Philly! - Bro Love

What a great weekend back in Philly!

First night out in town: Rodeo!

Rodeo wouldn't be the same without Pam

Some OT love with Leckie, Roberto and Chuku (who by the way is a karaoke beast)

With Michelle

Keira!

Next night, Theta Tau initiation and party! Congrats to the Etas, and it was great to see OT still going strong. I went and introduced myself to the new kids and they were like "yeah, we know all about you already!" creeepy. The night, of course, ended at Crown Fried Chicken.

 

Michelle and her room (oh the good ole' Hill days...)

Dinner with Kuong, Metter, Tozzo, and Leckie

Rob was back in town for the last night, and that was awesome. We had drinks at Smokes and then went on one of our epic 1 AM, 35-block bromantic walks back to Tozzo Mansion. Then the next day we had lunch with Tozzo by his work for a good old roomie meal.

And now for my two favorite food items on campus:

Tacos Don Memo

New Deck "Awesome Fries"!

mitfahrgelegenheit!

Just got the BEST email forwarded from Dfar:

Total inside joke from the whirlwindbromance that only him and I (oh and Alison and one Claudia Rodomski from Leipzig) would get. But man, that was such a fun trip!

Like my new tatt?

Eulogy for Grandma

My Grandma's infamous slingshot story has been all the rage these past few weeks. As the story goes, my Grandma was once at a street market when she was a little girl. This police officer (who was a I think was some former member of the Indian Army or something) told this little girl to shoo. When he turned away, my Grandma reached into her pocket, grabbed her slingshot, shot the dude, and ran away. Hahahah...go Grandma! And the funny thing was that many, many years later after she had moved to a new city and started a family, the man was passing through town one day and still recognized her as that mischievous little girl! Good story.

This is a copy of the eulogy that was given by my Great Uncle at my Grandma's recent funeral. From a historical perspective, its pretty interesting--I didn't know a lot of what she had to go through to get here. What a strong woman. Its always good to know where you roots are from. =)


--


Oct 31, 2009

Eulogy for Mrs. Shwe Lian Phan (4/12/1919 – 10/24/2009)

By Christopher Lee, Ph.D.

I would like to say a few words to give tribute in loving memory of Mrs. Shwe Lian Phan.  
Mrs. Shwe Lian Phan was born in Pakokku, Burma on April 12, 1919.
She was the 2nd eldest child of seven children of Mr. & Mrs. Kim Ngoke Leong.  
As for her own family, she was blessed with and survived by

• Five children consists of three sons and two daughters, and
• Nine Grand children

Her children and their family members are:

1. Eldest son Ricky & Make Phan and two grand children
2. Second son Hock & Eva Phan and one grand child
3. Eldest daughter Mary & Dr. Vincent Ho and two grand children
4. Second daughter May Shan & U Soe Myint and two grand children
5. Youngest son Andrew & Rosa Phan and two grand children

She is survived by four of her siblings: two brothers and two sisters.

• Younger brother Sik Chu Leong
• Younger sister Shwe Pain Tor
• Youngest brother Larry Leong, and
• Baby sister, my wife Pamela Lee

Her parents, Mr. & Mrs. Leong, emigrated from China to Burma in the dawn of the 20^th century.  At that time China was in the final years of the Qing Dynasty.  Both men and women wore pigtails in their hairdo; including her parents.  They first settled in the town of Pakokku where she was born.  Being immigrants to a new country, life was a struggle at the beginning.  Later Mr. Leong moved his family to a city called Prome, known as “Pyi Myo” in Myanmar.  In historical times, Prome was the capital city of many Burmese Kings.  In Prome, their business was good and the family was able to grow and prosper.  Mrs. Shwe Lian Phan was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend a Chinese girl school in the capital city of Yangon during her teen age years. In those days, educating a girl in the family was not a priority, and sending a girl to a far away city to study was a rare instance unless the family was very well off.

Disaster set onto Burma when World War II broke and the Japanese invaded Burma from the south.  In an effort to escape the Japanese occupation, her parents abandoned their businesses and belongings and ran for dear life towards the northern Burma with the hope of escaping to Yunan China.  They reached as far as the outskirt of the boarder town of Bhamo, but were unable to scale the mountain ranges and rough terrains at the border to China.  The advancing Japanese army caught up and her family had to stop running and take refuge in a remote village outside of Bhamo.  The struggle to survive was intense.  After the turmoil settled enough to move again, her parents moved the family to Shwegu, a small village town south of Bhamo on the bank of the mighty Irrawaddy river.   It was there that they hid, took shelter from bombings, and struggled to survive versus hunger and sickness. That lasted for three long years during the oppressive Japanese occupation.

World War II finally ended in 1945 when Japan surrendered.  The family then moved to Mandalay, the capital city of the last King of Burma.  Her father was a talented businessman and he quickly re-established his businesses and prospered.  She married Ah Kyaung Phan on Sept 23, 1946 in Mandalay.   The newly weds setup and operated tea shop in a small town Pyaw Bwe and they had their first born son Ricky in 1947. After a large fire consumed much of the town of Pyaw Bwe in the following year, they moved back to Mandalay and later settled in Myingyan with the help of Mr. Liu, her eldest sister’s husband.  That was where they spent almost thirty years of their lives operating a successful tea shop and various trading business.  During that period, her family was also grown to include five children.  

