're contributing to the pension system would be less of a burden for everyone," Yermo said.

When will you be able to retire? Experts say that the benefits of keeping people in the work force could spread beyond social security.

"People today in their sixties are not only living longer, but they're healthier," said Don Fuerst, senior pension fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries. "They can be a productive part of our society, and our economy needs for them to be productive. They could give our economy a boost."

I can not end this article without telling you that I did asked my octogenarian and nonagenarian friends what is the secret of their longevity: They both answered: We tried to be active both socially and physically and we never stop smiling...