Seppia's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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Seppia
Posts: 2016
Joined: Tue Aug 30, 2016 9:34 am
Location: South Florida

Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Thanks all for the kind words :)

@animal: I try my best to stay positive, I genuinely believe that we are among the luckiest inhabitants of planet earth who have ever lived in the 100.000+ history of mankind.
For whatever misfortunes we may experience, in the aggregate we are super-lucky.
Your journal has been an inspiration and it defines the very concept of “freedom” the way I see it. (Please more pics :) )

@jp thanks!

@Jason: I may have to try a bigger surfboard after these Christmas holidays.
I’m an Italian man with an Italian wife and we are both from the same hometown.
This means our respective mothers have an intense passive-aggressive food competition during this time of the year.
They prepare food that is literally enough for three large meals, every time, and whenever someone stops eating they look at him/her with a sad look on their face and say “oh, so don’t like it?” (especially me since I am a “young man” - remember Italy is still a bit sexist).
So the polite way of behaving is to try and eat till you are on the verge of dropping dead.
In Italy, gaining only 5lbs during Christmas holidays is quite a feat.

We took possession of our small apartment, and we slept in it for the first time.

This is the small room

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This is the dining room, we don’t have a table yet so in perfect ERE fashion we made a makeshift table out of three boxes

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This is the view outside of the window at dawn.

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This is what we see from the parking lot in front. Those behind are the Italian Alps.

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For our first meal, we wanted to inaugurate the apartment by paying respect to our dear leader Jacob*, so we made....
LENTILS!


*it wasn’t actually done on purpose, lentils are a typical dish in this season as they are said to bring good money luck if eaten between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but it was a cool coincidence

First chop some garlic, carrots and some sort of tasty pork.
You can use bacon, guanciale or whatever. I scored a prosciutto end for a super cheap price so that’s what I used.

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Do the soffritto as usual, and add fresh bay leaves.

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After a good 15 mins on low flame, add 1lb of lentils and half a glass of red wine.

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Drink the other half

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Add water and salt, let cook

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Enjoy the wait by reading, sipping wine and eating parmigiano on your makeshift table

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Done!

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Happy holidays ladies and gents!

Jason

Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Jason »

(@) Seppia - Merry Christmas, ragazzo grande.

I heard this is a big hit in Italy.

https://www.hbo.com/the-young-pope

We are binging it before our HBO expires.

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

....so does Italy need any GIS specialist of any kind?

BRUTE
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Post by BRUTE »

Jason wrote:
Wed Dec 26, 2018 7:23 am
https://www.hbo.com/the-young-pope
great show

Jason

Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Jason »

There has been a recent influx of great Italian TV shows - Gomorra, Subarra. There is something bizarre about The Young Pope to me which I think has to do with Italian sensibilities when it comes to comedy. Italians can cook, paint church ceilings, compose operas like nobody's business. Film making they had Fellini. Sports cars, no problem. Women, forget about it. High culture they own. But they have absolutely no ability when it comes to pop culture. I mean you have people from fucking Iceland with frozen eyelids making great pop music but epileptics seizuring couldn't find the beat to an Italian dance song.

BRUTE
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by BRUTE »

TYP is definitely bizarre. it seems on purpose. just the intro sequence (one of the best of all time in brute's opinion) is a crass combination.

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

@Jason: yes Gomorra is VERY good. I’ll have to watch TYP, but I’m trying my best to cut down on my already low TV consumption so it may take some time :)
For some reason, we really suck at music. There’s literally two or three Italian artists I like (Francesco Guccini and Fabrizio de Andrè), but I’m not sure they are enjoyable by the non-Italian public as most of the charm in their songs comes from the words.
We call them “cantautori”, which kind of means something in between a singer and a poet.

Jason

Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Jason »

(@) Seppia

Brute is spot on that the opening sequence is a pastiche of whatthefuck. It's like watching a Geico commercial on mescaline. Rome has been called the Las Vegas of Christianity. The opening sequence, from that perspective is perfect, not limited to the cheesiest instrumental cover version of All Along The Watchtower imaginable.