By 1975, it was an opportune time to move on again.  Under our sponsorship, she and her husband and the youngest son Andy were immigrated to the US in Sept 1975.  The older children later joined them in the following years.  Three years after they migrated to the US, her husband predeceased her on April 5, 1978.  Life was still a struggle at that time.  Even though the children were grown up, they were all struggling to get educated and professional trainings to establish careers in this new land of opportunity.  She was a strong minded and witty leader of her family.  She kept her family together until the children were able to stand on their own feet and settle with their own families.  She was a dedicated and loving mother and grandmother.  She touched the lives of many and we will remember and miss her deeply.   

On behalf of the Phan family, I would like to thank you all, especially those who came from far away cities.  Thank you for your out-pouring of love, support and sympathy at this most difficult time.  The Phan family deeply appreciates your time, care, gifts, flowers and words of condolence.  Thank you very much.

The Fall of the Greenback

In the econosphere these past few weeks, there's been much talk about the imminent collapse of the dollar and how its going to bring about chaos for the U.S and the world. This certainly didn't help last week when the Indian government bought 200 tons of gold to hedge against the global expectations of a falling dollar. And this definitely didn't help when the dollar fell 0.8% yesterday, amidst rallies across most of the major indices around the world.

I don't think that a correction in the value of the dollar is necessarily bad though. This is why: I think that the causes for our recent economic woes, while inextricably complex, can be boiled down to the existence of significant macroeconomic imbalances across the world--much of this has been exasperated by the recent strength of the dollar. For example, a strong dollar helped lead the U.S. to a large current account deficit (as a reminder, a current account deficit is when Imports > Exports). Look at a simplified view of the US-China relationship. Because the dollar was valued so much higher than the Renmenbi (though not as a result of natural market forces, but instead the Chinese government's decision to peg the RMB against the dollar), Chinese goods became cheap relative to America's, and as a result, the U.S. became a net importer and China became a net exporter. Helped by this, the U.S. began to develop a nasty habit of becoming the world's most powerful and extravagant consumers, and as China built up a current account surplus and started to accumulate U.S. dollars, it had nothing else to do with that money except 1) hoard it or 2) invest it (which it did both of--with the latter action being speculated to have helped indirectly worsen some of the real estate bubble over the last decade). Now take this U.S.-China relationship and apply it to most U.S. trade relationships across the world...and you begin to see how huge imbalances led to some of our problems.

A chaotic fall in the dollar would be catastrophic. However, a less extreme correction in the dollar would do great things in rebalancing much of the global monetary system and trade imbalances, because they are so heavily based on the dollar. It would help alleviate our current account deficit, and for once, help our exporters out. As we saw over the recent years, the world economy cannot be propped solely on the extraordinary consumerism of American and a few other large powers--demand needs to come from elsewhere. Rebalancing trade across the world will hurt America's economy in the short term (a fall in the dollar equals higher costs--thus lower demand and a slower recovery). But it will do great things in the long term, such as increase domestic demand in emerging markets (including the powerhouses of China and India), and help our global economy grow in a more stable and consistent manner--of which America, as well as the other countries, will certainly benefit from.

--
note: just realized that the above example can't really be extrapolated to represent all of America's trade partners--as China is a special case and one of America's largest trade partners. In this situation, a simple decline alone wouldn't help. The RMB is pegged to the dollar, and so for any good to happen from this situation, Beijing would have to allow the RMB to appreciate relative to the dollar--which does them no good because it horribly depreciates the stockpile of cash that China has been hoarding. This then leads to a whole other problem that US/China needs to deal with...

Oh The Power of Analytics...

So for the first time ever (and looking back, I'm actually very surprised it took me this long), I joined in a Fantasy Basketball league with some friends. I must say, this has totally sucked away my life. I spend so much time now following the NBA, looking at players' stats, and contemplating adds/drops/trades. Its kind of crazy. Seriously though, if I spend half as much time analyzing the stock market as I do the "NBA Market"...I'd be quite rich by now. But then that's not as fun, right?

Unfortunately for all of my time invested, my team has been doing quite horribly. Granted, its only been a week so far, and my 2nd best player (Antawn Jamison) is injured. I do, however, hate losing, and so am quite perturbed by this. In a bout of frustration last night, I sat down and (in un-abashed Banker-style) built out an excel model for my team's performance.

Judging by the amount of red seen in my team's performance vs. the league averages...you can see just how poorly my beloved "Team Awesome" is doing. Most notably, I'm getting absolutely rocked in the 3PT, PTS and REB categories. No need to panic yet though, this was just Week 1 out of 22 weeks and hopefully we can attribute most of this to early-season jitters.

But oh the power of analytics. This model is great so far, and it flows perfectly so that each week all I have to do is dump in the raw data from last week's performance and it will calculate all of the necessary stats. Not to mention with vlookups, all I have to do is enter the name of the team I'll be matched up against next week to estimate my performance. I think it'll be very, very helpful. By looking at my team's performance relative to the league average...analyzing trends such the standard deviations and skewness, I can determine what areas I can improve on and what areas I should just botch. For example, looking at my results so far, I think that in looking at trades or adding new players, I should work to improve my BLK and FT% categories, as those are the areas I'm not too far from the average in. And I should do so at the expense of my weaker categories--as those I'm way too far behind to catch up in. But hey, its only the first week (<4 games into the season) and certainly not enough data points to come up with statistically significant conclusions. I may just wait this out a few weeks and see how I fare.

Next steps: an overall dashboard to see total performance and improvements? something to estimate my team's performance based on my players' previous performance and extrapolate that to a per-week estimate?

LOL I think I've reached a new state of dorkiness. 8-)

We Will Always Remember You, Grandma

Shwe Lian Phan

1919-2009

who always brought our family together...

...and who always loved me, even when I was a goofy-looking baby: