eu-jin’s posterous

IKEA in Beijing seems to have turned into an attraction for locals. People spend their weekends there eating at the cafeteria, lounging around on the display furniture and taking photos of themselves in the store. Memorable quotes include:

"Brazen customers are known to come in with carpenters armed with measuring tapes to make replicas. Zhang, the office manager visiting with his family, said he bought a TV table and a couch elsewhere that looked just like IKEA furniture.

"Why spend so much money when you can have the same thing cheaper?" he said."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-ikea25-2009aug25,0,3900096,full.story

One of the best optical illusions that I've seen.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/08/18/square-circle-spiral/

Great article on how home ownership came to be thought of as part of the American dream in the recent decades. It was apparently not always the case even in the 20th century, and that mindset came about partly because of government policies.

I was also brought up to think that owning rather than renting was something you'd do once you had a steady job and were married. Home ownership where I came from is even more deeply entrenched in government policies than in the US. After working in finance for a while, I've changed my mind about the value of home ownership, and I have no desire to leverage myself to the hilt to pay for an illiquid asset with very high transaction costs in the area that I live in. In fact, in my area, buying turns out to be much more expensive than renting, and you'd need a pretty sizeable annual appreciation in the value of the house to even come close to breaking even, something I don't forsee happening for a few years.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350432677038184.html

A miniature version of the lead up to the global credit crisis is taking place in a much smaller scale in the world of Indian micro-finance. The leading events are pretty similar, except you can take off several zeroes from the sums involved in this case.

I remembered reading a while back that the original concept of micro-finance hinged on social pressure because your fellow villagers and friends would have be the guarantors of your loan, hence it would extremely awkward socially for you to default. From the article, I couldn't see any enforcement of this concept so it's unclear to me how the new concept of micro-finance is any different from strangers giving people small loans.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125012112518027581.html

Contrary to popular wisdom, running doesn't appear to hurt your knees if you're conditioned to it. In fact, running appears to have some protective value for your knees because it seems to condition your knee cartilage. I wasn't aware of these recent studies showing that your knees are probably not going to be hurt by running a decent amount, in particular,

"An important 2008 study, this one from Stanford University, followed middle-aged, longtime distance runners (not necessarily marathoners) for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1984, when most were in their 50s or 60s. At that time, 6.7 percent of the runners had creaky, mildly arthritic knees, while none of an age-matched control group did. After 20 years, however, the runners’ knees were healthier; only 20 percent showed arthritic changes, versus 32 percent of the control group’s knees."

It might be time to cut back on the elliptical workouts that I started substituting for running in an effort to preserve my knees.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/phys-ed-can-running-actually-help-your-knees/

One of the more fascinating jobs that I've come across. I never realised that background sound was added to movies in post production. The attention to detail is pretty remarkable.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204261704574274364012713436.html

A look into the lifestyle of a Mexican druglord. Some highlights include

- "The three-story house is like Hansel and Gretel meets Pablo Escobar, replete with gingerbread-like carvings featuring Christian and Buddhist figures, goats, fish and other animals. The grounds are a labyrinth of garden trails among man-made ponds fed by waterfalls. The compound also has stables, a suit of armor and a disco with stripper pole.

Some of the traffickers were caught in a cave-like underground hot-tub complex about the size of a backyard swimming pool, featuring faux stalactites and a fireplace. A glass skylight allowed bathers to gaze up at lions or a pair of albino tigers that dwelled in a cage on the roof."

- "Police at the scene said the neighbors apparently never complained about the lions' roars, perhaps because they thought better of tangling with the big cats' owners."

- "Inside his home, investigators found $205 million in cash hidden in a secret room hidden behind Mr. Ye's dressing-room mirror."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124804075279363265.html

I never thought of competitive yo yo as a sport prone to injuries but apparently competitors get all sorts of horrible sounding/looking injuries such as the one in the picture where the veins in the index finger are completely ruined.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124778820675954809.html

I've been to Yosemite a fair number of times to climb and hike, and it's gotten to the point where I've stopped bringing my SLR along for these trips. Then once in a while, I see something stunning that makes me wish that I had brought my camera along after all, but I never seem to learn my lesson.

A few weekends ago, I brought friends from Boston to Yosemite and we drove around the valley floor and headed up to Glacier Point where we saw a young black bear wandering around for a good half an hour. I felt a minor twinge of regret that I'd left my SLR at home for this trip.

On the way back down to the valley floor, we stopped at Tunnel View where I noticed that a storm was moving through the valley. At least I brought my G10 along for the trip.

I knew that pro athletes were notoriously bad at managing their finances but I didn't know it was this bad.

"Sixty percent of the NBA's often extremely well-paid players are virtually penniless within five years of retiring, according to a recent Sports Illustrated report. The numbers are just as bad, if not worse, for the NFL, the magazine says, with 78% bankrupt two years into retirement."

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2009/bs20090626_130035.htm