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Financial Recap of 2018

This year hasn't been going according to plan financially.

There were two main reasons.

First, the markets havent been collaborative, taking out a good two thirds of what I've put in.
This is mostly a good thing as I'd rather be buying at cheaper prices obviously.

The second one is the purchase of the apartment, whose ancillary costs accounted for more than 40% of my total yearly spending.
Included in these costs I have furniture, kitchen, closing costs, taxes, etc. I'm not counting the actual price I paid as a "cost", because I paid a fair price for the apartment so i considered it a change in Asset Allocation (from cash to Real Estate).

Other than that, I had a huge unnecessary expense (a used Rolex watch), but in fairness these things tend at minimum to keep their value, so it's not completely wasted money.

The rest went a little bit better than planned, so not a terrible year overall.

My savings rate was still semi-respectable at 47%, and my NW increased about 6% to about 21 years of expenses (calculated on the average of the last three years without the apartment-related costs which I consider to be one-offs), with productive assets equaling 16 years of expenses.

For next year I'm budgeting a SR of 65%, which I hope to exceed mostly due to my conservative way of estimating income (I don't count any bonus money, and I tend to underestimate the dividend income).

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Does that include your wife's finances or just your portion/half?

thegreatvoid

Re: Seppia's journal

Post by thegreatvoid »

Seppia wrote:
Tue Jan 01, 2019 11:20 am
Financial Recap of 2018

Other than that, I had a huge unnecessary expense (a used Rolex watch), but in fairness these things tend at minimum to keep their value, so it's not completely wasted money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsmOegRt5Nc
I was reading your journal and then stumbled upon this recent comedy bit by Louis CK . Love his take on gold watches at ( 2:32 ). :lol:

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

@greatvoid LOL

@2b1s: just my assets, I pay for the majority of the family's expenses. My wife has a career as well but she’s had to quit her job to follow me in the last adventure.
When we move to Asia she will have plenty of opportunities in her field, but where we live right now, not many.

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

I have decided that I will run an experiment for the first three months of the year.
I talked about it with DW and she is fully onboard.

I was reviewing 2018 expenses, and if I strip out the expenses related to the purchase of the apartment, I’m basically in line with 2017 and 2016 (the only two years comparable to 2018 as I was living in NYC till 2015, and the COL there is obviously much different VS Italy).

The funny thing is that my housing costs swung pretty significantly over the Italian time frame*.
I drew the conclusion that my level of spending is a fairly constant percentage of what I earn (this is the case for most people), hence a lot of room for optimization is still left.
I was kinda aware of this intuitively, but seeing how in 2016 and 2017 my expenses were the same even if in 2017 I spent $5000 less on rent was pretty powerful.

So for the period of January to March 2019, I’m giving myself a spending budget equal to what I used to spend when I got my first job back in 2004, rent excluded.
No adjustment for inflation will be considered, as at the time I was living in Paris which I assume to be more expensive than Trieste.
The reason why I exclude rent is that I was renting a room in a shared apartment at the time, and now that my wife is unemployed I’m paying almost in full for a 1BR.
I don’t want this to impact my test.

So I will be aiming for $600 per month, with $100 extra for emergencies only.

I wasn’t at all living a miserable life at the time, so I should be able to pull this off.
I want to see if my perceived quality of life changes or not.
We shall see




*the reason for this is that DW and I have an agreement to split rent based on salary: 50-50 when she is full time employed and 80-20 when she is not.
Last edited by Seppia on Thu Jan 03, 2019 3:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

prognastat
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by prognastat »

Sounds like an interesting experiment, good luck with it. Definitely keep us up to date on how you experience the shift.

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Project "live like it's 2004"

As outlined above, DW and I have decided to try live for the first three months of the year with a budget (excluding rent, see couple post above for details) with $600/mo + $100 for emergencies only.
This is likely a lower budget VS 2004 because I'm paying for most of the costs for the couple while at the time I was paying just for my share.

First month looks like it will be a success, with spending as of today January 30th at 481 euros, equal to approx $550 at today's exchange rate.
I may have some minor grocery expense tomorrow, but no more than 15-30usd at worst.

Savings rate this month was 82%, and January dividends covered all my expenses.
I only had two such months last year, and even if I know the only right way to measure this is not across one month but rather "% of yearly expenses covered" it is still a motivating occurrence.
Being super competitive, I always found it beneficial for me to take on artificial/bullshit challenges like that, because they "trick" me into doing the right things

Work

Work keeps being awesome, I had to travel to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Hong Kong.
It's now my second time in Singapore and the impression has been the same as the first time: a very boring, dull and soulless place with terribly humid weather.

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It was my first time in Kuala Lumpur, only had two days and didn't have the chance to visit much. Weather sucks as much as Singapore, but the place seems to have a soul and an interesting history.
I didn't feel the religious presence (they are mostly muslim) too much, and noticed there's many Japanese there, which makes for some extra good restaurants on top of the already excellent food.
Will be happy to go back and learn more

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No pics of Taipei (again a short stay and too much work), but I kinda liked it. Seemed like a mix between China and Japan at a first look (which makes sense historically).
I'll be back in 15 days or a month and a half at most so I'll have a second look.

Hong Kong I'm just liking more and more.
So much charm, so much glorious colonial history, so much "china, but nicer and more polite", so much beautiful.
I'm ready to move there

View from hotel
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I took a one day trip to neighboring Lamma island. 45 mins by ferry spending something ridiculous like $3 or so and you're here:

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I only got back to Italy this past Saturday and on Thursday next week I'll be leaving again to Tokyo and Seoul.
I'm definitely going to try advance the "go to HK" schedule at work as much as I possibly can (I was planned to move to Asia, but no super clear timetable and maybe Singapore?), as for as much as I'm liking what I do, it's just not sustainable long term and I really like the idea of moving there - plus DW is fully onboard :)

Smashter
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Smashter »

Nice work on the spending! That is impressive.

I'm loving the mini city reviews, having never been to that part of the world.

I disliked the 2018 movie "Crazy Rich Asians" (set in Singapore) despite all the good press it got. For some reason your lukewarm Singapore review makes my opinion feel validated :)

lightfruit55
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by lightfruit55 »

Genuinely curious. May I know why you think that Singapore is “soulless”? What in your opinion makes a place have “soul”?

Tyler9000
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Tyler9000 »

Nice Hong Kong view! It's a really cool city. When passing through on business, I would always stay across the harbor in Kowloon very near the brown building on the far left of your first image. That's where people gather to watch the evening light show on your side.

Taipei is cool, too. The Taipei 101 has a nice view and the night markets are interesting. I would always make it to the National Theater just to walk around and sightsee. And if you're into Chinese art and history in the slightest, make time to visit the National Palace Museum.

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Seppia
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Location: South Florida

Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Thanks Smashter for the kind words :)

@lightfruit: it's very hard to explain what makes a city "with a soul" to me, it is mostly instinctive.
If I had to define it it would be a mixture of being instantly recognizable, having a defined and distinctive culture (food, architecture, music, manners) and generally "being alive".
Singapore is a very new country (hence doesn't have such a unique culture), when walking around you feel you could be anywhere in the world (with Marina Bay area being the lone exception), and, most improtantly, people live in shopping malls. Meh.

@tyler: did you stay at the intercon? it's one of our biggest customers in the city.
I stayed there the first time and the hotel is beautiful, just too expensive. II can get into the Renaissance (a beautiful hotel) in Wan Chai for 30% cheaper.
Our company policy is ridiculously generous so I could do the Intercon - I just feel bad even if it's not my money

Tyler9000
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Tyler9000 »

Yeah, the Intercon is nice. I've had a few drinks at the bar, but that's about it. My personal hotel of choice is the Marco Polo, as it's in an awesome location within easy walking distance to food, shopping, and the ferry.

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